Where could I learn more about these kinds of opportunities? Does it come from networking, domain experience?
It also comes to good sales as well. Again in my example, I was originally approached for a single contributor personal contract. It was just me at the time. Within a couple weeks of working together, I quickly realized they were bringing on these individual devs left and right. I simultaneously pitched the client on expanding our contract to multiple contributors, AKA becoming a true vendor, while also recruiting and hiring a team behind the scenes (again, networking - I pulled from past coworkers and friends who could get the job done, so the hiring process was far from exhaustive, but saved critical time). It was a risk, but it worked out and I was able to stitch together the team and win the contract. We became their de-facto “engineering team” of about 5 devs, and I set up a corp entity and began processing invoices and running payroll for my new employees.
Use accounting software from day one. Hire a corporate attorney. Worth every penny. Spend as little as you can to make your employees as happy as possible. Do not run payroll in multiple states unless you absolutely have to, or be prepared to deal with L&I and revenue departments for every state you have employees in (see: accounting software, corp attorney). Just a few of the lessons I learned along the way.
I’ve personally transitioned several people from other industries into software successfully.
Some of them got stuck in the leetcode world convinced it is what would help them get hired.
You know the ones who always get hired the fastest? The ones who have real-world prototype apps to demo to recruiters and interviewers and showcase their applied knowledge.
As someone who also has hired several engineers, I don’t care how many leetcode problems you do if you can’t do basic real world tasks like simple devops, or don’t have basic domain-specific experience (such as GraphQL, React, Stripe to name a few randomly, whatever tools are in the stack or the place you’re trying to get into).
Also idk why you think FAANG is the only place where you can find money. I can tell you from first hand experience that you can sell the most mundane development work, like basic jQuery and CSS site updates, for hundreds of thousands of dollars with the right opportunity. Plenty of prestige in running your own firm. Networking well is where the money is.