{"id":36204,"date":"2023-03-23T15:41:05","date_gmt":"2023-03-23T14:41:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.wbscodingschool.com\/?p=36204"},"modified":"2024-12-02T10:37:59","modified_gmt":"2024-12-02T10:37:59","slug":"from-cafe-owner-to-web-developer-how-i-changed-my-career-in-my-late-40s","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wbscodingschool.com\/from-cafe-owner-to-web-developer-how-i-changed-my-career-in-my-late-40s\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cFrom Caf\u00e9 Owner To Web Developer: How I Changed My Career In My 40s\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The sun-drenched slopes of Madeira, encircled by the North Atlantic, are not the sort of place where anyone would expect to plunge into an existential crisis. Yet Yuki Grosb\u00fcsch, owner of a Caf\u00e9 in Berlin and aged 47 at the time, returned from the archipelago loaded not with souvenirs but with doubts about her life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI was there to help a friend with a small film festival he had organized,\u201d says Yuki today. \u201cI realized that working there made me happier than I felt at my Caf\u00e9, at my own business. That\u2019s when I knew something had to change.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yuki\u2019s path into the food and beverage business had been anything but linear. At university she had studied physics, but was eventually discouraged from pursuing that any further. \u201cWhen you\u2019re young and insecure and you are surrounded on a daily basis by comments about women in science, it chips away at your self-esteem. Starting something of my own, I didn\u2019t have to hear people telling me \u2018women can\u2019t do this\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So she moved from her home in little Darmstadt (Hessen) to Berlin \u2013 that city of bustling streets, culture and counter-culture \u2013 and started out by working as a barista for others. She learned much about the trade, the grind, the early-morning hubbub, the after-hours maintenance, and the many underground terms of Berlin\u2019s \u2018Third Wave Coffee\u2019 culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Adobe Stock \/ 21AERIALS<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Then she put her savings to work, and \u2018Yuki\u2019s Espresso Bar\u2019 opened in Friedrichshain in spring of 2004.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOwning a Caf\u00e9 was a dream that ran in the family,\u201d she remembers fondly. \u201cIt wasn\u2019t just about cooking \u2013 although I do love to cook. It was about creating a space where people from different strata of society could come together, where the many lives of Berlin could intersect and brush sides.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The unexpected trouble about dreams, however, is that there comes a point when they are fulfilled.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI managed my Caf\u00e9 for almost 17 years, and I am proud of that,\u201d says Yuki, looking back. \u201cBut there came a point when I realized that my day-to-day felt boring. It felt like work had become just routine, like I had nothing left to learn or discover. When I went to Madeira to help my friend with his film festival, and once again I felt the joy that comes from getting my hands dirty, I decided it was time to try something new with my life.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"coding
View of Madeira. Adobe Stock \/ Grecaud Paul<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Yuki remembered that she\u2019d been good at programming back in her university days, and she knew that tech was a field that was desperate for qualified personnel. But that option seemed scary for a variety of reasons.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI knew I wouldn\u2019t be able to use what I had learned in the 90s. And at 47, there was the simple question, am I too old to learn to code? Am I still mentally equipped, am I still lucid enough for this sort of thing?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Among her initial, tentative applications was one for a scholarship at Berlin\u2019s CODE University of Applied Sciences. Yuki was rejected \u2013 but that rejection was precisely what pushed her onto the right path.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThey gave me some pretty comprehensive feedback. They said, you\u2019re already a grown-up, you don\u2019t need to learn the basics of how to work, and you want to learn quickly. You don\u2019t need a university degree \u2013 you need a coding bootcamp.<\/strong> I did a little bit of research, and I realized they were right. There were tons of bootcamps out there \u2013 I just needed to find the right one for me.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The \u2018right one\u2019 turned out to be the WBS CODING SCHOOL Full-Stack Web & App Development bootcamp<\/a>. \u201cIt was longer than most other bootcamps, and seemed more comprehensive and realistic about the process of learning to code. I asked some of my friends who knew about tech, and they recommended exactly what was in the bootcamp\u2019s syllabus. On top it all, financing was covered by the Arbeitsagentur. I thought, let\u2019s give this a go.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Contrary to her initial worries, being lucid was not an obstacle \u2013 but the intensive nature of coding bootcamps was. \u201cThe first week was one of the most stressful in my grownup life,\u201d she says today. \u201cThere was lots of work, lots of sleepless nights. I had to structure my day with precision just to keep track of what was going on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"coding
Adobe Stock \/ DC Studio<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

\u201cSometimes I asked myself \u2018What did I get myself into?\u2019, but then I saw that it was a common thing \u2013 everyone else was struggling too. And our instructor, Ben, was incredibly helpful and supportive.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And so, after 3 months of gritting her teeth and working hard, Yuki graduated from her bootcamp in April 2021, and completed her butterfly-like transformation from Caf\u00e9 owner to Full-Stack Web Developer!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Today she works as a Technical Consultant at FDM, and she says the most beautiful thing about the new world she has found is how different it is from the old world she first made contact with as a physics student.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cTimes have changed a lot for women in tech,\u201d she says with a smile. \u201cDuring the bootcamp I never heard inappropriate comments, jokes about girls or anything like that. And in my current job too, although the gender ratio is still not 50:50, the fact that women work as programmers is seen as something totally normal, not as an anomaly. Honestly, just being surrounded by other women feels so encouraging.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And so, at the end of her old dream of owning a Caf\u00e9, it works out that another dream was waiting for her \u2013 but for Yuki, this is far from the end.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI see my life as something that is continuously developing,\u201d she says as we wrap up our interview. \u201cAnd I know now that \u2018too old to learn\u2019 is not an argument. I don\u2019t really think about the past anymore, and I know that there are big shifts happening in the world of tech. My job \u2013 our<\/em> jobs \u2013 will change again in the future. And I am going to embrace that.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Enjoyed the article? Check out our blog answering the question Am I Too Old To Code?<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yuki Grosb\u00fcsch had fulfilled her dream of opening a Caf\u00e9. Could she break into programming next?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":36201,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"content-type":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[43,101],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-36204","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-reviews","category-software-development"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wbscodingschool.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36204","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wbscodingschool.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wbscodingschool.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wbscodingschool.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/17"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wbscodingschool.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36204"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.wbscodingschool.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36204\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":60815,"href":"https:\/\/www.wbscodingschool.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36204\/revisions\/60815"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wbscodingschool.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/36201"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wbscodingschool.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36204"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wbscodingschool.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36204"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wbscodingschool.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36204"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}