<blog>
<tldr>
It took me 10 years to start on my chosen career path as a developer. After 5 years as a software engineer I realized that the skills I attained in those initial 10 years are perhaps more valuable than my engineering skills.
</tldr>
<body>
<asteroids>
I’ve wanted to be a programmer since I was a small girl playing Asteroids on a portable computer that my father, a programmer, would bring home from work.
</asteroids>
<a-levels>
Due to lack of demand at my all girls’ high school, Computer Science was not offered for A-Levels. I made special arrangements to leave the school for part of the day to study Computer Science elsewhere.
</a-levels>
<dotcom-bubble status=”burst”>
A first class honors degree, from a top university wasn’t enough to navigate the crashing economy. Like most, I was unable to secure a job in IT.
<execute>
function applyForProgrammingJob() {
return false;
}
</execute>
My fellow graduates went on to retrain in careers such as Accounting and Pharmacy. I got a job in a preschool for hearing impaired children and followed up with a Master’s degree in Education with a Technology focus.
</dotcom-bubble>
<lost dream=”career”>
With every year that went past, the tech world was becoming increasingly out of reach. Technology evolved and I had still never even gotten that entry level job into the field I wanted so much to join. Despite the fact that teaching came naturally to me and was always very intuitive, I still felt like I was wasting my time teaching and had given up the chance of ever having the career I truly wanted.
<execute>
let dejected = 0;
while (bubble.type===‘dotcom’ && bubble.status===‘ongoing’) {
teach();
dejected++;
}
</execute>
</lost>
<boredom>
After 10 years, I was at a point where I was crying from boredom each night. I was working 3 jobs to make ends meet and had three young children. I decided to push myself a bit harder and spend my evenings re-learning how to code. From there I was able to secure a job as a Java trainer in a consulting firm.
</boredom>
<goal status=”achieved”>
After a few years of repeatedly teaching the same course, I was again, in need of something more stimulating. I finally entered the career I had been dreaming of since childhood. I got my first job as a programmer, so many years after I graduated university. Unlike most new grads however, I knew my code inside out, in a way that only teaching can enable.
</goal>
<regret reason=”wasted-time”>
I spent my first five years as a developer with the constant, nagging feeling that I had wasted the first ten years of my career. Thinking that if I had just graduated one year earlier, just graduated before the dotcom bubble burst, I would have gotten that oh-so-illusive entry level job in IT. Perhaps then I wouldn’t have spent ten years in a constant financial struggle.
<regret>
<shift-mindset>
Whilst developing in a large, global, financial company, I noticed that engineers took a significant amount of time to ramp up to the point where they could start producing autonomously. We’re talking between 3 to 6 months ramp-up time for the average engineer. The rate of attrition in these large companies is high. Which means that this long ramp-up time is eating a whole lot of productivity.
<senior-engineer role=”teacher”>
At work I would watch a particularly knowledgeable engineer patiently train a recent college graduate. It was whilst they were delving into Unit Testing that it started to dawn on me, this is not efficient. Not only is the new grad still learning and finding his way in this constantly changing field, but now the senior engineer’s time is being consumed as well.
</senior-engineer>
<realization>
Realization hit me hard. I HADN’T wasted 10 years of my career. I was in a fantastic position. I have two separate and distinct career paths that I could follow at any time: Teaching or Software Engineering. Not wanting to take a step backwards and revert to teaching developers, I saw my value would lie in creating training departments at the corporate level. Training the trainers. Custom training would enable the company to decrease that initial ramp-up time, free up senior developers from the bulk of onboarding, thereby decreasing costs and increasing productivity.
</realization>
</shift-mindset>
<summary>
Having multiple skills to bring to the table makes an employee more valuable. My particular set of skills can only be achieved through years of experience, training and hard work. It has been 20 years since I graduated with my first degree. I can now finally say:
<poem poet=”Robert Frost”>
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
</poem>
</summary>
</body>
</blog>