One of my favorite ideas — My main stimulus
Storyteller mode: ON!
Today, I‘ll finally share a story with you that I was thinking about for years.
But before sharing it, let me introduce the source of inspiration and one of the reasons this idea came to my mind.
His name is Nikolas. A Greek guy, around 40 at the time I met him for the first time. He was in Greece at that point in time, working as an Architect! No no no! Not Software architect! He was one of the other guys, you know, the old era ones, a traditional architect! Fun fact, they also don’t have a life! I have many friends so I can confirm that! They are like us!
So what’s special about him? He was liking software. And I‘ll be brutally honest. At that time he had NO idea what software means. He had some experience with old programming languages and probably some Arduino stuff, but no idea how a software company works or what kind of challenges we are facing every day.
Buuuut he was liking it, and who am I to tell him what he should like or not? It has happened to all of us. Having seen a boy or girl at a random place and immediately fall in love with her/him. You want to meet her, you want to learn more about her, but you have no idea what she keeps behind the face attracting you, you have no idea about the inner side of things. But, still, you want to meet her, even if you have the feeling sometimes that this mission is gonna be a hard one.
And this is the impression I had at that time for Nikolas. A guy who wants to experiment, a guy who wants to go outside of his comfort zone, a continuous learner. An awesome guy, isn’t he?
But… There is always this f&*(&ing word around us. Stereotypes. Even I was thinking about that.
He is 40. He didn’t study software engineering, he has to learn stuff that a youngie learns in the first year of the university. It requires a lot of courage, especially in the software world. Where everything is moving so fast, a world where you throw away what you‘ve learned a year ago. And to be honest what is the most important for me, in the crazy software world is exactly that, the learning process or to be more specific the art of learning. This is the superpower you should have as a person and of course as a Software Engineer.
So back to Nikolas. He was living in Greece, and along with his beautiful partner (and friend of mine as well) visited the Netherlands just to get an idea of the country as they were thinking to relocate here. It was the first time, Nikolas, shared this thought with me. It was really nice to hear that, so I tried to recommend him some resources. I wasn’t the best coach at that time so my mentoring was very limited.
After some months, he and her partner decided to move here, to the beautiful city of Rotterdam. So of course, I met them some weeks later and Nikolas shared the same desire again. “I want to become a software guy but I am struggling.”. And you know what? This feeling seemed so familiar to me. I still remember the old days. Sorry but for me 2010–2011 seems a long time ago, and yes I know that, if you are more than 40, you think that in your era it was much more difficult to find resources, books, etc. — This is gonna be a completely different article where I‘ll share my opinion about that and the difficulties each era has and of course, the main reason is to hear your opinion! — Aaah, yes, I was talking about the old days, when and one of my fellow students, Chris, had the chaotic feeling while we were doing our software baby steps. Back in Greece at that time, 2nd 3rd year of our studies in a University system that focused on rote memory and passing the exams, we were looking for something else. We wanted to learn but with all the tons of information, we were always losing track. We didn’t have coaching or mentoring, we didn’t have the guy who doesn’t make it easy for you, but just gives you some hints, a kind of direction. The leader that you can find now in the good companies. I still remember how much time we wasted on reading useless articles or books. No, please, don’t get me wrong! There are no useless books. We just didn’t need these books at that time, so in this context they were useless.
As you noticed, I always start multiple stories while I am telling you one! Just want to give you more context and make it challenging to you! So, please pay attention! ;-)
Back to Nikolas, again!
So for months, or even a year or two, Nikolas was trying to change his career from a traditional Architect to become a Software Engineer. He was trying hard but he was facing the same issue as many people while starting to study software development. I just described my experience while I started. No mentoring and of course in his case was even more difficult.
If you are a newbie, please pay more attention.
The older you get, the more difficult is to follow this crazy software world. And what you have to learn is again the learning process. The more you grow, the more experiences you have. So as I mentioned in the article series (part 1 and part 2) “A software engineer is a basketball player…” after some years working in Software Engineering your body-mind will be unable to follow you, to support you, so the only way to survive is to push your experience forward.
I was sending him some articles, some resources to read, some workshop material. It worked out, partially. We didn’t have a constructive way and I could only help him enough in my expertise area but as you know the software world has so many different domains and it’s so difficult for a guy to discover what he wants to do and how he sees himself in this world. And Nikolas wasn’t the only one. I have a lot of friends who find the world, that I am spending most of my hours, interesting. And they all have the same problem.
It was somewhere in 2020, I was on a flight (operated by KLM 😉) to Greece with my friend and I was thinking about Nikolas without a reason. Just came to my mind. I had some months to contact him and I was thinking about how his dream goes.
At the same period, KLM (a company I was working) started a huge restructuring and during that time it gave the chance to many people to apply for di
And booooom! An idea came to my mind.
By the way, isn’t really weird the nicest ideas come to our mind while we are taking a bath or while we‘re flying?! Ok ok, I don’t know about you! But in my case is totally true! That’s why I take a lot of baths and travel a lot! Just to have some new ideas!
So, as a person:
- I always want to help other people
- I always want to share my knowledge
- and I always want to improve myself.
Can you think about how I can do these three in one go?
Please tell me! Because in the next article I‘ll share my idea! Actually, I‘ll not share it in the next one, but you‘ll get why!
See you soon!
