Question For Online Coders

My family is in a situation were I need to be in 2 places at once; in Mexico/USA. Physically speaking, this requires a lot of back and forth travel. Financially speaking is another matter.

I am looking for options to continue working while I bounce back and forth. The best option I can consider is an online job, with the better pay seeming to be in coding.

My question is this: How hard is it to learn a few forms of coding, Python, JavaScript, Java quickly? How hard is it to find semi ok income online for a beginner with no programing working experience?

I am fortunate enough to have close to 0 debt and a few lines of passive income. I will not need online coding to be a 100% financial support system. BUT, enough to not chip away my at my retirement savings.

Any advice is greatly appreciated. I ask on ffxiah.com as I know we have some amazing coders on these forums who probably have useful knowledge into what I am asking.

Thank you!

I can only tell you my experience and what I've observed, everyone may have different experiences or observations. I'm a consultant so we kindof come and go with large code bases, so we see a lot of different things, but I also mainly focus on embedded so my time spent with things like Java/C#/etc is more limited these days.

Learning Python, Java, or C# (which, as far as managed languages go, we see far more of than anything else) really isn't hard. They are fairly forgiving, very well documented, and the syntax is easy to understand. Error output from compilers/interpreters is pretty clear and, again, well documented. There will be nuances you'll learn over time, as anything will have, but there are an overwhelming number of resources to start working with all of these and learning the basic concepts.

The challenge is that development is about more than just syntax especially when you start dealing with large projects. By far the most tedious part, at least for me, is coming into a huge established codebase and being able to make sense of it and I think that's where a lot of people stumble, they learn how to write basic stuff but never how to jump into something already developed and contribute. That and, for me anyway, all of these languages/technologies can be really indirect, so it may be doing something somewhere that isn't immediately clear, which annoys the hell out of me with them. If you do decide to pursue this, I'd strongly suggest once you get a grasp on the concepts and languages you are working with, download some FOSS projects in that language and learn to navigate it so you can grasp what's going on, learn how features work and where they are implemented in the code, etc. Some languages will also have frameworks or APIs that would be good to understand, for instance we see a lot of Django projects (Python) and a lot of WCF (C#), but again experiences may vary.

For someone able to grasp the nuances and intricacies of this game, none of this should be terribly difficult to learn, it'll just be time learning, reading, and experimentation. The challenge is proving to someone else you are able to do it and IMO that's where you'll have trouble.

Almost everyone I've worked with in the last few years are laying people off in large numbers, including developers. Many of them also do this type of development 'offshore' and those that don't may have export control issues that might be a problem if you are planning on working from two countries. You'll also be overcoming the hurdle that you don't have a CS degree or some kind of formal education (presumably), which again makes it more difficult, not so much from a learning/functional standpoint but more proving to people hiring that you have the experience. There are freelance sites like UpWork that you could try to work on, but I'm not sure how well that'd work out for someone without more experience in established code bases. None of this is insurmountable, if you are able to demonstrate that you are capable of doing work then engineers/devs are more willing to look past these things, but getting through the HR filter might be difficult. If you have things you can demonstrate you've done, it might help with engineer types and smaller companies, but getting past HR at big firms will be a nightmare because they just look for certain things and discard anyone who doesn't meet those quals.

This is all in the US, Mexico might be different. Smaller companies tend to be more permissive IME. You may need to be mindful of import/export rules though so be clear that you plan on being in both places, being blunt this alone might present a problem for some. Coming in saying you'll be traveling between two countries and need to work remote as a jr employee might not go over well with many, it might not be a problem for some (or possibly a benefit if they are in both places). I'd also caution that remote work has kindof slowed down, a lot of people (especially jr employees) are being sent back to the office. Again, experiences may vary, just my opinion/observation/experience. If you freelance, this may be different, but I have little exposure to doing that, so someone else would need to comment.

Thank you Iamaman,
I have formal education in construction project management and some technical certifications in HVAC. I have held high level positions for large companies before starting a small family HVAC company. However, from what I have read, this does not seem to translate well into the programming world. I really appreciate the feedback. Hoping someone with a freelance background may also chime in.

