I'm pretty much self taught. "Pretty much" because while I did attend a year long "intensive" programming course, it was in no, way, shape or form even close to quality education (I don't include it in my online presence and don't tend to bring it up in discussions other than sharing how to throw money away). In this case, it provides a bit of context.
I first spent a year or so at a small family run development company after which I was lucky enough to land a gig at Electronic Arts. As a purchasing assistant. I'd interviewed a there a couple times previously for engineering roles but was so far behind the curve it was laughable. The reason I took the gig though was because the manager was looking for someone with wev dev experience. I didn't have much, but just enough to land the gig.
I learned. A lot. In a short time. I spent roughly the next decade or so transitioning from a purchasing assistant to a bonafide web developer, to a front end engineer (eventually becoming the lead for a relatively large team), to contributing to game client teams (mostly gameplay with a sprinkling of rendering), to moving to popcap post acquisition to work on devops and back end server work. The entire time I was there I worked my ass off learning those academic things that I'd never touched before. Design patterns, algorithms, some math (linear algebra and a touch of calculus) and C/C++. It was an incredible learning experience and even through the crunch times, I really don't have much negative to say about it.
However, ten years or so is a looooong time. I felt totally baked into the EA way of doing things. The frameworks, the processes, the people. I had no idea how the outside world worked, and not coming from the traditional (at the time) CS background, I always felt like I was just lucky enough to be an engineer at EA, that nothing I'd learned was transferable (I mean, how many non games companies used ActionScript?!). I was overly pessimistic about external opportunities and, quite frankly, too scared to even try.
And then I had a kid.
I was already commuting an hour either way daily. So add the crunch times onto that and you really don't have much time to spend with your family. That combined with the fact that the satellite popcap studio I was then a part of was being shut down, I decided that it was finally time for a change and it gave me enough reason to get out there and start interviewing.
I interviewed with two prospective employers and was offered two great opportunities. For someone who was too scared to leave the EA nest it was a pretty big confidence booster.
I ended up taking a role at Demonware (not out of the gaming industry but far enough removed from game clients that I had much more time with my family) and spent the next two years there. It was the happiest I'd been in ages.
Then the big change came about five years ago or so when I took a leap and left the gaming industry entirely. I've been at Salesforce ever since and couldn't be happier.
If there were a few learnings I took away from it, they are:
Interviewing is a great skill to have and should be practiced. I've known people who have applied for jobs just to get more experience.
Contributing to open source is an incredible way to get valuable experience, especially if you're feeling pigeon holed, and even more so if your current skillset isn't overly transferable
Keeping in touch with peers and keeping your professional social network is a Good Thing. It's a large part of what eventually led me to Salesforce.
If you're nervous or scared about how you may fare when switching gears professionally, it typically means that you actually care. It's not a bad thing and chances are it'll push you to work your ass off too. Just take care to not burn yourself out.
Thank you for sharing Demian! There is so much here, and so much that resonates and so much that I have follow-on questions about.
There are so many stories like this of evolving one's sw career over time. It isn't easy though we can learn from each other. Perhaps I need to interview bunch of people and tease out insights and wisdom to share with others.
I'm pretty much self taught. "Pretty much" because while I did attend a year long "intensive" programming course, it was in no, way, shape or form even close to quality education (I don't include it in my online presence and don't tend to bring it up in discussions other than sharing how to throw money away). In this case, it provides a bit of context.
I first spent a year or so at a small family run development company after which I was lucky enough to land a gig at Electronic Arts. As a purchasing assistant. I'd interviewed a there a couple times previously for engineering roles but was so far behind the curve it was laughable. The reason I took the gig though was because the manager was looking for someone with wev dev experience. I didn't have much, but just enough to land the gig.
I learned. A lot. In a short time. I spent roughly the next decade or so transitioning from a purchasing assistant to a bonafide web developer, to a front end engineer (eventually becoming the lead for a relatively large team), to contributing to game client teams (mostly gameplay with a sprinkling of rendering), to moving to popcap post acquisition to work on devops and back end server work. The entire time I was there I worked my ass off learning those academic things that I'd never touched before. Design patterns, algorithms, some math (linear algebra and a touch of calculus) and C/C++. It was an incredible learning experience and even through the crunch times, I really don't have much negative to say about it.
However, ten years or so is a looooong time. I felt totally baked into the EA way of doing things. The frameworks, the processes, the people. I had no idea how the outside world worked, and not coming from the traditional (at the time) CS background, I always felt like I was just lucky enough to be an engineer at EA, that nothing I'd learned was transferable (I mean, how many non games companies used ActionScript?!). I was overly pessimistic about external opportunities and, quite frankly, too scared to even try.
And then I had a kid.
I was already commuting an hour either way daily. So add the crunch times onto that and you really don't have much time to spend with your family. That combined with the fact that the satellite popcap studio I was then a part of was being shut down, I decided that it was finally time for a change and it gave me enough reason to get out there and start interviewing.
I interviewed with two prospective employers and was offered two great opportunities. For someone who was too scared to leave the EA nest it was a pretty big confidence booster.
I ended up taking a role at Demonware (not out of the gaming industry but far enough removed from game clients that I had much more time with my family) and spent the next two years there. It was the happiest I'd been in ages.
Then the big change came about five years ago or so when I took a leap and left the gaming industry entirely. I've been at Salesforce ever since and couldn't be happier.
If there were a few learnings I took away from it, they are:
Thank you for sharing Demian! There is so much here, and so much that resonates and so much that I have follow-on questions about.
There are so many stories like this of evolving one's sw career over time. It isn't easy though we can learn from each other. Perhaps I need to interview bunch of people and tease out insights and wisdom to share with others.
Thanks for taking the time to write this down!
Happy to share! I probably would have written more if I wasn't replying from my mobile ;) Happy to answer any follow-on questions that you may have.
Interviews to back a post seems like it'd be a great idea!