(Or, how to not go through the somewhat painful 38+ year process it took me to find my dream job.)

I had someone tell me the other day that they wanted to know my story, that they thought it would be inspirational.

I don't know how inspirational I consider decades of bad decisions, but they did eventually get the to a good place, so here goes ...

1978 - The Beginning

My tech journey began in 1978 when I saw an ad ...

I was, at 10 years old, able to purchase this with money I earned mowing lawns.

This computer had 2K of onboard memory. I had purchased the 16K add-on module and a graphics module.

I was entranced ... digging into the small "ZX81 Basic" book that came with it. The most complicated thing I managed was a circle on the screen. This wasn't bad for a 5th grader.

1982 - Apple Products

I got my first introduction to Apple products when my father opted to purchase an Apple II+ (two months before the Apple IIe came out).

With 64K of memory and two 5 1/4-inch floppy drives, I was in heaven.

I sat there the first weekend and wrote a 3d wireframe program that displayed the letter "A" for all my family to see, until the power went out.

That was the day I learned about saving my code often.

1983 - Early High School

A year later, I entered my sophomore year of high-school and to my amazement, they had a computer lab and classes available.

To my disappointment, I was not allowed to take classes. I was told by a guidance counselor, "you'll never do anything with computers, you don't have the math skills."

That year, I aced Geometry and Algebra I.

1984 - Later High School

We moved and I entered another high school for my Junior year. Sadly they did not have a computer program, but there was a nearby college that allowed me to take Fortran classes between my Junior and Senior year.

1986 - College

I opted to go to the same college (The University of Dayton (UD) for a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science.

The main language UD focused on (with Wright Patterson Air Force Base down the road) what is now an obscure programming language, ADA.

I unknowingly learned a lot about communications, as well as computer theory and writing cleaner code. They also broke a lot of the bad habits I had accumulated over the years (related to code).

1990 - Entering the Work Force

My entrance into the work force from college was dismal at best. I worked various odd jobs, even trying to start my own company maintaining computers at one point. I was rarely at one place more than a year, or so.

I didn't write any code at this stage of my "career."

Oh. And there was this thing called the Internet that was becoming popular around 1990. Dial up service was a growing thing at the time.

1994 - Prison

No. Not what you think.

In early 1994 I got a phone call from a friend of the family that had an interesting job offer. There was a new prison opening in Dayton, Ohio named Montgomery Education and Pre-Release Center (MEPRC). The focus was on inmates that were 6-months to one year from release. They wanted to ensure they had the skills to go "back on the street."

What they wanted me to do was design a vocational program called, "Information Communication Occupations," or ICO.

With all the other great offers I had facing me I jumped in ... and the first major part of my career (as a Teacher) began.

The program involved teaching ...

• Microsoft Office
• Networking
• PC Repair
• Programming (Web Development, actually)

We built basic web sites that the students could view and improve over time.

We had an intranet only; no connection outside the room. On the server, I installed Microsoft IIS and build a basic "site" using mostly Perl to host the student sites.

Along with the student sites, I built classroom management tools that allowed me to track information about student progress over time. They event had limited access to the progress I was documenting on the website.

On a side note, I also got trained as a Hostage Negotiator while in the department. I learned a lot about communications while earning the nickname, "Easy Listening," since my voice tended to put people to sleep over the phone.

2004 - Leaving Prison

I worked at MEPRC for over 10 years.

About 6 years in to my career, I got a new supervisor who I will simply say was a very angry person. She clearly didn't want to see anyone else happy since she wasn't herself. I contacted everyone I knew in the department in a desperate attempt to get away from her. Nothing worked.

One day she had me in her office detailing her latest scheme to make life painful for some inmate and I realized I wanted to go over the desk at her. That was the day I realized I had to leave.

I loved working that job, but while I enjoyed working there I had no desire to live there.

With no clear plan I left.

Later in 2004, the only thing I got right that year happened, I got married to the most amazing woman I know. From that point, with a few stumbles, my life radically changed.

2007 - Columbus, Ohio

I bounced around several small companies for a few years. I had no direction or goal in mind that I can remember.

In 2007, I got an offer for a training position at AEP in Columbus, Ohio. The job was good and it put my wife and I closer to her job and my immediate family.

2007 - US Army Recruiting Command

Later in 2007, I got an offer for a training position that I couldn't refuse. HP was designing and managing a position for the US Army Recruiting Command and they wanted two trainers at every Battalion to teach the new software.

