I had no idea you essentially get “overtime” pay for on call at google. That’s how it should be imo. I’ve avoided on call jobs for the lack of extra pay for doing more work.
I really enjoy this advice and wanted to apply it to software engineering. I’m having trouble thinking about what to focus on and wanted to see what others would do if they decided to follow the advice.
I had been working in a call center for 4 years and had not had any growth whatsoever. I was broke, lost, and felt trapped at my job. I would look at job postings on dice and monster but didn’t have any of the skills mentioned and thought I would have to go to college to get a decent position. I didn’t have the money to go back to school so I tried something else. I e-mailed 30-40 tech companies, asking if they had any internships to get my foot in the door. Two companies replied back. First company was a desktop support position and the second company was a marketing internship at a coding bootcamp. I took the unpaid internship at the bootcamp. I realized I didn’t enjoy marketing right away but stuck with it cause it was better than a call center and I wanted to learn how to code. I ended up becoming friends with some of the engineering instructors and that’s when I was introduced to programming. They told me what to focus on, study, and build. So when I wasn’t at work or the internship, I was reading and building. After a while, I got my first job and been writing code for almost 8 years now.
I can’t lie, I got into it because of money but I ended up enjoying building web apps and solving problems.
Things that I enjoy now are the people. So many cool, smart, and helpful devs out there. The flexibility is really nice.
There wasn’t one book or website. Honestly, reading documentation or learning a concept and just practicing that one thing until you completely understand it helps me. There’s just so many resources online now so I’m sure there’s something for everyone.
Absolutely. I can break it down with some key points that come to mind.
Making the jump:
I had been working in a call center for 4 years and had not had any growth whatsoever. I was broke, lost, and felt trapped at my job. I would look at job posting but didn’t have any of the skills mentioned and thought I would have to go to college to get a decent position. I didn’t have the money to go back to school so I tried something else. I e-mailed 30-40 tech companies, asking if they had any internships to get my foot in the door. Two companies replied back. First company was a desktop support position and the second company was a marketing internship. That second company was a coding bootcamp. I took the unpaid internship at the bootcamp. I realized I didn’t enjoy marketing right away but stuck with it cause it was better than a call center. During my time there, I became friends with some of the engineering instructors and that’s when I was introduced to programming. They told me what to focus on, study, and build. So when I wasn’t at work or the internship, I was reading and building.
Focus:
I had been Deejaying for 18 years and so I always felt that I had to stick with music cause it was a big part of my life. However, I knew it would interfere with my current goal. I couldn’t do both. I’m kind of an all in or hell no type of person, which isn’t always great but that’s what it is. So I packed up my turntables and decided to go all in on programming. This was essential for me.
Holding myself back:
After 4 months of studying, I got hired as a contractor at a small agency. That’s when I realized that I was trapped at the call center job because of myself. It was a powerful realization that opened up my mind from there on. I thought I had to have a certificate or piece of paper to have decent career. I do want to go to school for CS for fun!
Problem solving:
Building software showed me how to problem solve. I didn’t have a framework or direction that I would go to before I started this profession. Being able to break problems into smaller pieces and identify how those pieces relate to each other was game changing. I was a late bloomer with all this but better late than never
Money:
Money changed a lot of things. I would be lying if that wasn’t a big part of all this. My mom, sister, and I would live in homeless shelters and motel rooms, paid by churches growing up. We never went hungry or anything but things still sucked. So when I got my first paycheck as a programmer, I couldn’t even describe the feeling. I didn't have to worry about bills or rent anymore.
This became long but I wanted to give an honest answer as to how it changed my life.
This was my favorite MPC out of all of them I owed/used. I loved the way my drums/samples sounded vs the 1000/2500 family I had later on. I had to sell it cause our condo at the time was too small for all my equipment. It made me really happy to see this on HN.