Started my professional career as a teenager. I was in board rooms advising CEO’s before turning 18. I started in infrastructure. First building gaming compute

Started my professional career as a teenager. I was in board rooms advising CEO’s before turning 18. I started in infrastructure. First building gaming computers for clients then shifting to a new model servicing business clients by setting up servers, implementing computer and phone networks, setting up a PBX or VoIP system. Then transitioned from that to designing data centers and call centers for larger clients. Got deep into the architecture of ip transit layers. Fell into resale of existing tech and security for servers/networks/endpoints. Cloud started eating the market for private data center facilities so I started a VoIP company. We did novel stuff with open platforms to create high density usage without performance impacts on 10 year old hardware (back when hardware was still expensive because cloud couldn’t do telephony well). Had bad a business partner and got out of that. Throughout all of this I somehow never needed to learn to code more than HTML/CSS. I decided to learn when I turned 30 and my careers future was unclear. About three months in, I realized that I needed practice building real world tech not just codeacademy. I hired a tutor to help me learn to program as I only had about 2 hours a week to spend on it. After three years of being tutored I’ve written a data aggregator sifting through various order data and building custom reports, I’ve used machine learning to filter important content based on content, I’ve built integration with payment gateways and a basic ledger system to track payments, I’ve done all this to work on a startup. I’ve pivoted over time but the concept is still motivating me. I still consult as a tech leader. I’m a much more capable leader having learned to code with my other skills coupled together. My recommendation to any professional looking to learn these skills is to hire a tutor. I could spend 100 hours of trial and error that a person with 20 years of experience can figure out in 5 minutes. If you are based in the USA you can find someone for $50/hour or so overseas to help you. That’s $400/month but still less expensive than many paid courses/schools and you get to set the criteria/agenda for your own needs.