[gardenhedge]

I graduated a good but very hard CS course over 10 years ago. I didn't know much CS either to be honest. I got a job a few months after graduating in the finance sector. I improved in programming by doing it everyday and being part of a team. I had great mentors who I listened to and learned from. I was committed to work in a way that I never was to university. I learned the companies internal systems and turned out to be really good at communicating technical problems. I was always put in effort in improving any codebase I touched and improving technical & business processes.

After years of being a software engineer and being recognised and rewarded for being one of the best in my area of the company, I became more senior. Nowadays I don't do much programming (at work, I still code in my own time) and definitely don't do any CS concepts in work. Instead I mentor junior team members, architect/review software solutions and plan and help run software projects.

I am just sharing a brief snippet of my story so you have an idea of what a career path can look like.