Iโm a sucker for origin stories. Stories about a series of events that has led to who someone is today.
It is an exciting time I think to be a developer. I love that through the Internet and code schools, folks from various walks of life can become a developer. While I took a more conventional route to becoming a developer by attending a CS program at a university, most of my knowledge came from outside of that experience. Through resources found online, jobs and friendships.
On top of that I think the culmination of all the odd jobs I had prior to development also attributes to who I am today and how I approach things at work.
For this reason when a few weeks ago, my Twitter buddy, Andrew Del Prete shared his jobs before development, I thought Iโd share some of the jobs I had in hopes of revealing some of my origin story.
The list looks like this for jobs I had before development:
- cashier for clothing store
- jewelry sales person
- shoe sales person
- valet driver
- bandai toys sales person
- wedding photographer
- cnc operator
- tutor
- bestbuy sales person
- administrator for baby photog
While the only common factor between these jobs is me, I can honestly say working these jobs before development has somehow or another contributed to the set of skills that I use as a developer today.
What are some jobs you had before development? Iโd love to get a glimpse of your origin story.
Photo by Gavin Allanwood on Unsplash
Originally posted on michaelsoolee.com.
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Oldest comments (39)
I worked as a geologist studying groundwater quality and later on with soil and groundwater investigation and remediation in industrial areas. After moving to a different country across the ocean I took a coding bootcamp and learned to code!
This is so cool! With a background in geologist do you see yourself now thinking about ways to solve problems you had in the past with code?
I was a CNA working in memory care, then a chef, then a dining room manager. During a period of unemployment, I started to feel strongly that I needed to change my career, and give my family a better life than we had. I started programming based on nothing but a gut feeling that I should, and I was hooked. A couple months later, I built a CLI application that scrapes music articles off of a website, and I was in love. I'm in a coding bootcamp now and looking forward to learning new skills.
That is very cool! Was the CLI for something specific or did you just want to see if you could make a scraper?
Also how's the coding bootcamp going?
Oh the CLI was my first bootcamp project. Sorry, I wrote that comment before coffee. But I also wanted to see if I could do it. It was sort of the turning point for me because previous to that I had been doing a lot of exercises, and it was the first time I built something from empty file to finished application.
The bootcamp is going great! Thanks for asking. I love spending so much time programming, and I really like doing it with a group of people, rather than solo.
My lifetime jobs in order, I may be missing some stuff along the way:
Whoa...I love the transition from salad maker to bouncer/security.
I quit (or was fired) from making salads because they wouldn't give me time off to go to my track meet. I sometimes worked with some shady characters as a bouncer but they were so much better to work for than my jerk grocery store manager!
Ha! So interesting.
Here's hoping the characters you're working with these days are better than both the folks from the days of making salads and bouncing shady characters.
I was taking classes for some COMPTIA certs. There was this nagging curiosity about how electrical signals on copper wires were translated into information we view in a web browser. This turned into a degree in electrical engineering and DSP. The DSP end showed me how much fun programming can be, so now I just do that.
Jobs held during this process (in chronological order):
-Dishwasher
-Line cook
-Flower Delivery
-Network Admin
-Groundskeeper
-Webmaster
-Janitor
-Applications Engineer
-Software engineer
-Software developer
Hey hey Matthew! Thanks for sharing :) What is DSP? I'm digging how electrical signals on copper wires led you on the path to see how it ends up to information that we see via a web browser. I had never thought about that and now you've got me curious. Could you expound on your findings? Perhaps in a DEV post?
DSP is digital signal processing.
That would be a HUGE DEV post -- but I could certainly break it down into more digestible pieces across a series of posts. That's actually a pretty good idea.
That would be awesome. I think that would be excellent.
If you'd like to keep it shorter and concise there's also #explainlikeimfive which might be neat too. But I could totally imagine you taking a deep dive in this topic and folks totally geeking because of the depth of knowledge you have in this.
The first job I had was yard work.
Then during college I worked most of the school years and one summer watching computer labs (making sure users checked in/out, helping with using software, etc). For other summer jobs during college, I worked fast food one summer and did data entry from fingerprint cards for another.
After I graduated (with a BS in CS), I did random temp work for a while (at one place I did some more data entry in Excel, and at another I gave surveys to people in a mall). Then I got a job doing phone-based customer service for a bank. Then finally I got a job doing tech support where there was some chance of moving into the "R&D" department where the coding happened, and eventually I did. I worked as a developer for 11 years or so, and now am on a sabbatical, after which I'll probably work as a developer some more (but remotely this time) or possibly try to sell a software-related product of my own.
Before I decided to go to school for CS, I was considering a career in music, and I'd like to get serious about that again, though probably not as my main source of income.
Also coming from a non-traditional route. I haven't had much work experience though, so here's a list of everything ๐:
Now I get to leave comments like this one for (some of) my living. ๐
Ha, this was basically how I ended up in NYC. Bro's couch, age 23 (or 24 I forget).
Hawaiian Shaved Ice snow cone maker
Clean up crew at a bar / concert venue
Mammography Clinic office helper / misc duties
Stocker at Target / Big Lots
Med school Petri Dish Washer / Cat Brain Cutter-Upper / Oh you do website stuff?
Marketing Agency Junior Web Dev
Marketing Agency Web Dev / SysAdmin / Network Admin
Marketing Agency Geek In Charge and Board Member
Marketing Technology Lead at Fortune 500 company
Marketing Technology Lead at large private company
Director of Emerging Technology at large private company
Sprinkled in there are tech co-founder of two startups that never failed, but never truly succeeded either (though one is still passive income).
100% self taught. Went to college for Religious Studies and Philosophy. I consider myself a hacker, and not a computer scientist. Because of my journey mostly solo, my favorite thing to do is mentor other developers.
My Bachelor's and first Master's degrees are in Classics (i.e. Latin & Ancient Greek). I never wanted to be anything other than a professor of Greek, but the Real Worldโข got in the way and made me pick a career where I could actually make money, so I parlayed that into a Master's in CS with a focus on natural-language processing and made a career out of that that's lasted 20+ years so far.
If we're listing pre-professional jobs, then I've been a
I've had a lot of different jobs but I'll list a couple.
-16yrs old I started working for a moving company called 2men and a truck
-18yrs started working at warehouses
-23yrs worked doing upholstery
-24yrs old worked as a problem solver for amazon
-late 24 - 25yrs old started doing odd jobs and landscaping
Throughout those years I also would work a lot of warehouse jobs doing general labor or forklifing along with some construction jobs. I also worked for BNSF railroad at one point