Is it possible to major in computer science and management of infosystems and minor in computer programming?

At 27 years old, should I change my career from construction management to computer programming/software engineering? Why?

• Sorry for the long post - I tried to organize and minimize my thoughts the best I could. I would appreciate any feedback you have on anything noted below - but most of the questions are towards the end of the post. Thank you for your time. I am 27 years old, working in SF, I work in construction management, and we build office space for clients in SF, most of our clients are tech companies. Think Box, Twitter, Facebook, Google, Oracle. I get paid 67K annually, with 3 year experience. I want to make double this within 3-5 years - in my field, I think it will take 10 years to get there. Maybe 15. (I am also anchored by my desired salary by what I currently get paid - ideally to live comfortable in the bay area I believe you need to make $200K+) Construction Management has to be one of the most challenging fields, and most frustrating fields. Your work depends on so many other parties outside your company - and you depend on them. If they fail, you fail. With that, when one of the parties make a mistake, they blame it on others - and the easiest person to blame is us, even if its not our fault.  Most people think you are always trying to rip them off, when really they don't understand that's actually what it costs to build what they are looking for. With all this - I still like the work - but barely. There have been days (maybe 5 days total) where I almost lost it and wanted to cry because it gets exhausting dealing with problems 24/7. There is also the day when the project is built and they move in - and you say - wow - I was a part of making this happen. In a nutshell:  If someone came up to me and was interested in construction management - I will tell them to look into other fields. Or - if I knew now what I knew today, I would have looked into another line of work. Is it too late? There are similarities between computer programming and construction. Someone I know in the tech industry mentioned that they look for people with construction experience since the thought process is similar. This has to be built before that. Or you need materials (or think function in computer programming) before you build it (it being a wall in construction - or the program in coding) Rent prices in SF have increased due to the tech boom in the past couple years. Some people are mad at the rising costs, I don't really care. But a thought popped in my head - Why not me? I have done maybe 10 hours on Codehs. I really enjoyed it. Its easy - I understand that. But I really like the whole computer programming/ coding concept - that you can create a program to complete certain operations. Also, I feel that computers are the future and theres a lot of hype. Electric Cars, ipads, ipods, Spotify, Google Glasses, like these are all really interesting things that are a product of computers and programming and I would like to be involved in this field and movement Also, I have noticed that even with 10 hours of programming play, I have been looking at things at work and like differently. I've actually thought of putting together a write of up if-then statement for things that happen at work. If this happens, then its best to do this. Or thinking preconditions and post conditions. The great thing is, thanks to quora and other websites out there, you can learn a lot about coding - free. I don't mind spending money to learn coding either Questions: How much experience should I need to get an entry level job. I know this is a really open ended question - but would 10 hours a week of practice for a year be enough to get a job with a salary in the 60-80 range? Is it possible with this minimal experience to work at Google, Facebook, Spotify, Apple - any of the big firms - or is it better learning to work for a smaller firm? With that - what is the most useful use of time - what languages, what resources? What different jobs are there in programming? What's front end vs back end? Where is there the most growth in the next 5 years? Whats the biggest need? What is the starting salary of entry level work and how hard is it to find something being self taught? What other things should I consider before I decide to devote my time to learning to code and changing my career.

• Answer:

  The career change is a good way to get challenging satisfying work which pays well if you have passion and aptitude for software engineering and will be satisfied working at least full-time, although getting there is not a minor undertaking.  If you don't have the passion you're not going to learn enough to be good and get hired.  Interesting software engineering jobs are usually at least 40 hour per week positions so it's not a good part-time profession. 1.  How  much experience should I need to get an entry level job. You ought to know what you should have learned earning a CS degree (the degree itself isn't enough because in the 1990s CS departments found that  the 40-70% drop out rates resulting from heavy coursework dependent on  aptitudes not everyone has was not good for revenue).  I cover some of the highlights in ? To get past the resume screen you should  demonstrate you're likely to possess that aptitude and knowledge via a BS CS degree or significant practical experience doing non-trivial things. Ideally you'd also have 2-3 years experience at a previous job in industry where the problem scope is much larger than in school or small personal projects.  With a healthy work environment you can expect people to perform at least as well as they did at their last job.  Without previous commercial experience that performance floor doesn't exist so new graduates are risky hires that I avoid when possible. 2.  I know this is  a really open ended question - but would 10 hours a week of practice  for a year be enough to get a job with a salary in the 60-80 range? I wouldn't hire anybody with that little experience period or know anyone who would because that's not enough time even if you know what to study People do  get jobs like that after attending 8-12 week  "full-time" boot camps with formal instruction. http://www.skilledup.com/learn/programming/the-ultimate-guide-to-coding-bootcamps-the-most-selective-bootcamps/ although "full-time" is somewhat of an under-statement.  Quoting the 9-week http://devbootcamp.com web page Also it's important to note that even though class is 40 hours per week, you'll be working more like 70-100 hours per week! and No, seriously, have you ever worked 80-100 hours per week? Do you know  what it takes to work that hard? Our students do. On day 1. and It is important to note that even though Dev Bootcamp's onsite  program is only 9 weeks, there is Phase 0, a 9 week preparation phase  that is accomplished remotely. You'll be expected to put at least 10-15  hours per week of work during that phase. That's 720 - 1035 hours, 18-25 full-time weeks, and a few years at 10 hours a week if you could manage to internalize everything as well. For comparison purposes the relevant parts of a CS degree program with good project classes  probably total about two years of full-time work. I've known people who earned computer science degrees while working (some full-time) in their 30s that  got jobs in industry but that takes years. 3.  Is  it possible with this minimal experience to work at Google, Facebook,  Spotify, Apple - any of the big firms - No.  With brand name recognition there are far more applicants than positions and you're going to loose to people with degrees and practical experience from projects and internships. 4.  With that - what is the most useful use of time - what languages, what resources? Language knowledge is a very small part of what engineers need to do their job.  I got hired to write distributed systems software at Microsoft in C# in spite of never having seen it before, and to do the same at Amazon with Java which I'd encountered once before. It's like writing commercial grade fiction or screen plays in a foreign language - lots of people know Spanish and German but that's just a small part of it. 5.  What  different jobs are there in programming? Some engineers build the web interfaces people see, some build the internal services those use, some write software for robots.  Some solve simple problems very similar to what lots of people have done before (which are likely to be off-shored to places where $1500 rents a mansion with guest house and live-in servants not half a one-bedroom apartment), some do hard things with lots of moving parts that will be described in research papers a few years from now when they're less commercially relevant.