From the course: Career Clinic: Developer Insights

Bonnie Brennan

From the course: Career Clinic: Developer Insights

Start my 1-month free trial Buy for my team

Bonnie Brennan

“

(electronic notes) - I was actually a single mom for a long time, and I got my first, like, legit job. I was a entry level clerical tech, and I was a secretary. I really liked computers. I liked software. I liked kind of figuring out and working with the programmer. So any time we had anything like that I always volunteered to be the first one to use the new software. So I had volunteered to this new SharePoint thing. It's like 2007, right? And we had this guy who was a consultant, and he was an expert and he was supposed to be helping us get it all set up. And I was asking him questions like there's a photo library and I wanted thumbnails. Like, I know you can do that, right? You can do that in Windows Explorer. I just didn't know how to do it in SharePoint. And I asked him and he said you can't do that. And I was like, okay. Well, I Googled it later and I found out you absolutely can do that. He just didn't know how to do it. And then I found out that he was making, we were paying this guy $200 an hour. And that's when something went off in my head and I was like I need a new job. I came in early and I stayed late, because I wanted a better career. I wanted to be professional. I didn't want to be support staff anymore. I think the big thing for me was that I learned the hard way, and I wish that I had learned this much sooner, no matter how hard I worked at my admin job they just kept telling me, "Bonnie, go sit down "and shut up and make us some more coffee." They were never going to promote me. I was never going to become an engineer. You know, I didn't have that degree. I didn't go to college. I didn't know how to get from where I was to where I wanted to be. And no matter how hard I worked, they just wanted me to make coffee. The only way that I ever changed my career was I had to learn on my own time. I had to go and spend my weekends and my evenings learning how to code. And then when I came back with the skill, I was treated with respect and I was treated so much better and I was paid so much better. And it wasn't until I started spending my own time learning, teaching myself that I got that big break. And it changed everything. And I just wish that I had done that sooner. (electronic music)

Contents