Zero Tech Skills to QA Engineer in 6 Months

and have people realize that your job is not your identity now. So where you are now, you can change. I thought 30 was old. I thought I couldn't change. I couldn't go back to school. It's not true. Don't waste the rest of your life thinking that like you can only stay in one career. And that is not true at all.

You know, the way that they have these different courses and careers and you know, all the like, you know, different boot camps set up like it is possible to change your life now, you know, and change your life, change your family's life. It's It is incredible.

Imagine investing $5,000 for a boot camp for a career you've never heard of. No tech background, just a hope that it might work out. That's exactly what David did when he left his 8-year career in healthcare to pursue software QA. First, it sounded almost too good to be true. But what happened next? over

3,000 job applications, countless rejections, and a journey that tested his grit every step of the way. Today, David's a QA engineer in tech. And in this episode, we're breaking down exactly how he made the leap, what it took, and why he wouldn't trade it for anything. This is the real story behind

the pivot, and you don't want to miss it. David, welcome to the show. Awesome. Thank you so much for having me. I appreciate it. Absolutely. Hey, do you mind just taking a few minutes and kind of telling us a little bit about yourself? Yeah, so um I started as a dietician and uh that's what I thought

my dream and career aspiration was um pretty much my whole life and uh so became a dietitian and got into healthcare and then I realized I hated it and uh so I was about uh I was about 30 years old. I hit my third year crisis whatever and I realized I had to make a change. I was working a ton of hours. I

was working an hour away from my house and time I probably had two or three kids and now I I have four now. Um and I realized that like I I can't do this anymore. You know, it's putting a strain on the family, strain on me mentally. I wasn't happy. And so I literally just Googled like because I knew I wanted to

get into tech somehow, but I also did not have four years to go back and get a degree, right? I went to school for 5 years like I'm done. I'm not going back.

I don't have the money. Don't have the time. I literally Googled, you know, like careers in tech that don't require a degree. And then, you know, couple things would come up. I thought about maybe taking like a uh, you know, coding boot camp or something. And then I kept seeing, you know, software QA, software

QA, you know, you don't you don't you don't need a degree. Take this course. You don't need a degree. I was like, that doesn't really seem right. Um, but like I I also have one of those like everything seems rosier than it is, you know, like you I I want to believe things are true. Yeah. And I've gotten

bitten by a couple of like investment scams, you know, and so I thought like gosh, is this another one of those? And, you know, trying like trying to convince my wife to like, hey, like this is this is the next great thing. Um, so I found this um program, this uh career course called um Careerist. And basically it's

a two-month course and they offer a couple different levels. Some that's just manual QA which is strictly non-coding and they also offer an automation QA which does include coding as well. And it sounded too good to be true. 100% too good to be true. I didn't believe it. And uh I did more research