So, I officially became BATMAN as a Battalion Applications Trainer. Working with the recruiters was one of the most rewarding jobs I've ever had. As with Corrections, I thoroughly enjoyed the impact I was having with this community.

One of the other things that occurred here is I started leveling up my networking skills. It was hard not to ... working with some of the most amazing soldiers I've ever seen. These were people that had tremendous networking skills.

2011 - Trainer

In 2011, I took a position with a family run business in Columbus, Ohio that focused solely on technical training. This job sounded amazing and was a lot of work for a reasonable amount of pay.

Here I learned that I could still write code. I was teaching classes on .NET, Java, Web Development. While doing that, I started work on a skills inventory application.

While I wasn't writing code full time, I thing something was energized for the next step in my career.

2012 - Bull Semen

Yes. I said Bull Semen.

In 2012, I took a job as a trainer at a company, Select Sires, Inc (SSI). Their primary focus was collecting bull semen for use in artificial insemination all over the world.

The application was pretty straight forward, but I was teaching farmers (very smart people ... don't let any bias in at this point). They weren't always the best with technology.

At about a year in, the lead programmer left and there was a shake up in IT and a new manager was hired for the department.

In our conversations, I mentioned that I saw a gap in the development team. They needed frontend developer and I had the skills, although I had never applied them on a job.

He took a chance on me, which I will forever be grateful for. I got a chance to jump into frontend development while jQuery was in its prime. I saw AngularJS, React, and Ionic come out while in this role and got to see their strengths and weaknesses as we worked through various projects.

I got introduced to various conferences in the Columbus area: CodeMash and StirTrek to name a few.

I also had a conversation with this manager that, along with the above two items, were about his only redeeming qualities. In this conversation, we talked about the resources I used while implementing various frontend solutions: Articles, Source Documentation, StackOverflow, etc. ... and realizing that we as developers needed to give back to the community we had been pulling from. This is when I started a drive to speak at conferences.

My career with SSI came to a head when I realized I was spending the majority of time maintaining code. There was very little of that early exploration going on. I was given an opportunity to leave and explore my options that I did not expect.

2016 - A Conference

At my next conference, the day after I left Select Sires for the last time, I ran into a recruiter before my talk. The talk went amazingly well and apparently, so did my chat with that recruiter.

He called me about a week later, as I was relaxing and just getting started with the process of figuring out what to do next. I interviewed with Leading EDJE, Inc. (EDJE) ... a LONG interview process, but I got to see that I had found someplace special.

2016 - To The Present

At EDJE, I've gotten to showcase what I can truly do and was promoted to Senior Solutions Developer within my first few months.

• I took the initiative to decentralize the articles we were writing for the company and moved EDJE to DEV and I started personally writing an article a week.
• I achieved one of my goals, to speak at CodeMash (TWICE)! I am still working on speaking at StirTrek.
• I got my first AWS Certification: AWS Certified Developer - Associate (DVA).

Takeaways

What have been my most rewarding experiences?

General Work Experiences

The people I work with. There are some amazing people at Leading EDJE.

• I've worked as a vocational teacher with inmates. I taught them to use computers (programming was part of the program).
• I was a trained Hostage Negotiator.
• I have worked with the US Army Recruiting Command. There were some amazing soldiers and civilians there.
• I worked with a company that collected bull semen for artificial insemination. There I got to see how a tight knit community came together in support of each other.

Developer Experiences

• The coolest code I wrote was a script language written in JavaScript to emulate a language written on a mainframe 30+ years ago. Building a language is quite challenging.
• The coolest thing I’ve had happen is seeing my code in a client’s commercials.
• Speaking at conferences and meetups many times over the last twelve years.

Also, I get to write code … every day; something I’ve loved since I was 10 years old.

The Present

I often joke that I learned everything I know about writing code by making mistakes. If you've read to this point, it's decades of making mistakes ... and not all of them in the code.

I realize that I should have been more focused and had career goals that were more aligned with my interests (my passion). I enjoy teaching, but realized that I love writing code and solving problems.

I could have been more particular about the companies I accepted job offers from, ensuring they were better aligned with the same goals mentioned above.

I got here ... one way or another. I have experience. I like to share that experience and help others.

That's enough.

Your journey will have trials and successes that are all yours. It will have good days and bad, as with any career. Have fun, learn from failure, and hold on tightly to the wins.