5 YOE in service-based company, mostly support role, no DSA/LeetCode — feeling lost about switching. Where do I start?
Hi everyone,
I’m looking for some honest guidance from people who have been in a similar situation.
I have close to 5 years of experience in a service-based company. Out of that, around 3.5 years were mostly support/maintenance kind of work, and the remaining time has been in development, mainly in .NET and Azure-related work. The problem is that I never seriously did DSA or LeetCode during college or after joining the industry.
Recently I’ve started feeling very stuck in my career. My current project has given me some exposure to APIs, microservices, Azure services, integrations, Docker, etc., but I still feel underconfident because I know many product companies focus heavily on DSA and strong development fundamentals.
When I look at people solving LeetCode hard problems or talking about system design deeply, I honestly feel overwhelmed and worried that I’m already too late.
My questions are:
Given my background, where should I realistically start?
Should I first focus on DSA from basics or strengthen development fundamentals/projects first?
Is it realistically possible to switch to a decent product-based company from this situation?
How much LeetCode is generally enough for someone targeting backend/.NET roles?
Any roadmap/resources specifically for someone with experience but weak DSA foundations?
I’m willing to put in consistent effort. I just don’t want to waste another year feeling confused and directionless.
Would really appreciate advice from people who transitioned from service-based/support roles into better development roles.
Thanks.