Day 1: The Path from Classical Musician to Software Engineer
My name is Steve Vaughn, and I am a professional musician that has decided to change careers into Software Engineering. My first blog post will outline why I made the decision and how I am going to make the change!
I love music. I love it so much that I made the decision in 7th grade that I wanted to be a professional musician. I was your typical band nerd all throughout high school — the chubby kid that took up an entire seat on the bus so I could take my baritone home every day — you can probably picture it! Fast forward to today, and 12-year-old Steve would be so excited that I am an Adjunct Professor of Euphonium at a large University, principal tubist with a regional orchestra, and playing in a championship-level British-style Brass Band.
So then, why the career change? Believe it or not, there’s not that much demand for professional tuba and euphonium players (shocking, I know). The path to success for classical musicians is often one of 2 roads (or both); a tenure-track position teaching in academia or playing with a full-time orchestra or military band. Since COVID, tenure track positions are few and far between, and the pay is often embarrassingly low for a job requiring a doctorate. I was offered a lecturer position that was advertised as doctorate required in 2019 for a whopping $42K/year. Military bands offer great benefits, pay, and depending on the position, don’t require you to ever shoot a gun. However, these auditions are fiercely competitive and I can count on one hand the number of openings in the past 5 years.
I received some of advice from a friend who made a career change out of classical music. He said, “I care more about living somewhere that I like more than I care about playing the tuba somewhere I don’t want to be”
The low supply of these jobs means that you often have to be willing to move anywhere at anytime when you are offered a position. When I turned down that 42K/year job in a HCOL area I decided that I like living where I am, and the connections I’ve made in this area. I turned down that job and took a high school teaching position that made decent money, but I didn’t enjoy the stress of classroom teaching.
What are the things that I do enjoy about music? I reflected on this question and realized that the musical things in my life that bring me joy all happen outside of a normal M-F, 9–5 work day. The late night/weekend gigs and teaching a few private lessons at the university are all things I can still do while in a different career.
I started seriously looking into what other things I might be interested in, and software engineering was first to mind. It runs in my family too! My mom worked for IBM and I grew up around computers. I remember using Netscape on our IBM ThinkPad laptop and playing DOOM on it when my mom wasn’t working.
My next step was to figure out how to learn the skills needed to actually get a job in this field. I saw a post on Facebook from a fellow musician who had just graduated from the Flatiron School in their Software Engineering program. We talked a bit and after hearing what the courses were like and doing some courses on freeCodeCamp I decided this is the field I want to move in to!
This blog is long enough already, so I will end it here saying that I am enrolled in the Flatiron School Immersive Software Engineering Course starting on June 7th. I am so excited to explore this new (but familiar) career and see what it has in store for me!
