Hey DEV community! 👋🏽
If you work in an engineering or engineering-adjacent role: how did you end up in your role? What has the hardest thing been for you? What do you like about your role?
I’ve been in tech for almost eight years (after switching careers) and I’m now on an engineering team! Previous to this, I was a content strategist on a developer relations team. I graduated with my Master’s in User Experience Design over the summer.
I’ve been in my current role for five months, and I’m a Senior Technical Program Manager on a web eng team. I ended up on my team serendipitously, the result of a re-org. My new manager selected me to lead a specific program, and I learned most of the role on the job (including Agile).
I’m now five months in and so grateful for the switch! I’m learning so much about myself and how to leverage my strengths in a completely new role. It’s not easy going from doing something you had years of experience in and was confident in to being a newb, but I’m energized by the work. I’m taking a related course, I’ve read quite a number of books, and spent some time looking at online tutorials for aspects related to my new job. And I’m excited to share that opportunities to do work that aligns with my UX degree is on the roadmap.
I look forward to hearing about your experiences!
Latest comments (19)
I had a degree in marketing management and a registered marketing professional but haven't really practice it in my profession. I've previously worked in roles such as customer service agent, marketing operations specialist, and a software quality assurance engineer. Then I took a coding bootcamp and switched career as web developer. But I already had interest in working with tech stuff since high school.
Awesome!
I currently write code examples in Go for AWS docs. I got here by:
Close to 20 years in the software industry and have worked on various technologies for desktop, web, mobile (Android and hybrid), and backend apps. I made a conscious decision to move away from Android to Backend 2 years back and now enjoying the micro-services paradigm and its challenges.
I am in my late fourties, have been working in IT for over 20 years and don't dance ... at least not ballroom. My first degree was in Arts and I discovered an interest in computing as I was finishing that. Then I enrolled in some vocational training and after another 2 years got my certificate and my first fulltime IT job as a publications programmer working with Omnimark, SGML and XML. After 3 years I decided to study computer science part time as I found the vocational training background limiting. When that was finished I got another job as a .Net developer doing a mix of back end and Web development, where I stayed 10 years, mostly because it was convenient, I liked most my colleagues and didn't have much to do with the toxic company culture. After 10 years I quit and it took me 3 weeks to find a new job as a .Net web developer in a great team, which I left after about 3 years to move overseas. Now I have been working in a new role as .Net developer, have been doing a bit of win forms as well as web development. It's been challenging to start new roles after a 10 year stint, but it's also been rewarding. I would like to go back to my previous job though since there were some really strong developers on that team that I felt that I could learn a lot from.
After getting a degree in chemistry I began working as a technical content editor for an EdTech start up. After some time of picking up odds and ends of coding I was given the opportunity to move over to dev at the same company. Several years and lots of MOOCS later (massive open online courses) I have learnt the skills I need to do my work efficiently. It took two years of hard work taking course work part time and working full time but it was fully worth it.
At the age of 16 when students in Czechia take dance classes, I fell in love with dancing and joined a dance team. Then I started dancing with a girl who is now my girlfriend and whose friend's dance partner works in IT. He told me his comany was hiring an intern for GUI testing with Selenium. I got hired and after one year I moved to a different team of the company and now I am a Java developer. Throughout the time I have come to realize how many people who dance also work in IT.
I've been programming since high school but actually got my Bachelors in Materials Engineering. After discovering that I am not a good fit for the rigid structure of a chem lab (though chemistry is awesome), I fell back to my computer roots and worked as an IT tech at the help desk at my college. After graduation I had some false starts, getting laid off from my jobs as a technical project manager at a tech startup and then again as an IT Tech at an MSP. Fortunately, I applied for and got a contract help desk position at my current company. That turned into a senior IT tech full time role and then into a promotion to my current role as an IT Engineer.
I'm very excited that I now have time to develop and that I'm highly encouraged to. The other engineers on my team do a lot of scripting, but I've been able to branch out into actually applications. I just finished my first C# program for our Office Management team to track meeting room usage using data from Microsoft Graph. Those stats are something they've been asking about for years and it's really great to be able to finally give them something.
I was stuck in a biz ops role in sales/support after failing as a biz project manager. I made a decision to get into programming, and applied to both an internal tech training program and an external boot camp program. My company accepted me for their new program, and I was the third person to be able to go through it (company of like 5k+). The program entailed sending me to a boot camp for a few classes and then placing me on a team with mentorship right after for further learning.
I'm continuing to learn while on the job, whether it's dealing with legacy code or building a new service from scratch. However, I've been spending a lot of my time helping mentor other folks who want to get into programming, so they can make the same jump I did (but maybe make it a little easier for them).
Not the last role, but my first US job: I was visiting a friend that put his office for sub-lease on craigslist. I was just checking my email when the new tenant came in and asked if I came with the furniture. They asked if I knew Ruby and I said I was a master, so they told me I could choose my desk. And that's how I met Miley Cyrus and subsequentially landed a dream job at PlayStation. <3
I become a full-time Developer Advocate for almost half a year now. Loving it. Before the transition, I was a data scientist but always love doing (and spending "too much" time on) community work (speaking at conferences, contribute to open-source, organise events). So after reaching out to a few DevRel friends and getting some tips, I am lucky to find a job ad from a mailing list and get my dream role.