How did you choose your career?

Linux is one or my biggest hobbies and I like helping people: Linux engineer + support person.

I didn't. My career chose me.

@buitrung 😁

I knew i like computers. Since my dad was a programmer at swiss bank i came in contact with the magic machine since my birth.

But then in high school suddenly the time came to choose a profession. I was not prepared for that.

So within a year i tried 12 different jobs each for 2 days to a week. Baker, Bicycle Mechanic, Print Operator, Pre Press Print Operater, IT Support, Graphic Designer, Electrician.

So i expierienced some dumb shit while doing that. 😆
In the Bakery i got closed in to the -20*C / 4*F freezing chamber because some dumbass put 50kg /110lb of butter in front of the door. I only wore a tshirt! 😢

I was making bread and for that you had to rip out the dough out of a huge waist high mixer pot. The dough was so elastic that at the end it draged me head front into the dough mixer pot. My face was full of dough 🙈

At a printing shop there was a openly gay man. I think he found that i was cute or something. However big printing presses consists out of a row towers where each color is applied on the paper. From time to time you have to check between the towers if the color offset is right. To show me this he stood behind me guiding my hands while i felt something hard on my back. Imagine the scene in the movie Titanic between a printing press tower. 😆

I got lucky and I've got an apprenticeship as a Print Operator somewhere else. But that lasted only a half a year. I accidentally took a paper out of the printing press feeder and it tore my finger appart. Was bleeding like crazy.

So after that i became a Pre Press Operator. Creating business cards, filling magazines with copy text and wtiting PDFs. Color, form, typography and computer all day long and I loved it as much as IT support.

Today i pursue a career in designg unconventional design and business sollutions as interaction designer.

@heyheni who the hell was that cause of which you locked up...

@jAsE same here

Would be cool next week's question

Choosing your profession with 15 years old sucks. It's way to early.

You want something that you wouldnt hate doing from 9 to 6 everyday. After that its just additional stuff.

I purchased a Commodore 64 in 1984, and would buy Load* magazine, which had machine code in it that you had to enter in order to have the app or game that came with that issue. Then I heard about this language called C, and within months purchased my first C compiler, and I was hooked on programming. Before I became a professional, I worked a few years as an aircraft maintenance crew chief, and as a German translator (not interpreter), and finally in 1993 I officially entered the world of computers and IT.

@heyheni I think you just described sexual harassment as a titanic scene

I'm not there yet

Still on my IT master and having the same question in my mind:

What do I want to do in my life? And therefore, what do I want to write my master thesis about..

But it seems like it will be about pattern recognition in the medical sector.

Let's see the results of that end then hope I can build a fancy career on it!

I just didn't have the looks for a marriage swindler nor rich parents to be born with a golden spoon in the ass.

@Emphiliis how do you feel about digital nomadism? www.onewayticket.io

I don't know.. it came naturally I guess. At age 9 I was already tearing apart cheap little toys to see what makes them tick. At around that same time I accidentally "hacked" my first computer, a Windows XP SP2 computer that I had to reset for some reason, and the advanced boot menu came up afterwards, exposing Safe Mode. Out of curiosity I booted into it, and low and behold, its admin account wasn't password-protected. So I made me an admin user and had admin access to the machine for several months 😛
After those few months they upgraded the machine to SP3 though, after which I wasn't able to redo this majik trik anymore 😞

That I think is what made the spark for me. I still like tearing things down and see under the hood of every little thing to this day. With the added bonus of them (usually, but definitely not always) going back together in one piece nowadays as well 🙃

@Condor when a child is smart enough to break through parental controls, they are smart enough to live without them.

The flip side is that many adults wouldn't know how to do that, and thus they are not smart enough to not be under supervision.

Had no interest in computers, but a bad schedule forced me to take a class to stay full time student status... Hit me like a ton bricks. Made perfect sense and have never looked back.... I'm a geek til I die

Programming and computers were always somewhere around me, starting from writing Atari code from book or reading about javascript and netscape back in 1997 when I was child.

Then there was high school and I picked different subject on university then software development.

After girlfriend dumped me after 4 year relationship I started playing games cause was depressed by the situation. I dropped out of university and got back to my home town.
One day when laying in bed with a laptop I bought for all my money from summer work I found flash forum and remembered that I was making simple websites for people when in high school.

Internet was still a thing so I got into reading flash development books, tutorials, forum posts, helping people.
I liked animations and colors from flash player games, websites.

Tweening equations was something new back then just like hand gestures, funny times.

Books were only in english and I didn’t know english much so first book took me about a month to understand.

Then I started some blog, build some proof of concept programmatic animations that I posted on my website and applied for a job in two companies that were interactive agencies.

RIA was starting to be a thing and macromedia flex 3 was out.

It was something about 2 years after I started learning programming.
I was not confident and probably could get a job after a year.
Today it would be so much easier with all this learning and exposing experience possibilities.

Both of companies wanted to hire me so I picked one that was near my home town.
I was scared cause the project I was assigned was biggest I saw and didn’t understood a thing after looking at it at first day, I got jira task to solve next day and I made commit near end of the day so I was sure I will handle it.

Now eleven years passed by, couple of companies, a bunch of people, lots of technologies but it’s no different then it was back then when I started to make a living as software developer.

Was the only subject in school that didnt bore me to hell, soo.. here I am..

I like programming, and have since I first discovered it. Took classes and taught myself. Was always ahead of everyone, teachers included. College was more pointless than high school, so I dropped out and continued teaching myself. Couldn't find a job doing anything but php and web dev. Got lots of experience doing it professionally, and got stuck. Still stuck.

Web dev is the bastardization of code.
I'm good at it, but that doesn't make me dislike it any less.

@Root That's why I say: Don't learn what you don't like. You might end up using that skill later on.

Born into it. Second generation computer nerd. Dad would bottle feed me while working away on his computer. Grew up with hand-me-down computers. Tried to get away from it for a few years - thought I would join the Army or be a cop, but eventually ended up going to college for CS and discovered my passion. My kids will probably be 3rd generation.

@Condor that's incredible