From the course: Career Clinic: Developer Insights

Leigh Lawhon

From the course: Career Clinic: Developer Insights

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Leigh Lawhon

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(electronic music) - I was a art history and painting major, and actually moved to DC to work in museums. And my roommate, she had a design studio. And I was messing around one day, and she said, "If you can teach yourself Quark, "you can become a designer, you can work in my studio." And so I did, I read the book cover to cover. And so that led to about 15 years of being a designer. I really liked the technical side of it, I liked putting master pages and stuff together, the production side of it, which led me to become an Adobe certified instructor. And I did that for many years, teaching the technology, teaching the software. And then one day it occurred to me that I liked that so much because I like software, and I wanted to learn more about how these things, what was underneath the hood, so to speak. You know, there were little sparks before that, like I would start programming Excel sheets, or planning a work schedule, things like that. But in the end, obviously the internet came around, and people wanted to start building websites. I needed a portfolio, and I really wanted to be able to do that on my own, so I dug in and I started teaching myself how to be a developer. So, I've probably had about three different job, you know, career paths. I went from designer-artist to being a software instructor to being a front-end developer. And each one of those transitions were incredibly painful. They were difficult, they were a lot of work. But certainly I think rewarding in the end. You know, going from a creative field to a technical field was really difficult. I think there are still times when I hide my portfolio so that I can get a tech job, or hide my tech side so I can do more design work. But, you know, in the end I think having both skillsets has really strengthened my abilities and it's enhanced my life a great deal. I can do tech for many hours, and then take a break and do something creative. And I think that really is fulfilling. You know, you've got problem solving for both. I made my last career transition late in life, I was in my 30s, and that can be very difficult to explain to somebody when you're doing an interview. You know, you have a couple of career hops. When you change careers, there's going to be short stints and you have a couple of career hops. And so it's like, oh, you're in your 30s and you're jumping from job to job. But I think there are ways to package that. (gentle electronic music)

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