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Comment by mercnet | Hacker News Reader

I work remote and have plenty of time to work on side projects and learn programming. I still get excellent reviews from my peers and manager so the raises and yearly bonus have been decent. I want to make the switch to a developer role but I am insecure about my coding skills. In addition, I love working from home and I would have to replace my aging car with something more reliable if I commuted to a new job.

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Whether your coding is up to par is for your employer to decide, you don't need to worry about it.

Find a remote programming gig, or just do a few hours on elance.

I had similar feelings when I was working tech support, now 13 years later I'm not coding so much anymore and am now managing devs.

How did you make the transition from tech support to coding to managing devs?

Quite a few companies take full time remote devs, check the who's hiring threads each month. Off the top of my head Buffer and Heap (full disclosure I work there) accept full time remotes.

I mailed both of them. Got a reply from Buffer and it wasn't a template. The CTO had taken his time to look at what I had written and crafted an appropriate reply. I really really appreciated it.

On the other hand, I didn't even receive an acknowledgement from Heap, template or otherwise. It is fine, really. But I just want to get this out there as an addendum to your comment.

Really sorry about this. We try to follow-up with every candidate, and you must have slipped through the cracks during the Thanksgiving holidays.

I'll make sure we get back to you ASAP.

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