Tell Your Story: How did you break into the tech industry?

Question

From "Configured Board Band Connections" to "Curiosity Driven Towards Programming and Cyber Security", here are the 13 answers to the question, "Tell Your Story: How did you break into the tech industry?"

Evan McCarthy · Answer

I started my IT career back in 1999 with the local cable company setting up computers to work with the local broadband. At that point in time, most of the desktop computers didn’t come with an ethernet connection. I followed the cable technician around and he would set up the company and I would configure the PC side. I would have to install a network card and get the computer online and set up email. I was going to school to become a network administrator; this was an excellent entry-level job. Every day was a little different and was working on all different types of systems. I learned how to build my customer service skills and half of my job was how to educate the customer on how to work their new internet service. It wasn’t the most exciting job I have had in the IT field, but I did learn some important skills that I still use to this day.

Antreas Koutis · Answer

I was always interested in computers and technology, but I didn't know how to break into the tech industry. I graduated from college with a degree in computer science, but I didn't have any internships or real-world experience. I spent months sending out resumes and waiting for interviews, but I wasn't getting any bites. Finally, I decided to take matters into my own hands and start posting on Reddit. I started participating in conversations, asking questions, and offering help. After a few months, I had built up a reputation as someone who knew their stuff. That's when I finally started getting interview requests. It took a lot of hard work and dedication, but Reddit was the key to breaking into the tech industry for me.

Matthew Ramirez · Answer

I transitioned from a job as a graduate student instructor in the humanities before getting into the tech industry in 2013. I had actually wanted to start a lab on campus through the Digital Humanities center at Berkeley, but couldn't rally the support for the research I wanted to do on AI and student writing. Instead, I found that philanthropists were much more eager to work with me outside the university and inside a corporation, so I founded WriteLab to build AI tools for students.Within a few years I raised $4M, built the team, and sold the business to Chegg in 2018. Although humanities to tech founder is not a common transition, I do think that background gave me some unique advantages and perspectives in the earlier days of natural language processing and deep learning products.

Jim Campbell · Answer

I always knew I wanted to be involved in the tech industry. As a child, I was fascinated by computers and how they worked, and I would spend hours tinkering with them. In high school, I took every computer science course available, and I even started teaching myself coding. However, I wasn't sure how to turn my passion into a career. After graduation, I decided to take a gap year to figure it out. During that time, I did a lot of research and discovered that the best way to break into the tech industry was to get a degree in computer science. So, I enrolled in college and never looked back. Today, I'm working as a software engineer at a major tech company, and I couldn't be happier. Breaking into the tech industry wasn't easy, but it was definitely worth it.

Lukasz Zelezny · Answer

I got heavily into music in the late 90s. I composed my breakbeat and drum and bass tracks. At one point, I wanted to start playing them in clubs, but, coming from a small town, it was difficult for me to break through. And then SEO and web mastering came to my rescue. I created a website and started reading how to measure traffic and make it appear higher on Google. When I finally started to rank high for phrases related to drum and bass, bookings began coming in via email, not only for national clubs but also for foreign ones. After a while, I concluded that making a living from music was difficult, but SEO was easier. So I decided to make music my hobby and SEO my profession. After graduating from university, I took up SEO in 2004 and 2007; I moved to London, where I have also been doing SEO (and music, but that's just a hobby) since my arrival.

Amer Hasovic · Answer

My first job in the tech industry was as a programmer at a small startup. The company had just been founded and I was the only programmer on staff. My boss asked me to write code for an iPhone app they were developing, so I did. The app launched successfully and was downloaded thousands of times in its first few days. It shot up to #1 on the charts, stayed there for two weeks, and then dropped off againAfter that first job, I went on to work as a freelance developer for many years. I found myself working with clients who were looking for someone with experience in several different programming languages because they didn't have enough employees to handle all the coding tasks required by their projects. At that point it became clear to me that there was an opportunity for me to build my own company one that could provide these companies with all the skills they needed at once so they wouldn't have to hire multiple freelancers or contract out different parts of their projects separately

Luciano Colos · Answer

I started out as a project manager, working for a software startup. I then decided to take the risk and start my own company. At the time, I was a contractor and managed to get a contract to build software for a friend’s company. This turned out to be a turning point in my life. I started to get more clients and was able to start up my own agency.  I think that breaking into the tech industry is not hard if you have the right attitude and are willing to learn. You also need to be more than just a programmer. You should be able to understand your client's needs and be able to provide solutions for them. If you are able to do this, you will be able to build a successful career as a tech entrepreneur.

