Sunday, July 8, 2018

Status update

I am now slightly over halfway through my classes at the Tech Academy, at least I am according to the progress bar on my account screen, I rather suspect that only counts for number of pages in the course rather than the actual work needed. If we are going on work remaining my guess is I still have two thirds of it left to go.

So far I like it fine, I think I know enough now that I don't really want to go into website design, as I am neutral on HTML and don't much like CSS and JavaScript. But if pressed I guess I would be able to do work with that stuff now, so that is cool.
I learned SQL, which is a language used to work with databases, and I like that a fair amount, the syntax of the language makes sense to me and I seem to be pretty good at it.
I am just starting to work with C#, and so far so good, but I am still in the early stages of that, writing simple programs that say "hello world" and getting used to the tools used to write it, like Visual Studio, which I have to say seems incredibly obtuse to me, maybe it makes more sense if you are an experienced programmer, but for someone starting out there is not a lot of handholding during the initial phases of creating a project.
Figuring it out though, so that's cool.

I am starting to get to the point where I think I will need to spend some time on campus soon, I have a tendency to sidetrack myself and work on stuff that sometimes turns out to not be required in the project at all, and having someone to talk to in person rather than via email will probably help me stay on task better.

Speaking of staying on task, I had to demand a more limited and consistent schedule at work this week, I have just finished working nine days in a row and the last two shifts were eleven hours long, the first one closing the store, the second one opening. Long shifts in foodservice pretty much make you useless for anything for the remainder of the day, not that there is much of it left, so I basically lost two full days of studying, to say nothing of the previous full week of work making it's own obstacles, by my estimate I am now behind in my studies by around a week or so, this isn't insurmountable, I can probably catch up during this next course a bit, and in the worst case I can still pay for access to the courses if I need another week or two, but it isn't something I want to count on.

My direct boss is pretty cool about it all things considered, yeah she scheduled me all this in the first place, but I know something of the pressure she is under to cover shifts, and my availability didn't explicitly say I couldn't have that workload. That is going to change however because I am not confident in my ability to complete the program if things keep up, our conversation went well though, I stated my requirements: no more than four days a week, no more than eight hours a day, no back to back close-open shifts, within those limits she can pick the shifts, but once she picks them, they can't change, I also said I realize this makes me less useful and if I need to step down as a manager then I will do so without any ill-will, I also said if that makes me useless as an employee than I can quit with no hard feelings too, she said she'll figure out the shifts and we'll reconvene on Tuesday about it, so I am optimistic.

In addition to studying, I needed to make time so I can do networking, the school hosts weekly visits from industry professionals, and there are assorted meetup groups all over the place that can be good resources for me too, on top of that I need to start thinking about my resume, I am 35 and going into a field I literally haven't done anything in before, and much of my resume is not going to be something that prospective employers are going to find too useful. I mean, if you need a guy to write code for your, I dunno, video game or accounting software, are you really gonna care that he spent two seasons slinging hot dogs in the Moda Center? My guess is no, no you are not, unless I can bullshit stuff properly.
Fortunately the Tech Academy has weekly meetings regarding resume and interview questions and I can get some help there.

I am optimistic though, a customer at the pizza place overheard a coworker talking about how he was studying programming too, and went out of his way to give him a business card and told him to call him for a job as soon as he graduated, the customer was with Intel and had never met my coworker before, and if that is how they are doing hiring I suspect I will have less trouble than I fear. But we'll see.

It's been a rough couple of weeks for me, mentally and otherwise, but still holding it together and by some metrics I am on the downslope for this stage of my career, so that is something to hold on to, if things fall together perfectly then by the end of August/beginning of September I get to say goodbye to foodservice forever.

Terrifying.

No comments: