Alternative Careers for Teachers: Why Tech Is the Way to Go

So you’re a teacher thinking of leaving the profession. First of all, we’ll just say: you’re not the only one. Especially because of the pandemic and plateauing salaries, many other teachers are also looking into a career change — and preferably, they want jobs outside of teaching altogether.

In fact, this is the background many of our students are coming from. And it’s led us to a clear conclusion: The best careers for former teachers are in tech. 

Here’s why.

Earn a higher salary

We’ll just come out and say it: tech has numerous roles that pay more than teaching jobs. As of this writing, the average salary for a public school teacher was $57,933 — and that’s taking into account all levels of seniority and all different specializations.

That needs some more context, though. The vast majority of our students come to us for a complete career change. That means that when they graduate, they need to make their way in a new industry, and thus they take entry-level jobs. 

So that nearly $20K salary increase should be interpreted not as an end goal, but as a starting point. As just a basis, you’ll be earning more. But then, as you gain more industry experience, specialize, and find your niche, you can see that number swell. For example, if you gain unique skills in software engineering and land a job at one of these companies_{The Top 18 Companies That Pay Software Engineers the Most in 2024}, you could find yourself earning over $230,000.

Your background can help take you far in tech

But just because you are in a new career doesn’t mean that you’re going to have to fully do away with the know-how you used every day as a teacher. In fact, your teaching skills can be the key to making you stand out to recruiters as you pursue a career change to tech. What skills? Just look at some of our grads and what they brought to their new tech professions.

Creativity

We don’t need to tell you — planning lessons takes a lot of thought. They need to be engaging and informative for diverse students who have unique needs. Crafting something that can cover all that requires creativity. One of the ex-teachers who made the switch with us is a prime example of this: Jenny Doctor_{From Making Music to Making Commits: Jenny Doctor’s TripleTen Story}.

She was a music teacher for four-year olds during the pandemic. To keep kids engaged over Google Meet, she applied her creative streak to develop new ways for them to get hands-on even at a distance. She started doing some basic HTML coding so that kids could interact with the material she was teaching. That sparked an interest in code that she decided to pursue with TripleTen, and now she’s working at Booz Allen Hamilton.

And that creativity is thriving. “There is absolutely still creativity in my current position. Of course, as a junior developer, I'm not exactly building complicated apps or you know, big components quite yet. But I'm able to find creative ways to solve problems,” she said.

Dedication

When switching careers from teaching, it can be all too easy to forget the importance of this core capability you gained. We’re sure that among all the other interpersonal skills you polished, this one came naturally, and we want to remind you that this is something absolutely in demand in tech. 

Consider it: you stuck it out to help a kid get those last few credits to graduate high school. Or maybe you stayed late to give help to a student who was struggling with fractions. That ability to put in the extra effort to achieve something significant will also serve you well when applying for a job and then doing day-to-day tech work.

Consider Tiffany Hall_{A Teacher Switches to Tech to do Even More for Students: Tiffany Hall’s TripleTen Story}. When she had to switch to teaching online because of covid, she saw just how much technology could do to help her special-education students. “After coming back from the pandemic, I was so excited going in, thinking, Great. This is the moment when we rebuild what we want to have. That didn’t happen, and that broke my heart a little,” she says.

But instead of giving up and resigning to a return to the status quo, she decided to do something about it. She enrolled in TripleTen, gained new skills in tech, and found numerous ways to apply that new know-how to measurably improving educational outcomes. In fact, she’s now at Scholastic Inc.

Domain expertise

When looking for jobs for former teachers, make sure you keep in mind that not only did you have skills in communicating information, you also had to know the information itself. Did you teach biology? Biotech is a growing field. Did you teach chemistry? Just add some data skills, and you could be an even more compelling candidate for the pharmaceutical industry. And if you’re a math person, data science might be just the career path for you, as it was for Evgeniia Unzhakova_{How an Immigrant Landed a Career in the US: Evgeniia Unzhakova’s TripleTen Story}.

After teaching math for nearly a decade, she and her family relocated to the United States, where she realized it would be difficult to continue her previous profession. So she started looking into alternative careers. She discovered data science, thought it was perfect, and enrolled in TripleTen. 

Thanks to the support of her coursemates, the guidance from career coaches, and her robust background in math, she managed to merge her existing skills with programming know-how and land a new job stateside. Now, she’s back in academia, but tackling data at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

With tech, you can make a difference

But people don’t just become teachers to gain transferable skills. When people go for jobs in education, they often do so with the urge to make the world better — to do good.

