Search

Home > Healthy Software Developer > My Software Development Journey (Part 1)
Podcast: Healthy Software Developer
Episode:

My Software Development Journey (Part 1)
Category: Technology
Duration: 00:28:00
Publish Date: 2017-08-23 00:00:00
Description:

Would you like to know a little more about who I am, and how my successes and setbacks shaped me into someone who is so passionate about doing less at one time, and embracing uncertainty as part of a lean software development mindset? Today I’d like to share part 1 of my software development journey with you.

Lead-up To My First Development Position

Though I’d learned some BASIC programming on “old school” Apple computers in middle school, when I attended college to become a “Microcomputer Specialist” *cringe*, I didn’t know exactly what I wanted to do in technology. One of my first teachers had me do some web development side work in college, and soon my Mother met someone at her church that would give me my first job. I came into the organization with no idea of what to expect but excited to do front end testing of software components using Visual Basic at the time. This was my first professional IT experience.

Finding My First Mentors

I explicitly sought out older, disgruntled software professionals at my company and asked for them to teach me. It gave them something to be excited about (teaching others), and I learned tons! It’s easy to be a skeptic today with all the information previously hidden from the public that’s come out in the past decade or so online. Though we’ve all become more distrustful of the government, corporations, and the news – we should be careful not to let opportunities to learn from other individuals pass us by.

One of the biggest mistakes I’ve made in my career is trying to “shortcut” learning by asking mentors to only describe things I “don’t know”. Often the most revolutionary insights I learned from others were about what I already considered myself an “expert” on.

Envisioning And Prototyping A New Product

A little over a year into my first position, my wife was pregnant with my second son who would go to bed at 7 PM. I was around 21 at the time, so I didn’t feel right going out and partying while she was at home. So I would stay home and read books about the latest new technologies. Eventually I created a prototype of a new product that simplified 5 existing products we had acquired from other companies to simplify the user experience. My boss showed it to the CEO and within a short time I was the technical lead (Application Architect) over a team of 12 people.

Inventing an XML Message Protocol For Manufacturing

At the time, web applications were written about but hardly anyone was doing them. SOAP and REST were not out yet, but I recognized that the application needed to use a messaging protocol to talk to applications and manufacturing devices. XML was popular at the time, so I invented and patented a messaging protocol allowing this to happen.

Getting Executive Sponsorship

Somehow my boss showed a prototype of what I was working on in my spare time to the VP (who would eventually become the CEO). He recognized it as “the most strategically important project in our portfolio” and asked us to pick 12 people from anywhere across the company to build a project team. On the surface, it was an amazing opportunity – new technology, a new product, a new team, full sponsorship. What could possibly go wrong? 

Total Play: 0