Brittney Simpson · Answer

My route into tech has been quite interesting. I am a human resource professional and have worked in this field for 12+ years. I am a natural problem solver and found myself working very closely with our IT and HRIS teams to develop automation to support our HR processes. Through this type of work, I became more involved in human resources information systems and developing automated processes to replace our manual work. It increases productivity tenfold when new hire information is entered into one system and then pushed into our other HR systems instead of assigning a member of the team to enter this information manually. One of my first successes early in my career was working with IT do design a trigger for new hire email creation. This allowed our new hire emails to be created prior to their start date. This was a huge success! I am now an HR Operations manager and very proud to be a part of the tech industry.

Blair Urquhart · Answer

When I was in high school I had very charming computing teacher everyone me included we all loved or like are teacher a lot he was also himself quite famous coder if I remember correctly he was one of the guys behind Javascript or Dreamweaver we were in high school some of the first people in the world to learn how to program this included many things from video games,excel,typing or anything really else.All these things made me take a serious love into programming as such I work as a programmer for my mini crypto firm and do programming SEO work and code bit in Python among others .

Joe Kevens · Answer

I broke into the tech industry by landing an entry-level job as a Sales Development Rep (SDR) at a fast-growth B2B software startup. I had a few years in a Business Development role in a non-tech industry and wanted to find a way into the high-growth tech world. Without any connections that could give me my first job, I had to take an entry-level job while already having three years of experience in a similar role. Once I broke into the tech industry as an SDR at a marketing technology company, I could transition into a Marketing job. Since then, I've been developing my career as a B2B tech marketer.

Marie O'Sullivan · Answer

Many years ago I had to submit an assignment for college, but I had never used a computer before, so after wrestling all night with Microsoft Word and a dot matrix printer, I decided to qualify as an IT trainer. I subsequently qualified as a therapist and coach. During the pandemic, many of my peers struggled with technology and I became the go-to person in my circle. This prompted me to retrain as a web designer, a decision I have never regretted because it helps so many people to access the support they need. It was an unusual path into tech, but I'm delighted to know that my work makes a difference.

Gary Paull Jr. · Answer

As a tech CEO who previously had a hand in other industries, breaking into tech was challenging but exciting. I saw 2021 as the year when crypto would begin to enjoy mass adoption by large corporations such as Starbucks. Before that, the crypto space had mainly been seen as a sort of underground activity reserved for the most tech-savvy people or those with advanced knowledge of finance.I founded Gauss in 2021 as a way to combat some of the inadequacies in the crypto space such as scams, duplicate transactions, and other issues that I believe have been holding back mass adoption in the past. I believe that creating an ethical blockchain ecosystem designed for accessibility and mass adoption as well as coming into the scene at exactly the right time will be the recipe for success.

Ken Buckler · Answer

When I was still in grade school, my parents purchased a Commodore VIC-20 computer. With a whopping 5K of RAM and the ability to create my own programs, I quickly got hooked.  My curiosity taught me how computer programs worked under the hood, and applied that knowledge in my classes in school, finding a flaw in a typing program which enabled me to trick the program into believing I could type over 200 words per minute through a simple buffer overflow vulnerability. From that point forward, I allowed this curiosity to guide me through high school and college, learning multiple computer programming languages while also learning how programs could be exploited, or defended against exploits. After graduating college, I found a job as a software tester, quickly moving to the cyber security team after demonstrating my aptitude towards that career path. Over 15 years later, I now leverage my expertise to analyze and write about the cyber security industry and emerging trends.

How do I break into the tech industry?

How To Break Into The Tech Industry

I Configured Broadband Connections

I Was Browsing Reddit

I Went From Humanist to Serial Entrepreneur

It All Started as a Fascination…

I Got Into Music

I Was the Only Programmer on Staff

A Friend Asked Me to Manage a Software Project for Him

I Didn’t Forget the Human Element

I’ve Been Coding Since High School

I Started as an Entry-Level Sales Rep

I Struggled With a Dot Matrix Printer

I’m Riding the Wave of Mass Adoption

I Convinced a Program I Could Type 200 Words a Minute

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