Stay Hungry

RestlessHobbyist — Mon, 27 Nov 2023 05:07:59 +0000

Who

I doubt there is one motivation stratgey that speaks to everyone to light that fire, so to that end I simply offer my personal experiences and advice I'm following, and allow you to observe them as it best suits you.

What

I'm currently in a transition between jobs and as I build the skills I'll be proud to show off, I'm also in a sprint to fill this gap ASAP. The biggest hurdle for me now is proving I'm a worthwhile hire, both to myself and especially an employer. Cut to; the essence of this post and the advice I wish I had followed before I needed it:

- Always stay involved with your career and up to date on the latest as if you were trying to impress a prospect employer and land a job.

- Always network with people in your space as if they're the connection that can land you your next job.

- Always keep a portfolio or some sort of record of your career progress.

- Always stay hungry...figuratively speaking

When

The best time to start is yesterday, the next best time is today. You may be thinking, "Well..duh, didn't you know to stay hungry?" Well...yes, but let's be honest we all know something we SHOULD do, that we don't. We should eat right, exercise, maintain relations, not buy another 3D printer because we already have 3... the list goes on and we're all guilty of at least one. We differ in how we falter and this happens to be my, fault.

Why

In the event of a lay-off or down sizing, or just seeking the next logical career step, whether within your company or outside, you'll be glad to have this backing. I should have been doing these things all along and I feel way behind and honestly kind of a fraud, that I'm just now putting in the effort, but I have to assume the best mantra here is, "better late than never".

How

A bit gets a little meta but; this post itself is a means to my own self improvement. The goal here is to both exercise my written communication skills -please critique this post and help me improve- and also networking in the way of leaving a piece of me behind others can find, use, or start a conversation over.

Where

A good general place to start is Reddit's subreddits, where you'll start seeing a trend/pattern of sources to the post, you may want to bookmark and visit regularly. Wholely dependant on your focus but some such frequent fliers are; TechCrunch and Wired. HackerNews and REddit are both communities where you can not only get your news but also interact/network. Furthermore hands on, you have: Github which could alos serve as your project portfolio. "Talk is cheap, your GitHub history speaks valuable volumes", he says with a grossly neglected GitHub history...I'm working on it.

The above resources are a great way to:

Keep your finger on the pulse of your field and industry

Connect with peers

Showcase your journey

Again, all important stepping stones to keeping yourself relevant and this I wish I had done earlier but aim to be better about going forward. Cheers and thanks for sticking around, I hope this helped and you were able to gain from this. Don't forget to like and subscri...jk, wrong platform ;) But please do drop me any feedback you have, looking to imporve!

Intro Post & WiP

RestlessHobbyist — Mon, 13 Nov 2023 23:40:33 +0000

In the spirit of traditional new beginnings...

Hello World!

I anticipate evolving this document as the information becomes outdated or N/A but for the time being here's some background dump...

TLDR:

I am a software dev in the Chicago area with experience in systems integrations, aka digital plumber, creating the "pipes" and processors that move/transform data inter- and intra- applications, DBs, teams, vendors, etc. My experience so far has lead me to work for the Education and Finance industries over the past 10+ years. My self taught dev experience includes: -in no particular order-

Linux (Ubuntu - dev OS)
Java (Primary language for my work projects)
Camel (EiP)
Spring (Latest framework utilized for builds/config management previously Maven)
Kubernetes (Got rid of our pets for cattle)
Various means of data schlepping; File I/O, APIs/REST/[A-]Sync, SQL DB transactions, CSVs & all such dubbed files that were anything but comma separated >.<
HTML/CSS/JS (moderate frontend exp. for various projects)
hm... probably more to come as I think of it or learn it. There are plenty of dev concepts I have and still dabble in but going forward, I will be building Git projects to speak to my experience.

Not so TLDR:

I've been in the tech space -loosely speaking- since...hm now that I think about it, I'm not sure which came first;

Jarring blast from the past alert

or if I was on one of these at school before having WebTV in our home...

I do know that WebTV was our first "computer" if you can call it that... maybe just access to the internet. Despite its flop, it was a monumental experience for me nonetheless.

Shortly after that, our first actual computer was an iconic -to the time- beige tower, sporting a flashy "never obsolete" sticker; an eMachines computer with a blazing 500MHz processor and I can only assume 32MB of RAM?

It was on that machine that I learned hardware upgrades when my dad and I wanted to play an RC aircraft simulator to learn how ot fly the real things. We found out we needed a GPU upgrade so I got to studying and learning WAY more than I needed about the computer internals; mobo, CPU, GPU, RAM, HDD, PSU, and I/O peripherals.

I followed that line of interest all the way through school, with PC games being of greatest interest of course -shocker, I know- but along the way I tinkered with HTML/CSS thanks to MySpace's flashy profiles, and performance tuning/overclocking to keep playing the latest games on the oldest hardware, network setups for LAN parties, and ultimately coding for setting up some automation scripts for... a thing

Entering the job market I first worked for a couple retail tech giants, then landed a student job as a computer support technician in college. After graduation I had to transition into a contract role as a tech liaison for a project, until that was complete and I was absorbed into a Java/Web dev team where I grew the most as a dev thanks to my supervisor, co-workers, and other team members.

Changing financial times and family obligations lead me to leave that position and join a larger company with my same job title but vastly different scope. Virtually no coding, a few challenges, and a year later I'm seeking a change of pace and looking to expand/improve my career in a bigger way than before, entering the job market with more to offer and seeking a better fit.

I believe that about brings us to current as of this publish date but updates and edits to come I'm sure as things evolve and/or I change my mind about the flow of the story ^.^

Thanks for coming on this intro journey with me!
While mostly just fluff, some may find this as a good grounding/relatable post to connect with. Check out my other posts -once I get to writing them- and I hope they serve better for useful content.

Cheers!

Forem: RestlessHobbyist