From Building Houses to Building Technology
I've spent more than 27 years working in technology, and when I look back at where it all started, I'm sometimes amazed at the path that got me here.
My career didn't actually begin in technology. Before I ever wrote code professionally, I was a carpenter building houses in the Washington, D.C. area.
At the same time, I was going to school because I wanted to break into this growing technology industry. I didn't have decades of experience. I didn't have a long list of certifications. I certainly didn't know where the career would eventually take me.
What I had was a willingness to learn, a positive attitude, and the determination to keep pushing forward until someone gave me an opportunity.
Eventually, someone did.
I started working as a Web Developer in the Washington, D.C. area, and it was quite a time to enter the industry. The dot-com boom was underway, businesses were racing to understand this relatively new thing called the Internet, and the world was preparing for Y2K.
Technology was changing incredibly quickly.
Looking back, though, one thing stands out to me about entering the industry during that time.
You weren't necessarily expected to know everything before someone was willing to give you an opportunity.
You needed some skills, of course. But you also needed the ability to learn, the willingness to work, and the persistence to figure things out when you didn't know the answer.
That last part became far more important to my career than I realized at the time.
Technology has a funny way of making today's expertise temporary. Eventually, the language changes. The platform changes. The hardware changes. The methodology changes. Something new comes along and suddenly everyone has something else to learn.
If your entire value is based on knowing a particular technology, eventually that technology is probably going to change.
But knowing how to learn, how to solve problems, and how to keep moving forward when you don't immediately know the answer has a much longer shelf life.
The carpenter who was building houses during the day while trying to find his way into technology couldn't possibly have known what the next 27+ years would bring.
I didn't know that I would eventually work across different industries, technologies, products, and leadership roles. I didn't know how many talented people I would have the opportunity to work with, learn from, mentor, lead, and eventually call friends.
I certainly couldn't have imagined cloud computing, SaaS, modern mobile technology, or artificial intelligence as we know them today.
I was simply trying to get my foot in the door.
Someone eventually opened that door.
The rest was up to me.
More than 27 years later, I think there's still an important lesson in that.
Sometimes potential isn't about everything someone already knows. Sometimes it's about their willingness to learn what they don't.
That willingness helped me move from building houses to building technology.
And as I'll talk about in Part 2, the technology never stopped changing.
Fortunately, neither did my willingness to learn.
Thanks,
Michael Cronin
Website: https://www.michaelcronin.info
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaeltcronin/details/experience/
