Shortly after college I was lucky enough to find myself in an incredibly unique and interesting position as a video compression engineer contractor for a large global tech company that will go un-named. My time there was filled with learning a variety of different skills, but the main one that stuck out to me was programming little scripts in basic using the Notepad app to draw in and run various other scripts that had been created by someone much smarter than myself. The layout and format was all fairly simple, but I found a strange level of joy in typing out a fully functioning script, even if they were very basic; it took me back to my days when I should have been paying attention in AP Physics but I was delving into the code on whichever little TI-83+ game I’d downloaded that past weekend. When those little games caught on and multiple classmates were becoming virtual text-based-adventure crimelords, I was the only one who’d gone into the programming and figured out what made it tick. Running through the code seemed simple, and I quickly learned how to modify it to get myself extra health and money. My friends kept asking me to modify their games with cheats as well; I was their king, the king of the nerds, and all of the virtual wealth in the text-based world was at my feet.
While there was certainly a lot I loved about my time as a truly elite TI-83+ Hackmasterchampion™ and my subsequent time forming and running scripts to bebug video files, I felt like I was missing something in my life, I just didn’t know what. Fate would have myself and nearly our entire team of video compression engineers let go after the company managed to automate all of our jobs into obsolescence, allowing me to search out what might fill this unknown void. I applied to a variety of other technical positions for just over 6 months with nary a single interview. I know now that my resume wasn’t great, and my lack of any technical training outside of on-the-job training was probably hurting me, but at the time it felt like it just wasn’t feasible to get a job anywhere else in tech without a CS degree, something I wasn’t interested in pursuing (or paying for!)
After a tiring job search that led me knowwhere, I grew a bit sour of the tech sector, knowing now that it was purely as a result of my own lack of experience, training, and self-improvement, but hindsight is twenty dollars or whatever. As my funds grew thin and the end of my unemployment benefits loomed, a friend suggested that I come take a job helping out at the bar he was working at. I didn’t know much about bartending nor did I have any in-depth knowledge of beer, wine, or liquor, but I did know that it sounded like fun, so I jumped in. I was lucky to start in a great craft cocktail bar, and immediately fell in love not just with the artistry of craft cocktails, but specifically with craft beer. Never before had I tried such a wide and exciting array of beers from around the country and world, and I quickly need to try all of them.
I grew a bit obsessed with craft beer, and, itching to narrow out a career path after aimlessly bartending for a couple years, decided to throw all of my chips in the craft beer basket. I moved to a nearby town and pursued a certificate in craft brewing. During my program I got a job as a packaging assistant at a local brewery, worked my way up to the role of brewer upon graduating my program, and have been brewing professionally for three and a half years since. I love what I do now, but unfortunately I don’t see a stable or satisfying future in craft beer for myself.
For the past year I’ve been wondering if I made a mistake giving up on the tech sector. I contemplated pursuing my CS degree that I’d shrugged off years ago, but decided for the same reasons that it wasn’t the path I wanted. I never put too much thought into coding bootcamps until I saw an add on Instagram for CareerKarma (killing it with the targeted ad game, clearly.) I did some cursory research about them, then decided to jump into their 21 day coding challenge. Not only did I learn a good bit during this time about some basic programming and language fundamentals, but I also got some really solid support and advice from mentors and other users of CK (shout out to Ruben!). With their advisement, I took a very serious and deep look into coding bootcamps, something I had thought of years ago as just a cash grab, but clearly the landscape has changed. Flatiron stood out to me the most not only because of their statistics of student success, but also the polish and design of the Learn.co platform and IDE, I thoroughly enjoy it.
Now I find myself wrapping up the bootcamp prep in preparation for my online software engineering program, and I couldn’t be happier. Every time I manage to learn something and actually get a piece of code working, even something as simple as a “hello world” in Ruby, I get that weird nerdy rush of excitement I got when I was ignoring my physics lessons to goof around in my TI-83 over a decade ago. There’s something so satisfying about creating a working piece of code, and I can’t wait to learn and develop more over the coming years.
Thinking back now with the benefits of hindsight and some age, I think that initial void I felt was really just a desire to learn and grow in my abilities that I had been ignoring, growth that had stagnated when I got comfortable in my very basic script writing as a video engineer. It wasn’t the tech sector that had me down, it was my lack of vision for the future, something I feel that I can see now more clearly than ever, and I can’t wait to go out and make it happen.