Que Intro
Beautiful day Dev.to community! I hope everyone out there is prospering and or persevering. Today is one of those days where I’m prospering more than the latter. Why? Well, because today I’m celebrating my one year anniversary with Pillar Technology! Today also marks the end of my stalling on posting to this platform. So as the new kid on the block, it’s only right that I introduce myself.
My name is Matthew Quinn. I’m a Software Artisan for Pillar Technology and, as mentioned above, today marks one year that I’ve been with the company. In honor of securing one year in the bag, I’ll reflect on the journey up to this point and then I'll map out some goals for year two.
Journey to Pillar
My journey to Pillar is a journey that tested the stamina of my perseverance. Back in the summer of 2014 heading into my senior year of college, I interned with a Fortune 1000 company that transformed my bland ass resume into something worth looking at. I was in school for Marketing Analytics with plans to find a job that allowed me to use my love for statistics and data to tell a story. This internship was my plug into that. So everyday that summer, I went into that company with a smile on my face and a drive to provide value anywhere I could. This paid off. When the internship was coming to an end, I received a full-time offer for a position I’d start after graduation and a request to remain working until then. I was geeked! My first “real job”. I couldn’t have been more happy! And I wasn’t until I wasn’t.
The wear and tear of an uncomfortable culture, a lack of connecting, and decreased challenges with no mentorship accumulated to the point where I wasn’t happy anymore. I still enjoyed some of the aspects of what I was doing. However, I realized that there was a lot more to a career than being cool with the work. So with no plans, no real next move, and no idea what would happen next, I left. Little did I know, that move catapulted a timeline of events that lead me to where I am now.
I won’t go in-depth with what all happened in the timeline above (I’ll share those experiences in other posts), but know it was a bumpyass ten months. From scraping money from side projects to abruptly joining a coding bootcamp to the mayhem of getting rejected by 27 companies before turning down my first offer to wait to hear back from Pillar, it was a wild ride that paid off more than I could’ve anticipated.
Looking Back at Year One
My first year at Pillar has been dope. I went through the Apprenticeship Program, graduated and got placed on my first client, spoke at our company conference, and connected with extremely talented individuals. The growth I've experienced this past year has been phenomenal. One thing I failed to do though was set actual goals to hit. Originally, it was to just get better and graduated from the Apprenticeship Program, but for year two, I want my experience to be more than that. Hence, why I set goals for the next year.
Goals for Year Two
Take a deep dive into JavaScript and React: Working for a consulting company means that the technologies used vary by client. This ultimately translates to Software Artisans needing to be capable of learning-how-to-learn. However, with no tech experience before Pillar, I've found that a lot of the folks around me are comfortable with something while I'm not. Hence, the goal of going deep with JavaScript and React for year two.
Communicate: I believe that the best way to solidify what you know is to communicate what you’ve learned. Anything related to my experiences in the tech world or my discoveries of JS and React, I want to communicate. That’ll be done through posting on websites, presenting at Lightning Talks and Lunch and Learns, asking questions, and reading up on how other folks are executing the same practices.
Create. Create. Create: Another huge part of learning is done through creating. I will create as much as I can with the technologies that I’m taking a deep dive in. Small projects. Pieces of a project. Large projects. It doesn’t matter. I’m just gonna create.
Dev.to: I’ve been a member of the Dev.to community for awhile now, as a reader not a writer. But today I'm changing that. I'm gonna build in habits that result in a minimum of bi-weekly posts to this platform.
To wrap this up, I appreciate y'all for the time you took to read this and I look forward to becoming a more active member of this community!
Happy Monday!
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