Start your clock on your tech career

Breaking into tech will be hard for some and easier for others but no one knows exactly how it will pan out for them individually. You can ask others for countless advice on what they did, what resources they used, bootcamps they attended or tools they downloaded but if you aren’t willing to put the necessary recommendations into actions and research for yourself then what are you doing?

Quick story: I've been in the tech industry for almost 20 years and my passion for tech didn't start then but maybe within the last 7-10 years. As growing up, I always wanted to be a journalist now why I didn't pursue this in the military is a different story. The job I chose was an administrative job and it was my 2nd choice as I came in open-admin which meant they would put me in a job that met the needs of the Air Force. So I had to list about 7 jobs with #1 being my first choice and #7 being the least of my choices and cross my fingers that I'd get something closer to #1. However, once, I got to my first duty station just like many of us that wore and wear that uniform, we are often thrusted into duties that we originally didn't envision for ourselves but we found a way to make it work honestly, we didn't have much of a choice lol. Within the first few months, I was managing an IT inventory of around $300k+ and maintaining systems that were migrating to Windows XP (yes, I know what you're thinking) with my supervisor. I'll admit I hated it because tech was not something, I was interested in at that time because I didn't understand break/fix processes, I didn't know how to multitask or deal with frustrated customers. Then to top it off, I was an E-1 working for a unit commander. Like in high school, I took desktop publishing learning how to make presentations in Microsoft PowerPoint and creating business cards in Microsoft Publisher. At the time, I didn't think Microsoft as a whole would become something that we would need on a day to day basis. But knowing this was my ticket, I had to begin fully immersing myself into tech and that meant learning things that I thought were too hard but as well as speaking to experts that worked in different facets of technology until I learned what lane is the best for my kind of driving.

So, it will take some grit, discipline, bumps in the road and determination but in the end this will be all on you because none of this will be handed to you.

If you have been given advice but struggling to implement then I suggest you ask yourself the following:

1. Why do I really want to work in tech?

2. Am I willing to devote my time to research my options and learn the necessary skillset?

If you confidently answer both regardless of your reason then just do what you know that you need to do. You can start and continue asking questions along the way but you need to start and stop waiting on the perfect success story because it doesn’t exist.