If you don’t count the two years of Java I took in high school (AP CS), I’m self-taught. No CS degree. Switched majors 6 times in college and didn’t realize until I graduated I wanted to code.

Started in QA, did that for over 3 years. Transitioned to a SEIT, did that for a year. Then finally got the software engineering title. Took much longer than I wanted but got it eventually.

Since then I’ve been through the whole stack. Now doing more DevOps, SRE type stuff. It’s honestly been great. Worked for startups, mid sized and Fortune 500s.

My only tip is if you love to code just keep doing it. Everybody wants to say “I don’t want to code outside of work, I want a life, ect ect.” The only way I’ve truly been able to learn is by having side projects and working on them constantly. I’ve had a side project going consistently for the past 7 or 8 years. Hacking on your own stuff, at least for me, brings me actual joy rather then a lot of stuff I do for my day job.