After 10 years in restaurant management, I was burned out and looking for a career that offered remote work options. A friend in tech suggested I try coding.

I started with Python but quickly fell in love with Go for its simplicity and performance. Built several CLI tools and a REST API for inventory management - skills directly from my restaurant background.

The job search was challenging because I focused too heavily on technical skills and not enough on system design and problem-solving. I failed several technical interviews before realizing I needed to think bigger picture.

My breakthrough came when I built a distributed task queue system and wrote detailed blog posts about the architecture. This demonstrated I could handle complex backend systems.

On the interview

Focus on system design interviews. Usually started with behavioral questions, then architecture discussions, followed by live coding of distributed systems concepts.