How I became a Software Engineer

I have been a software engineer for 7 years now and I graduated from the University of Hertfordshire with a 2:2. I can admit I never really applied myself when it came to my education, doing just enough to pass and with the interesting subjects I would achieve higher but not to the level of me putting effort into acing the class.

Leaving university I managed to get a temp job working as a 1st line support which was basically my entry point to my career. After a 4 months I had gained enough experience to apply the skills (transferable) I had gained working there and my customer service background to get my foot in the door of IT.

Transferable skills can be born from the unlikeliest of places

Optimism is essential to achievement and it is also the foundation of courage and true progress.

My next job was given to me by God. I have no recollection of applying for the role, and after each of the 3 interviews stages I had a feeling that I hadn't done good enough but strangely they hired me. Great ?? I made it! In the space of year of graduating, I have managed to get my foot on the career ladder as Junior Developer.

This was the first time I was exposed to source control, servers, peer reviews, tech talks, demos, scrum and so on.. Luckily I am a quick learner and managed to keep up with everything but not without help. I leaned on my team leader and adopted a lot of his coding styles and even learned what that was. Things like using the command line (for more than executing a script), line formatting and even keyboard shortcuts.

Don't be afraid to ask questions.

Questions are good. It means you are learning

If you don't know, say. You will always find a way, and there is always more time.

Within 3 months I was made redundant, needless to say I was upset but there is ALWAYS a silver lining. With this short experience I was now able to put on my CV that I have working experience coding in a professional setting, with experience in html, css, js, jquery, xml, source control and most importantly working well within a team.

Within a month I had been offered a role with a significant salary increase. The thing I find interesting about this part of my journey, I was faced with a decision of accepting the role as a frontend developer or as a backend developer. Bearing in mind that my previous role was frontend, I had come from a Java university degree and now I actually had an opportunity to get working experience with it.

I chose the backend role. I decided that going forward I would be a backend engineer as my main trade, but learn and understand across the stack. I was in prime position (in the stack) to work closely with both the frontend and the sysops, In doing so I was able to learn more about the ways they work, tools they use and exactly what they do.

Can you think of some key decision that had led you to where you are?

And I will leave the story here, going bed! But I wrote this to say that we all have a journey and we should share them. We never know what gems lay within a story, some message or learning that might relate or inspire or spark a thought. My journey is still very young but along the way I would advise anyone who reads this to "Pay Attention" and "Ask Questions/Enquire".

All the best,

Kevin Mason