Nugget - self learning

 

I only wore my suit on days where I might meet other consultants for lunch or potentially go to a client site. It was a carrot dangled in front of me - when the time is right we will get you out there on our client sites and make you billable.

Until then, I drove my motorbike 30 miles to the office and worked there alone in the morning, answering the phone and doing small coding projects assigned to me by the boss. In the afternoons the bosses girlfriend also worked in the office. Very occassionally a consultant or even one of the 2 owners would come to the office but that was rare.

It didnt take me long to realize they probably only hired me to answer the phone!! But they did give me some assignments so I spent my days reading books and learning how to be a C programmer. After I showed them some of my work they seemed to have more belief in me so they wanted me to write a QuickBasic program for a real customer. I worked late lerning that language. I worked evening and weekends learning everything I could about the project, the client, the language (which I had never used before).

I had no-one to help so I had to learn by myself. And I did. This became a life-long skill. Pick up books, double check what is required off you and go and figure out best practices and how to do the task. It really becomes addictive to learn useful information.

And this, from a guy who really hated college and what they taught me. But as I got addicted to learning I went back and covered my college courses again on my own. Learning economics is interesting if you dont have some old guy telling you to write 5 essays a week.