TripleTen grads discovered alternative jobs in which they’re developing programs to connect people with therapists_{Taking Therapy from the Outdoors to Tech: Jake McCambley’s TripleTen Story}, helping sequence DNA, RNA, and proteins_{Revitalizing a Promising Career: Jordan Wilheim’s TripleTen Story}, and developing what’s described as “GoFundMe, but for charities.”_{Breaking Through a Professional Ceiling: Rex Rodriguez’s TripleTen Story}

And here, we’ll return to our first point — you can do all this while still earning a respectable salary. Often, our culture places a stigma on certain jobs. This assumption says that workers should be happy about their lower paychecks because their true earnings are the impacts they’re having, and what’s more, they shouldn’t be doing the job for just the money anyway. 

If you’re a teacher reading this, we don’t need to tell you how to feel about that. Likely, you’re reading this article and looking for the best jobs for teachers leaving education because that constricting belief about the teaching profession has worn you down.

You’ll reclaim your work-life balance

Many people assume that achieving a good work-life balance is easy when you’re a teacher. After all, you’re only working six hours a day, right? 

Of course not.

Lessons need to be planned. You need to spend additional time before or after school with students who need extra help. You have administrative duties. And it’s not just about time, either. A significant part of the labor a teacher puts in is classified as emotional labor, in which you exert effort to control your own emotions as well as those of the people around you. In fact, in a school environment, this can be the majority of your work. After all, emotional friction is almost an inevitability when so many kids are brought together.

And this sort of additional labor can lead to negative emotional consequences, as it did with Jenny. “I started to get a bit burnt out with teaching,” she said. She even lost a passion that had animated her career as a music teacher.

When I was teaching, I really didn't make music for myself. I was focused on my students. Jenny Doctor, TripleTen grad

But by switching to tech, you can reclaim an equilibrium between work and relaxation, as Hulya Karakaya_{Mastering a New Syntax and a New Vocation: Hulya Karakaya’s TripleTen Story} did. After training to become a teacher, she moved to the United States, where she realized she needed a new specialization. This spurred her to start looking into jobs for former teachers not in education, and as she was in Seattle, she found herself surrounded by tech workers. This brought her to TripleTen, and then with her new expertise, she landed a position as a Frontend Developer. Now, she’s enjoying actually taking time off.

I enjoy a work-life balance because I work from home and have greater control over my schedule. Hulya Karakaya, TripleTen grad

3 jobs for former teachers

So as a career change for teachers, tech is a prime industry to pursue, but what about some specifics? Well, once again, we can turn to our grads for recommendations on the jobs that might fit your profile after you make the switch.

1. Research Analyst

This is the position that Evgeniia landed after her career switch. Research analysts collect data, clean it, and analyze it to make predictions. So in a position like Evgeniia’s, for example, you might apply statistical models and other analytical tools to predict enrollments in a higher education institution. 

This position also benefits from presentation skills, as you can often find yourself demonstrating your findings to numerous audiences who may have different levels of understanding of the tech and underlying data. Are you looking to be a former math teacher? Research analyst might be the job for you.

Starting pay: $81,000 as of April 2nd, 2024

Training duration: 8 months

2. Full Stack Developer

This versatile position is what Tiffany landed after the bootcamp. To describe it, we need to take a step back. For a lot of development, there are two separate focuses: front end and back end. Front end is all about the things you see and click — the design, buttons, and fields that can intake data. Back end is the scaffolding on which that all hangs. For example, when you log in to a website, the credentials screen you see and put your info into is all front end. 

When that data is checked against a database, that’s the responsibility of the back end. Each of these focuses is known as a stack. Hence, someone who can do programming for both is known as a full stack developer (or full stack engineer). They do the programming for both the aesthetics and the nuts-and-bolts, and it’s easy to find companies hiring for these professionals across tech — they’re always in demand.

Starting pay: $91,000 as of April 2nd, 2024

Training duration: 10 months

3. Software Engineer

It’s a bit difficult to describe what exactly a software engineer like Jenny does, as this is a fairly overarching title. But in general, these techies write code. Whether for apps, websites, or hardware, these professionals are building the instructions that form the backbone of the tech we use every day. 

From delivery apps to Mars rovers, code is telling computers how to operate to enable our current world. Skills in creativity, collaboration, and time management (i.e., the know-how you already have thanks to teaching) will take you far in a career as a software engineer.

Starting pay: $103,000 as of April 2nd, 2024

Training duration: 10 months

See if a bootcamp is right for you

You don’t need to go back to school and get a master’s degree to make this change, either. In fact, training programs that can supercharge your next professional switch abound. To see which path suits you best, take our quick quiz.