When people hear that I started over in software engineering at 40, they usually have questions. “Wasn’t it too late?” “How did you learn to code?” “Did you go back to school for it?”
The short answer: it’s never too late, I taught myself, and no CS degree was required. I do have a BS in Business Administration and an MBA — both earned at night while I was still working real estate, and neither one taught me to write a line of code. But the journey was far from straightforward.
The Air Force Foundation
My professional journey started in 1994 when I enlisted in the United States Air Force. Serving in the Honor Guard and Security Forces taught me discipline, attention to detail, and the importance of showing up every single day. Those three years shaped my work ethic more than any job since.
Building a Real Estate Career
After the military, I spent about 15 years actively practicing real estate — first in San Antonio, then Georgetown, Texas. I got my Texas sales agent license in 2004 and my broker’s license in 2009, built client relationships, and learned the art of negotiation. (When you see 20+ years attached to my name elsewhere, that’s counting from that first license in 2004. The 15 is the stretch I was actually selling.) It was a good career, but something was missing.
In my spare time, I found myself tinkering with computers, automating spreadsheets, and wondering how software actually worked. What started as curiosity became an obsession.
The Pivot
In 2019, I made a decision that terrified me: I was going to learn to code and change careers.
I started with Python — free courses, YouTube tutorials, documentation. Then I discovered the world of DevOps. Infrastructure as code, CI/CD pipelines, container orchestration — it felt like solving puzzles all day, and I loved it.
The real estate skills translated more than I expected:
- Client communication → Stakeholder management
- Contract negotiation → Technical discussions with vendors
- Market analysis → Understanding business requirements
- Self-motivation → Remote work discipline
Landing at Dell
After two years of intense self-study and personal projects, I landed a role at Dell Technologies. Today, I work as a Senior Software Engineer on a DevSecOps team, focusing on IBM Vault (formerly HashiCorp Vault) at enterprise scale.
Every day I work with:
- Go and Python for tooling
- IBM Vault for secrets management
- Terraform and Ansible for automation
- GitLab pipelines, Podman, and dev containers
Lessons for Career Changers
If you’re considering a similar path, here’s what I learned:
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Start building immediately. Tutorials are great, but real learning happens when you create things.
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Your past experience is an asset. Every industry teaches transferable skills. Don’t discount them.
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Embrace the discomfort. You’ll feel like an imposter. That’s normal. Keep going.
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Network authentically. LinkedIn, local meetups, online communities — connections matter.
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Be patient but persistent. It took me two years of consistent effort. There are no shortcuts.
Looking Forward
Years into this second career, I’m more energized about the work than ever. I’m a senior software engineer at Dell now, and I build iOS apps on my own outside of that.
The thing that carried over was reading. Texas real estate runs on forms promulgated by TREC, and those forms get revised. The contract you learned last year is not the contract on the table this year, and nobody announces the change in the room. You learn to re-read the current version every time, especially the paragraphs you are sure you already know.
Documentation works the same way. A library changes behavior in a minor release. A runbook gets edited by someone three timezones away. The practice the team adopted last quarter has already been amended twice. I read all of it the way I read an addendum. Slowly, and assuming the part I want to skip is the part that changed.
