[Ancapistani]

I’m a Principal Engineer in my early 40s. My “credentials” consist entirely of a high school diploma from a rural school.

I tinkered with programming as far back as 1994 or so (I was 10 years old at the time), on a 486 dx/2. I installed Mandrake Linux (Now Mandriva? if it’s still around), had to write my own connection scripts for my 56k modem, and I was off to the races in C. I played with VB5 quite a bit in high school.

I had a full scholarship to a state university in 2002, but lost it due to undiagnosed ADHD and depression. In 2012 I enrolled in WGU because I needed a degree to climb at my corporate job… but less than a year later I realized that corporate wasn’t really for me, and decided to pursue startups instead. That was a good decision.

My advice: do whatever it takes to get in the door at the type of company where you want to work. That’s the hard part. Once there, you do the best job you can and constantly look for ways to put your skills to use. This is the boring part - it’ll probably take a couple of years, but in my experience you can slowly mold any position into one that’s either “programming” or “programming-adjacent”. Once you do that, it’s a short leap to get the actual title.

[Ancapistani]

FWIW, I summarized your skills and forwarded this post to a couple of recruiters I have good relationships with, including one at my own employer.

Based on your experience, you seem like you'd be a great "non-traditional" lead. Here's hoping!

[rly0nheart]

Someone is impersonating me. If you try to contact me, please use the links on my blog.

These aren't mine:

https://xcancel.com/rly0nheart https://about.me/rly0nheart

Unfortunately, I don't think I can report impersonation on X without having an account, and X is a no go for me.

[rly0nheart]

Thank you so much for sharing your story and for forwarding my post to recruiters. That means more than you know. Your path resonates with me, especially the part about molding positions into programming adjacent roles. I've been trying to get "in the door" for months now, but the ATS filters seem to catch me before anyone human sees my work. The depression struggle is too real!! I've dealt with similar challenges while doing contract work. Some days the rejection emails pile up, and it's hard to keep going. I really appreciate you taking the time to help. The "non traditional lead" framing is interesting, though I've honestly never thought about positioning myself that way :). At this point, I'd just be grateful to get in the door anywhere.

Hoping something comes from those recruiter connections. Thank you again for believing in me enough to vouch for me to them.

[Qem]

> I installed Mandrake Linux (Now Mandriva? if it’s still around)

Mandriva doesn't exist anymore, but it left descendants, OpenMandriva, Mageia and ROSA, IIRC.

[thedrexster]

I'm sorry, are you me?? This tracks my story (minus the WGU stint) almost exactly.

We're even the same age, it's spooky!

[rly0nheart]

Maybe you're a variant from somewhere in the multiverse? :D