Over the last 9 months I have been on a journey to really sharpen my skills as a C# developer. With those refined skills I was hoping to land a job as a developer in my company. This was not an easy task and one that I knew was going to take time and a lot of effort. When you work for company that employs over 5,000 people you are a small fish in a big pond. Especially when you are trying to get into IT with a goal of being a developer.

I applied for a few positions, but each one was met with silence. I finally realized I needed to talk to a guy I knew and worked with about what I needed to really work on to land a position as a developer. He was aware of my skills and was already starting to put a bug into his managers ear about me. He suggested that I go and network with him next.

After our meeting I immediately went back to my desk and fired off an email to the manager. I simply asked if I could meet with him and get his advice on what steps I needed to take. Two weeks later we got to meet and discussed what my goals were. The conversation went better then I could have expected. He brought up that he was made aware of my abilities and while he couldn't hire anyone to the team he would investigate the idea of "borrowing" me from my current team.

From there I waited. Almost three months passed. BUT...he pulled me into a meeting room one day and asked if I would be interested in working on his team for the next six months. On the inside I was jumping up and down, but I remained calm on the outside.

For the next six months I get to prove myself and build up my skills in a corporate setting. How did this happen? Because I pushed myself to step outside of my comfort zone. Because I took the initiative to ask "What can I for our company that will allow me to utilize my skills for them?"

And I'm going to do everything I can to make the most of this opportunity.

To coincide with this I am going to write about my dev journey here. To succeed in this role I have to learn Java (already have a foundation in C++ and C#), API's, SQL, Solr, and ZooKeeper along with a few other things. so my posts will be about my learnings and best practices...I hope.

Any feedback that comes my way I will welcome with open arms.