Have you ever said to yourself at work "sigh, I can be doing so much more than this!". This was me back in mid 2013, I was working at a phone shop and even though I was around technology and latest gadgets I never felt fulfilled and eventually did not want to be there anymore.
This is not to say working in a phone shop is unfulfilling or terrible it is to say it was not for me or my "calling". I just came out of university with an engineering degree ready to start work but here I am in retail. I sometimes wonder maybe I rushed to quickly to retail rather than enjoy my time off from all those hours of studying and being in education all those years to just find myself but that is for another blog post.
When working in a phone shop you really get talking to customers when serving them and one thing I used to get annoyed at was when they will say "You have an engineering degree why are you here?"and that used to bug me because I could not respond with "this is what I want to do". Questions like that did not help my morale at work whatsoever but eventually I decided to use this as a stepping stone to try leave retail and get my career going in engineering.
I knew I wanted to work in tech long before I graduated with my degree it looked like it would be robotics at one point, probably cos of my love for Iron Man. Working in phone shop I was intrigued about two things 1) the engineering behind a phone device i.e. designs, durability of phones and materials used to build the phone, 2) Software. I pushed more to the latter the more I was working, I already had small programming experience from my degree, MatLab shares similarities to C, so learning Java was not a steep learning curve for me but what bought me pain was eclipse and the whole android SDK. I found a few customers who worked as a software engineer and they were able to offer me more advice and I would sneak my email address to them so they could help me, yes I was too eager to get my career going but sometimes extremes are needed.
You could say my software engineer career began working in a phone shop, but it began when I finally took control of what I wanted to do and not accept my current situation at the time. In life we always have obstacles that stop us from being where we want to be or should be, and some battles are extremely tough, but I say is face them head strong, get help if you can, guidance, use whatever you can but do not accept a career or job that is not for you or do what I did use your current situation as your advantage. I used to give customers my email if they could offer me help or advice about starting a career in software development, yes I know risk losing my current job to get into a field I had little experience with.
“Fortune sides with him who dares.”
― Virgil
You're time is a valuable assets do something you value with it, I spoke to one of my engineer friend, and he said "you have to grab life by the balls and get what you want" yes I know weird advice but it made me think that he has a good point as odd as the saying is.
Short bites from this post :