If youre looking for an IT job, i would sugest starting out with N1 helpdesk.

Generally that job requires little qualification as you need mostly receive calls, look for established procedures, and either solve it with the scripts or forward it to higher tier help desk.

As you becomes more knowledgeable, you can also move to higher payment jobs.

Regarding to programming, i wouldnt underestimate the career.

Given everything evolves overtime, progressively there is more and more to catch up. Also, you dont learn a language to work. You learn a language to learn how to work with a framework, then you can start talking about what type of developer you aim to be.

Also, consider how AI services are becoming more and more accurate, i wouldnt think you gonna have any differential only learning one or a couple of base language. ChatGPT-like can probably program better than any bootcamped programmer.

That said, i believe programming gonna need less writing code and more having à holistic view of the entire development: you gonna need to be a fullstack and also have enough teamwork to make things happen.

Thus I encourage you to look at offers for help desk or sys admin. Also, devops and AI are good optiond

Just to add to what's been said, and take this with a grain of salt (I'm in Canada, graduated Comp. Sci. before it got popular, private sector for 7+ years, public sector since then... So I'm not out there in the trenches trying to job hop like a lot of other folks to stay ahead):

This is unfortunately a terrible time to be an entry-level developer by the sounds of things. Every tech company has been doing layoffs after over-hiring during COVID. Lots of newer folks stuck looking for offers for a year or more. And lots of people who were lured in by the promise of high pay and remote work, being let go or told they're expected back in the office now.

So the situation now sounds like if you're really, really good and experienced, you can still demand your worth and get opportunities. If you're average or less experienced, you're going to have a rough time.

I'm still hopeful development will remain a promising sector to work in for the forseeable future, but we're definitely not in a "boom" period right now where anyone that can write some code is getting job offers.

Personally, I'd say your best bet is if you're technically inclined try what others have said and go for more of an IT support position that's hopefully willing to let you work remotely. If you're not really "into" development, I'd recommend against going down that road solely for financial reasons. Just because the bar is getting so high that anyone who isn't keeping up (learning and growing outside of work) is going to fall behind. Like Panta said, even now everyone is basically expected to be "fullstack" (know the bare minimum to work with frontend, backend, and databases), and the pool of jobs for average coders is drying up. AI might accelerate this a bit, but nobody's got a crystal ball.

I'll second and expand on this.

If you are going solely for financial reasons or the perception that you can primarily work remote, I wouldn't encourage this path. I'd only suggest people do it if they are actually interested in the subject matter. You should be passionate about it IMO otherwise it'll be short lived or you'll have trouble finding good work and staying employed. I've done a lot of interviews over the years and it's really obvious who is doing it for perceived perks and who is actually passionate about it.

Software engineering (not just development) as a whole is not the great QOL people may think it is. They see people working from home making decent money, what they don't see is the work on weekends, after hours, neglecting their health or family, and massive burnout people deal with. It has its perks and there are worse things to be doing, don't get me wrong, but most competent people pulling their weight are pushing through burnout and working a lot more time than people realize.

There was a meme circulating for a while about how jr vs sr devs saw themselves in 5 years, the jr saw themselves sitting behind a computer doing cool things and the sr saw themselves on a farm without a computer in sight. Pretty accurate IMO.

Not to discourage you, if you are interested in it and it's your thing then go for it, but if you are just looking for a remote job and a paycheck then I agree, I'd look elsewhere.

^ This.

Got my first job as a dev in 1996, went from mono to fullstack in 2002.
By 2010, keeping up with all the new stuff you're supposed to know and master started to turn my passion into a really boring "job" (not to mention the terrible QoL).
In 2018, freelancing opportunities became a bit scarce due to the amount of competition which even got worse after Covid.
Then ChatGPT crashes the party.
I ran an experiment a few weeks ago and asked ChatGPT to create a js/php image editor using imagemagick with complex bash scripts.
The result worked flawlessly and took 5 minutes. 4 years ago I sold the same end product for $6k and it took me a whole week.

Any dev who claims AI is not a threat is in complete denial.

Requoting them since that's 100% relevant about today's situation: