I started my IT career in a web-design / internet service provider back in 2000, as a dial-up support technician... It was a scapegoat job. When everything was working, there was nothing to do and when things went belly-up, my job was to get screamed at by the customers and tell them we were looking into it...
One day where I was extra bored, I picked up the Mastering Visual Basic 6 book that was gathering dust in the office bookshelf and started reading it.
I was on page 6 or so when my boss passed by my desk.
"What are you doing?", she asked.
"I'm bored so I'm learning something." I replied
She dropped a spec on my desk and said "There! You've got 2 weeks."
It was a very basic "contact us" page for an existing client. Something that would have taken the actual devs a few hours to do. I did it in 5 days. That may not sound that cool, but remember that in 2000, there was no stackoverflow :)
After that, I handed it in to the QA guys and started reading my big book again.
She walked by my desk again and the conversation started the same way as the previous time.
"What are you doing?"
"I'm bored so I'm learning something."
"What did you do with the stuff I gave you last week?"
"Handed it to Fred..."
She turned to Fred (That's the QA guy) and he gave her the thumbs up. So she turned back to me, dropped a bigger spec on my desk and said "You've got 2 months for this"
A month later, I was promoted junior dev and she hired someone to take over the scapegoat part of my job.
After that I just kept learning...
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I started my IT career in a web-design / internet service provider back in 2000, as a dial-up support technician... It was a scapegoat job. When everything was working, there was nothing to do and when things went belly-up, my job was to get screamed at by the customers and tell them we were looking into it...
One day where I was extra bored, I picked up the Mastering Visual Basic 6 book that was gathering dust in the office bookshelf and started reading it.
I was on page 6 or so when my boss passed by my desk.
"What are you doing?", she asked.
"I'm bored so I'm learning something." I replied
She dropped a spec on my desk and said "There! You've got 2 weeks."
It was a very basic "contact us" page for an existing client. Something that would have taken the actual devs a few hours to do. I did it in 5 days. That may not sound that cool, but remember that in 2000, there was no stackoverflow :)
After that, I handed it in to the QA guys and started reading my big book again.
She walked by my desk again and the conversation started the same way as the previous time.
"What are you doing?"
"I'm bored so I'm learning something."
"What did you do with the stuff I gave you last week?"
"Handed it to Fred..."
She turned to Fred (That's the QA guy) and he gave her the thumbs up. So she turned back to me, dropped a bigger spec on my desk and said "You've got 2 months for this"
A month later, I was promoted junior dev and she hired someone to take over the scapegoat part of my job.
After that I just kept learning...