The Blog

Choice depends on the freedom to choose. And if you are shackled with debt, you don’t have the freedom to choose.

Tony Benn

Gratitude is not about denying the hardships of life but about finding strength and positivity amidst them. By making empowered decisions and taking proactive actions, we can influence our outcomes and create a more fulfilling life.

Today, I want to share my career journey – a story that began with an ambitious shift from manufacturing to the dynamic world of front-end development. Without a college degree but armed with determination, I embarked on a path of continuous learning, embracing challenges, and eventually finding myself at the helm as an Engineering Manager.

Saying goodbye was beyond hard. Bringing the empty carrier back into the house was crippling. That's where I thought my tears would end. I was wrong. Way wrong. Like most men my age, we were raised to repress emotions and push on. It's just a cat...

I have accepted an offer which is putting me back into a lead role. I seem to gravitate towards management or management-type roles. I have been doing it since 2005ish when I became Assistant Lead at Fleetwood. But this new role will be something completely different and it has me thinking about the type of leader that I am and the type of leader that I want to be. It also has made me think of all the bosses I have had in my life. Some were great. Some were horrendous. Most were meh.

I have had multiple interviews and some coding exercises. As I've done these assessments in the past, and probably more in the future, I have some thoughts about them that I would like to share. Whiteboarding is the worst. 8 hour assessments are ridiculous.

There are numerous ways to build websites for non-technical people now. Things like Wix, Squarespace, and the such and plugins for WordPress. These tools are great to slap together a website for your business, as having a website helps with legitimacy. However, as a company grows, most users expect a sophisticated website.

A head full of dreams and wishes and I was off. I networked and contracted.

I will try not to bore you with the details but I've taken a strange journey to being a developer/programmer.