I took a EMT Basic night class because my wife and I were getting into scuba diving and I wanted to be a dive master on boats during the weekend. I enjoyed EMT so much that I signed up for Paramedic class, not knowing what I was going to do with it, just did it. It was relatively cheap at the time and we were kid free at that time as well when I started. School was 15 months long.
As we were about ready to graduate PM school the county fire dept (FD) came in and said they would hire paramedics but you had to cross train to be a fire fighter as well. I was 36 y/o, we just had our 1st kid and I figured if I didn't do it then I'd never would and probably regret it so I got hired as a PM and then FD trained me for FF. This was 2006, hence the username FM2606 for fire-medic Feb 6, 2006 my hire date.
It didn't take long to see a bunch of firefighter's getting hurt, specifically back issues due to working and mainly from lifting stretchers with patients on them. I also have a chronic health issues and I figured if either or both of these issues became a problem and I couldn't work as a FF/PM we'd be screwed, so I decided to do an online master's degree in comp sci. Comp sci being my initial major out of highschool before I dropped out.
Fast foward to 2015, I finished my master's, had 2 kids and started working part time as a dev.
Fast forward again to 2020, I was about to turn 50 y/o, Covid hit and I was taken out of the field due to my health issues. I started applying for full time dev jobs. Landed one and then two years later switched to a bigger org.
No regrets on any of it. Becoming a FF/PM was one of the best career decisions of my life. I loved it (for the most part) but it was time to go.
I didn't have an "in". I think persistence paid off and plus I feel like I interview pretty good.
Feel free to ask me anything else.
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You also have a different background that would perk up interview potential (at least to me). Diversity (aerospace eng, firefighter, emt, paramedic) can help bring different perspectives and ways of thinking through problems that will ultimately help an organization.
Organizations that mostly hire people with CS degrees from top universities that can fly through leet coding tests and ace system design problems I think end up with not much diversity in thought when it comes to problem solving.
Luckily for me my current manager didn't have a code test. I received a timed coding test for another position within the same org but a different manager and bombed the hell out of it.
