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From Secretary to Software Developer: The Hard Way

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21–30 of 148 posts

Re: From Secretary to Software Developer: The Hard Way

#21

Well done. Interesting that you couldn't get a job coding in Delphi after you won the competition. I remember back around the same time, here in Australia there used to be quite a few Delphi related jobs around. Perhaps it was different in Europe. Did you consider writing a stand alone app in Delphi that you could package and sell?

Well I just studied the local newspaper and looked for development jobs, but there were only C/C++ or Java jobs. When looking for jobs across Austria it was almost the same: no Delphi/Pascal in sight.

I had no app idea back then, that would have been great... Now I know better, I currently code in Swift and have a few app ideas :-)

Re: From Secretary to Software Developer: The Hard Way

#22
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, there are also quite a few grammar errors. Makes it hard to read.

English is not my first language, sorry for the grammar mistakes, I tried my best :-) I asked a native speaker friend to help me to fix it ASAP. I will pay more attention to this in the feature! Thx!

In the future, you can run it through an online grammar checker, like Paper Rater or Grammarly. It will not catch everything, but it will help.

Re: From Secretary to Software Developer: The Hard Way

#23

A bit of background: in Austria, many people do an "Apprenticeship" ("Lehre") instead of going to high school. You work at a company and visit a vocational school (about 20% of time). This is great for practical people -- less theory, more real world experience. But there is a major downside: If you didn't go to high school, you are not allowed to go to university without first completing preparatory courses that can…

Same in the Netherlands. It's changing, but when I went to "high school" (age of ~12) you could go to a vocational school to become e.g. carpenter, electrician, etc. When you are 16 you are set to get into that profession. You will still attend school until 18, 1 day a week. You can also level up and go to a higher level vocational school all the way up to university.

Re: From Secretary to Software Developer: The Hard Way

#24
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, there are also quite a few grammar errors. Makes it hard to read.

English is not my first language, sorry for the grammar mistakes, I tried my best :-) I asked a native speaker friend to help me to fix it ASAP. I will pay more attention to this in the feature! Thx!

Hey, don't worry about it too much. Probably a few bits of grammar or phrasing that could be tweaked, but it's perfectly readable as-is. I spent four years teaching English in China, so I've got a pretty good feel for the various levels of English fluency in non-native speakers - you're doing fine, trust me :)

Really, about the only thing that tripped me up reading that was the German quotation marks, and that's just because I'm an American :)

Congrats on your progress, and thanks for sharing your story. Good luck in the future!

Re: From Secretary to Software Developer: The Hard Way

#25
That's a great transition, congrats to the author. My wife's mother also went from a secretary to the COO of a multi-billion dollar real estate company. Similarly, the current CEO of Xerox, Ursula Burns, was an executive assistant at Xerox. Although rare, it seems like things like that happened a lot more often before than now. I'm not sure if it means that as a society we have more opportunity or that we are more pigeonholed in our careers. Maybe it's the free-agent nature of our employment these days, but I don't picture execute assistants these days ever getting the opportunity of jumping into something completely different and rising to the rank of C-level.

Re: From Secretary to Software Developer: The Hard Way

#26
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Re: From Secretary to Software Developer: The Hard Way

#27
post #8
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, there are also quite a few grammar errors. Makes it hard to read.

She's from Austria, so English is not her first language. Guess a mistake or two in regards to grammar is the price you pay for broadening your horizon ;)

So quick to feel offended. I had nothing negative to say about her or her story, just that the story was hard for me to read. It's always nice when somebody writes in a language that isn't their native language, but that doesn't make it any less difficult for myself or others to read. Over the last few years I've come to realize that a native-born European speaking English isn't quite the accomplishment it once was. With the prevalence of English in the media and on the Internet, the teaching of English from grade school onward, and the opportunities to speak with English speakers on a regular basis makes it quite easy to pick up the language. While in Spain I was able to really improve my Spanish speaking skills, but upon returning to the United States those skills mostly deteriorated, unfortunately. Korean (I lived there for a year) is a much more difficult language to pick up. I'm very impressed if I meet someone who can speak Korean, Japanese, Mandarin, Arabic, or Persian Farsi and ALSO English, French, or Spanish.

I don't really think that the article, grammar mistakes or not, add to my horizon in any significant way. I've helped people in similar positions over the last few years, and understand well what goes in to it.

I hate to go on the defensive here, but snarky comments like this need to be rebuked. It seems to me that this is the type of comment that goes unchallenged because it feels good, but underneath the surface the assumptions are rather weak.

Thanks

Re: From Secretary to Software Developer: The Hard Way

#28
post #15
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most trades can be taught to anyone i think programming requires a certain kind of mind set to begin with or but another way an already analytical thought process. It's why a lot of grads that jumped into the field to make tons of money have trouble with the actual work. I am not saying it requires a special snow flake but it does require abstract thinking and that can't be taught to everyone.

"Most trades can be taught to anyone" This makes me suspect you haven't had much exposure to trades. Getting good... really good... at welding, or cabinetry, or stairbuilding, takes at least as much dedication and skill as getting good at programming.

Omnius didn't say that this anyone will be good. The same applies to welders, woodworkers, and all the rest of craftsmen.

Note that there are plenty of programming jobs and tasks that are boring, repetitive, easy to do, and of little impact to the underlying system, that really need to be done by human. Things along the lines of modifying a report, extracting some data on a request from other departments, or adding a button to an Android application.

Somebody still needs to do them, because they're often virtually impossible to automate away, but you don't want to waste a really good programmer on something like that, and a really good programmer usually will not want to do them either.

Re: From Secretary to Software Developer: The Hard Way

#29

Another good example of someone learning to program on their own because they wanted to and then leveraging that experience to get a job doing it professionally. The big secret to learning to program is that there is no big secret. It's basically a glorified trade job and everyone already has the tools in front of them.

It's basically a glorified trade job and everyone already has the tools in front of them.

That attitude certainly explains a fair few 'legacy' systems I've seen.

Re: From Secretary to Software Developer: The Hard Way

#30

That was a great read. Held back by parent's preferences into a secretary position, starts experimenting for fun/laziness (many great works started that way), keeps improving, fight the fight in college, and now at SAP working with serious tech. Congratulations on making it to finish line, Denise! So, you've worked from Excel to GUI's to databases to web stuff. You plan on trying a new paradigm of programming or what…

Thank you very much for your kind words nick! A bit of bragging, I am also quite proud to have a black belt in karate (Shotokan, 1st Dan). Currently I am doing native development (iOS with Swift) at work and I really love it! As a JavaScript developer Swift feels very familiar (and you don't suffer from the current JavaScript fatigue ;-)
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