Twenty years. If your career were a person, it’d be one year away from being legally allowed to drink throughout the United States. Like many people, you might think that these two decades in non-tech fields make you unemployable in software, data, or quality assurance. Threadbare and discouraging cliches about tricks and old dogs might rumble in your head like sharp pebbles in hiking boots.
It’s bunk. All of it is bunk. Cara Cross knows this better than most. After a nearly 20-year career as a mail clerk and landscaper, this mother of three has landed the transition into quality assurance, and this is only the beginning.
Here’s how she took her courage, merged it with new know-how from TripleTen, and is powering a new career at 40.
Making the change after 20 years
Forgoing a degree, Cara spent the majority of her career as a mail clerk. It paid the bills, but not without asking much of her.
It was a pretty strenuous job because it was a lot of labor, a lot of hours. Cara Cross, TripleTen grad
So after over thirteen years in that career, she made her first pivot. This time, she transitioned to landscaping. It was the right choice for her: “I worked one season and I couldn't get enough of it — being outside, cutting the grass, watching nature, being a part of something, and also getting paid to do it was a plus. So, I decided I was better at landscaping than I was at the post office,” she said.
But then, six years into her new career, she realized that she had exchanged one type of strenuousness for another. “While landscaping is a fun job, it's a little laborious,” she said. Besides, she was a mother of three, and wanted more freedom: “I wanted to go remote.”
That aspiration was lingering in the back of her mind one day when she was on Instagram. An ad for TripleTen came up, and she would have scrolled on by, but the mention of the money-back guarantee caught her eye. So she started looking into the bootcamp. The plain dealing struck a chord with her: “That transparency is a big quality of TripleTen’s, I think.”
She had a conversation with one of our career advisors, and landed on Quality Assurance (QA) as the program for her.
It was time for her next professional transition into tech.
The know-how to power a late-career pivot
Many people wondering how to change careers at 40 are nervous about learning something entirely new at their age, but TripleTen carried Cara through. “The first week of school, there was a little bit of intimidation, but the way that they break down the curriculum, it's very easy to go with and understand, and it's really step by step,” she said.
In fact, because of this, those first days convinced her she was in the right place.
When I started the very first week, I was sold. I was completely taken by it. Cara Cross, TripleTen grad
And as she progressed through the program, she realized just how valuable the tutors were in helping her tackle any issues she encountered: “At TripleTen, the greatest thing about it is the tutors, and TripleTen has tutors every hour on the hour almost,” she said.
[The tutors] touched me and gave me encouragement when I felt a lack thereof. When I couldn't learn something fast enough and I didn't understand and I was kind of scared, they asked questions to pull it out of me. Cara Cross, TripleTen grad
So with their guided, intentional help, she was set up to join not one but five bug jams, TripleTen’s in-house simulations of real-life QA work. She and small teams came together to do the testing on the apps and sites their fellow students developed. “The bug jams were absolutely amazing,” she said. “You get real work experience.”
The main difficulty for her? Finding time for it all. “Being a mom of three, working a full-time job, having things to take care of, I would say time management was my biggest challenge, but once I learned how to put it all together, it flowed pretty smoothly,” she said.
This all came to fruition when she took the opportunity to join an externship, a hands-on project with a real-life company. Specifically, she tested the login function for Runestone Academy, an online repository for math and computer science textbooks.
She’d been struggling with automation, but since she had to use it in the project, she was pushed to master it. She’s appreciative of that extra incentive: “I learned so much, and it knocked me over the edge for automation, which knocked me over the edge for writing code. So, with Runestone Academy, I pretty much learned automation besides what TripleTen gave me.”
She had the bug jams down. She’d started getting comfortable with automation (and presentation skills!) thanks to the externship. Now it was time for the culmination of it all: getting that new QA job.
On the path to opening her own business
Cara sharpened her search with the help of a TripleTen career coach. Being fresh to the field and starting a new career in her 40s, she thought she should just gain as much experience as she could before going for paid roles. Her career coach added some nuance to that idea. “The career coach of course enlightened me on that too and said, ‘No, it doesn't have to be like that … You can get paid while you gain the experience,’” she said.
What would that look like? Freelancing. For Cara, going for a freelance job was a move that would set her up in all the ways she was looking for. She’d work remotely, she’d get that tech experience while getting a paycheck, and she’d also start being responsible for her own professional fate, something she’d been aspiring to. “At some point I want to be in business for myself,” she said. “I want to work for me.”
So the first step was joining a testing platform where she could work and hone her QA chops. She found two platforms, got assessments, passed them easily, and was welcomed to start applying her new skills. The new work has been a blast.
Searching and finding — that is the funnest thing…It gives me a detective feeling. Cara Cross, TripleTen grad
But she’s not stopping there. Like we said, she’s planning on going into business for herself. To power that new pursuit, she might even come back to TripleTen and enroll in the Software Engineering program.
It’s all a testament to the fact that, even late in a career, with dedication and heart, people can make the change, something Cara’s adamant about, leaving this piece of advice: “Go for it, but have patience. If you're doing it as a passion, then you'll already have that. But even if you're doing it to just make a quick transition and you want to hurry and jump into the field, put the work in and have the patience because it can happen and it will happen.”
Forget any self-defeating notions about when you can and can’t make the change. Cara skipped them, and now she’s in QA. Sometimes, it just takes having the right partner to help you along: “The confidence that [TripleTen] helped me achieve made me feel like I can do it and I will do it.”
You can find a new career in your 40s too
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