When I was just out of school 20ish years ago, I wanted to take my CS degree to an application development position. I got hired, but it was more of a technical

When I was just out of school 20ish years ago, I wanted to take my CS degree to an application development position. I got hired, but it was more of a technical Product/BA/QA role, not writing code. I did the job as asked, learned the systems, contributed value, etc - but I was also young and stupid. I complained about my role to anyone who would listen. I wanted to be a developer. Most team members encouraged me to stick it out, my time would come, or rolled their eyes. Or both. At a team outing a few months in, I had too much to drink and approached the Tech Lead to complain about it. He looked at me square in the eyes and (basically) shouted - "There are hundreds of low and medium severity bugs in the bug database, go fix one then come talk to me! Better yet, fix a bunch and I'll come talk to you!" (It worked, I was an app dev 3 months later.)