When I graduated from a Russian university with a degree in teaching Computer Science and English back in 2006, I was certain I would never want to either teach or do anything with technology (Soviet teaching methods had taken their toll on me, I think). It turned out to be quite the opposite.
After I had moved to the UK from Russia, I trained to be a teacher; I taught English to international students in Oxford and in Madrid. After a few years though, I realised that the job market was saturated in the UK, and I craved for something else, for something where I could learn every day, and where I wasn’t going to get bored easily. I took an interest in technology and software development for several reasons: 1) increasing use of technology in general, and the desire to look ‘under the hood’ 2) I knew it would give me a great sense of achievement to see what starts out as a list of requirements eventually become a functional product/service 3) combination of team and individual work (depends on the company, of course!) 4) the opportunity to be creative and the need to be precise at the same time 5) infinite challenges and lifelong learning.
I must thank my husband (boyfriend back then) for helping me discover the world of programming, and also for leaving England for several months in order to do a snowboarding season in France. I must admit I was not very keen on him going away for such a long time, but it turned out to be a blessing in disguise: I had long evenings and weekends to learn coding from various (mostly free) resources while still working full-time.
It’s been a very interesting and certainly challenging task to get my foot in the door in the software development world: I had a small portfolio of examples of my work, and no commercial experience. However, I had a lot of enthusiasm, motivation and unquenchable thirst for knowledge, learning and developing my skills. It took me a year of applying for positions, dozens of CVs and cover letters and finally in November 2015 I was hired for my first Junior Developer role where I started working with .NET technologies
I’ve been a programmer for almost five years now – it’s been an amazing journey which still continues, and I hope to be forever in travel. I’ve learnt so much, and the greatest thing is there will always be more to investigate and explore. I’m also very grateful to my former and current workmates for their patience and sharing their knowledge.
I consider myself very lucky to have a job that is my hobby as well (or maybe the other way round?). In the last five years I do not remember a single day when I wasn’t looking forward to going to work. And not to mention I’m also getting paid ! I would say work doesn’t get any better than this?