Until the beginning of last year, I worked for Marks & Spencer in stores, as a manager. My path there was circuitous, and I certainly didn’t expect to be on their graduate scheme less than a year after finishing my degree in Software Engineering. It was such a surprise at the time, in fact, that I planned then and there to only work for them for 3 to 5 years; I did it because I could see lots of things I’d learn and rapid increases in responsibility, but I knew there wasn’t a lifelong career for me there.
When I started to plan switching careers back to software development in early 2012, I had just done my first Christmas period managing my own store, a little Simply Food in Gainsborough. In the relative calm of January, I realised I’d done enough there, learnt the main lessons I ever would from M&S, and that it was time to move back to programming. There was just one problem - I was way out of touch. I’d got my degree, but never had a job writing code, and I’d barely written a line of code in the near 4 years that I’d been at M&S. I needed to get my head back in the right place before I even thought about brushing up the CV and applying for my first development job.
Around this time, various MOOCs (Massively Open Online Courses) were just starting to get traction and had some sort of model for delivering courses that was becoming common. I read through some synopses for upcoming courses on Coursera, Udacity, and edX, and signed up for far more than I would be able to handle alongside my full time job.
None of the courses I chose were starting particularly soon, I had at least 2 months to dust of Java and work through a series of increasingly difficult algorithmic challenges. I really enjoyed doing these, and I was really strict with myself on working through them without assistance from StackOverflow. I don’t avoid help, or consider this approach a virtue in my work, or my side projects, but in this fairly academic study it was useful to figure it all out for myself.
All that preparation kept me really excited about the change I was about to make, which was a fantastic barometer that this was worth doing. As I took my courses (Princeton’s Algorithms 1, Udacity’s Web Application Engineering, and Programming Languages), this exitement continued, so I was really confident that I was doing the right thing. This was so important for me at interview later, as I had so much to talk about and real enthusiasm to share.
With the amount of preparation I did, I was fortunate enough to get an interview and offer from the first application I made (not only, make lots if you’re doing this). I’ve been working for Civica since then, and I’m so glad I made the switch - working in a field you enjoy really is fantastic, if you can concieve of a way to do it, I highly recommend it. You’ll never be as young as you are today again, and you don’t know what’s around the corner to make you reconsider - my wife and I found out that she was pregnant with our first the week before I finished at M&S.