How seemingly irrelevant experience can lead to your first developer role.
My perspective on getting a career in tech has changed drastically in the last 2 years, and even more in the last 6 months. I'd like to tell you a bit about how my seemingly irrelevant experience led to my first developer role.
My Experience
Mechanic
Let me rewind way, way back. The start of my professional career was spent as a pretty dirty mechanic. I changed oil, busted my back and did all the work that the clean technicians didn't want to do. I'm not going to lie, I hated it.
I wanted to become one of the clean technicians so I spent my nights reading documentation and diagnostics charts. When I was at work I would ask questions and went above and beyond to demonstrate my desire to learn new things.
Eventually I became the guy responsible for diagnosing and repair some of the most complex problems in modern highway technology - I made my way to a Computer Systems and Electronics Technician.
How this would be relevant in tech
There are a number of things that I took away from this position that would be relevant to tech and a few more that my employer thought was desirable.
What I took away
I quickly realized that no one can do it alone. Or at least, if you do, it makes things way harder and takes way longer. I learned to ask my peers for help, but I made sure that my learning path didn't rely on anyone else having to teach me.
What my employer saw
Of course there is some speculation here, but this is based on our conversations. When I explained my story, they saw a willingness to learn and a problem solving mindset. The role of a mechanic is mostly solving complex problems on equipment that's extremely challenging to work on.
Entrepreneur
My most recent role was spent running a wellness center along side of my wife. She was a dietitian, we both enjoy staying fit, naturally we started a wellness company that brought together Nutrition, Fitness, Massage Therapy and Wellness.
While I won't get into the misconceptions of owning a business in this post, my role was very hard to describe. As many people know, small business owners wear many hats. This was no different for us.
In the beginning I was working on the business, teaching fitness classes and cleaning. Being completely exhausted and not to mention still working as a mechanic full-time.
When we realized that these tasks, or working in the business was actually hurting our progress, I shifted to bigger picture things.
My role transitioned over the years to marketing. I took care of everything from high level to low level tasks. I would construct annual strategy templates, build ad campaigns on a number or social platforms and help my wife with as much as I could on the HR side of things. I was also building the content on social which eventually led to learning how to build landing pages with WordPress that would allow us to capture prospects.
I learned a lot here. Not much about development but how business works and what actually matters to an employer.
How this would be relevant in tech
My twitter feed is essentially a tech echo chamber. I see people arguing about the right way to build things. From a developers perspective, many of these arguments go deeper than knowledge on the topic goes.
This role has given me the ability to evaluate things from an employers perspective. Sometimes it really doesn't matter what the perfect way to build something is, as long as it gets done properly and we do a good job. With good management, there is always a reason to do something. Every policy and process was probably built from a situation or problem that occurred, just like every project is done a certain way.
What I took away
I've never worked in a non-profit but in business, we need to balance quality with getting stuff done. I've got a pretty good perspective on the importance of productivity and how to manage clients
What my employer saw
The ability to rationalize their decisions made and seeing the perspective on the other side table was pretty valuable to them. There is nothing better than having an employee who's invested in the company - not just for a paycheck but for growth and success.
You're underestimating the soft skills
Knowing the technology you're going to be working with obviously has its advantages, but the good employers are going beyond those hard tech skills or languages you need to know and finding the right fit for the team and the role.
The military for example will have a pretty good idea of what career path you will excel in based on an aptitude test. They don't expect navy seals to have any of those skills already, they're banking on the fact that they can train the right people the methods that work best for the military.
How this changes things for you.
Now, on to the most important part. When you think of your previous experience, don't think about what you did at your job, think about what it taught you.
Learn how to sell your skills
Take some time, the same amount of time you put into coding and programming for a few days and figure out exactly how your previous skills can benefit an employer above and beyond knowing the technology.
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