> How you get there is up to you. My own path was freakishly meandering.
Same here, though I was aided by being able to be really confident about stuff when people came calling with the checkbook and a quick study once I'd landed a gig. I learned to do what we would now call "sysadmin stuff" (manual administration of hardware) as a kid because I broke my Linux machines a lot. Then I went into the web development gristmill for a while. Ended up leading a multi-platform mobile team with zero mobile experience because "you're a good developer, you'll pick it up" (I did); I literally went into a devops role knowing no Ruby (to say nothing of Chef) under pretty much the same rationale.
"Fake it till you make it" is real, but then you gotta make it. ;)
Therein lies the best career advice I could possibly dispense: just DO things. Chase after the things that interest you and make you happy. Stop acting like you have a set path, because you don't. No one does. You shouldn't be trying to check off the boxes of life; they aren't real and they were created by other people, not you. There is no explicit path I'm following, and I'm not walking in anyone else's footsteps. I'm making it up as I go. - Charlie Hoehn
Same here, though I was aided by being able to be really confident about stuff when people came calling with the checkbook and a quick study once I'd landed a gig. I learned to do what we would now call "sysadmin stuff" (manual administration of hardware) as a kid because I broke my Linux machines a lot. Then I went into the web development gristmill for a while. Ended up leading a multi-platform mobile team with zero mobile experience because "you're a good developer, you'll pick it up" (I did); I literally went into a devops role knowing no Ruby (to say nothing of Chef) under pretty much the same rationale.
"Fake it till you make it" is real, but then you gotta make it. ;)