The First Mile — Why I decided to study Software Engineering.
Hello my name is Robert Hardy and I have been in tech since 2004. Prior to that I was and drafter/designer working in design engineering using AutoCad for 6 years. During that time I worked for many oil and gas companies in Houston Texas designing everything relative to the offshore and onshore industries. My career was not exciting and was only successful as the industry was. I suffered many setbacks when the price of oil dropped and layoffs decimated the city that’s dominated by the oil industry, similar to how Detroit is a dominant car city. I knew I had to make a change that would allow me to transition into a skillset that was in demand globally. I decided to go back to school and obtain my bachelors at the University of Houston in Information Technology and it changed my life forever. This blog will detail how tech allowed me to become successful Domestically and Globally.
In 2004 my first job was a database developer working with MS Access databases. From that point, I went on the develop applications in .NET, ASP, HTML, SQL, and CSS to name a few. My database skillset was valuable when linking these applications to SQL databases. That was my career for my first 3 years in tech and in 2006 I took a job as a contractor in Kuwait City, Iraq, and Afghanistan due to layoffs in the oil industry along with the recession of 2008. Although I was still in tech, my career took a turn from application development to networking and support. I had to learn it all from the ground up supporting the OIF/OEF (Operation Iraqi Freedom/Operation Enduring Freedom) missions of the US Military which was 24/7. I worked on everything from the Satellite (how we received comms) to the keyboard. The learning experience was the best of my career and there were many close calls when it comes to danger. After working in the Middle East for 5 years, I decided to call it quits and come back home to the U.S. From that point I started working as a Project Manger in I.T. Infrastructure and Networking for 7 years. My career was great, but something was missing. My creative mind was not being utilized to it maximum potential like when I was a CAD designer and software developer. Being a PM and Program Manager is not creative as my previous career and I decided to make a change.
First I moved to Austin TX from Houston in 2018 to be in an environment that was heavily invested in tech and software. I became Agile Scrum certified and stated managing primary software programs and projects focused on digital transformation. That enabled me to become familiar with the changes in the toolset and framework since I last was a developer. After doing that for 3 years, my satisfaction was not fulfilled, I wanted to be back in the game on a granular level and I decided to attend Flatiron school after attending a PM Meeting at the Flatiron Austin location. I met an instructor there and he gave me a tour of the school, introduced me to the program and I enrolled about 6 month later. This is my first week and after getting use to the environment setup and toolset, its all starting to become familiar. The first mile will be tough but it will create the foundation that will be valuable for success for the remainder of the course. With the momentum I have now on the lessons and being introduced to booleans and control flow, the language is similar to what I used in the past and is starting to resonate with me.
The main point of this blog is to follow you passion and dreams early as possible in life. Although I have had a great career and maximized my potential on every level, I still was not satisfied with what I was doing. A creative mindset and applying that on a daily basis is what drives me and what was missing from my career. Who knows where this new journey will lead me. As long as I’m able to apply it to my current career or a new one, it will be well worth it because from that point, no stone has been uncovered during my career as I maximized my potential in all facets of it. Good luck to you all.
Robert Hardy
