So I got a random email tonight, his words not mine, from a 21 year old Comp Sci student up in Wisconsin.
"I'm 21, a computer science major at a smaller private college in Wisconsin. I stumbled on your blog just by chance. I see that you're 31, a software developer, and (if I do say so myself) leading a pretty nice life.
I was just curious what kind of career path you took that led you to where you are today?"
My email to him turned out longer than I had expected, and after going over it again I figured I might as well post it up on my blog. I am rather open about most everything in my life, so why not post this as well?
--start email
I wouldn't recommend the path I took but I will try to give you an overview of how I got where I am.
1. To begin college I started Majoring in Mechanical Engineering at the University of Missouri Rolla.
2. After two years I switched to CompSci. I was what I would call a poor student, I went to class but didn't have the motivation to learn, even in Comp Sci classes.
3. I started doing HTML work in college for my fraternity website and my personal site (my original url was www.umr.edu/~christoc)
4. After 4.5 years I left college to work as a help desk/support guy for a decent sized private company here in St. Louis (~400 people), I actually got a job with them the summer before because my dad played golf with a guy from the company.
6. I started racing SCCA Solo (autocross) and started working on a website revolving around the sport (the website eventually became www.solo2.org but started out as christoc.com/racing, then was www.pylon.cc)
7. Started doing some ASP development on the side and at the office.
8. Went to work for The Sporting News for a year as a web (html) developer, picked up some PERL skills (which I have ultimately lost)
9. Went back to work for #4 as an ASP developer, a year or so later I started doing development in Microsoft's .Net, all VB.net at the time
10. Started doing a lot of work on .Net projects on the side, DotNetNuke (www.dotnetnuke.com) and CommunityServer (www.communityserver.com)
11. Got approached by my current employer working on DotNetNuke nearly full time, we utilize C# so I became skilled at both VB.net and C#
12. Since that time 4 years ago when I started working at Engage I've done a lot, and grown a lot professionally. I've been able to do a lot more than I ever would have at the previous company due to the small size of Engage Software. They've allowed me to excel at my community efforts, which helps to promote myself and the company.
So that wasn't as brief as I had planned. It is also not a career path that I could have mapped out. There are a few key points in my professional career that I can point out.
4. I wasn't getting anywhere in college (dropping classes every semester) and had worked for this company one summer, the company allowed me to start up there while I tried to figure out what to do with my life.
7-8. My learning of .Net, and utilizing it for a few hobby sites (www.solo2.org primarily) allowed me to grow as a developer, and become sort of an expert in the field of DotNetNuke.
One item that I've done all along throughout the timeline above, I build websites for fun, using DNN and other tools, without all of these sites I wouldn't be able to quickly apply solutions for clients
Another key aspect that has made me, I like being in front of people, talking, presenting, making a fool, I think being on the radio back in College helped with that, I used to hate giving presentations, now I love it.
A lot of it was dumb luck, had I finished school way back when I would most likely not be where I am in life today, would I be better off? Perhaps, but I sure like my life right now. I get to play a lot, work on cool projects, and have built a name for myself in the industry.
So what's my advice? Finish your degree, but don't expect that to get you to the place in life you want to be. I didn't have the drive for school (I am actually still taking classes and hope to finish an Economics degree in the next year) but I did have the drive for other things. Prior to getting started with DNN (dotnetnuke) I was able to be good at a lot of things, not necessarily great at any one thing in particular. With DNN I've been able to make myself very good at the product, but not necessarily the most skilled person in each area, I have a large toolbox of knowledge for the product.
So that turned out a lot longer than I had planned, but I hope it has provided you some insight into your question.
--end email
Now, another question is, what do you want to do with your life? I can't answer that question right now, it would be way longer than the above post, but I will try to start blogging more about my dreams for the future.