I started my career with 5 years in IT/devops. During that time, a few friends and I started a retail hobby game store (Magic the Gathering, board games, etc).

I started my career with 5 years in IT/devops. During that time, a few friends and I started a retail hobby game store (Magic the Gathering, board games, etc). Did that for 18 years. During that time, we wrote code and used technology to give us a competitive edge. Closed the store during Covid. Now I'm applying to developer jobs. We were quite successful but the retail was wearing on me. Specifically retail employees are a challenging bunch to manage because retail margins are so low. I developed a saying: "You can either find someone good at customer service or someone knowledgeable. Anyone who's good at both can find a job paying a lot more." The best employees we had always left for a career in a field outside of retail. My manager was a great guy. He's very personable, remembers everyone's name, very caring, and knows the products inside and out. He does lack a few management skills but I think he's probably near the top in the industry. He's studying to become a social worker. During the time we had the store, we did a software startup and had a couple of engineers. I was far happier doing that work and working with that team. When Covid hit and everything shutdown, I was delivering product to customers and thinking to myself over and over again "I would rather be writing code." So we decided to close. It was really sad to close the store after 18 years. However, my wife told me a few months later that I looked far happier than I had been for years. Now I'm really excited to be getting back into the tech industry.