“What’s past is prologue…” – The Tempest (This article is reposted from my LinkedIn)

I was interviewing someone today, and they kept referring to their “non-traditional” path into technology as something that needed to be overcome, and it reminded me of a lot of people in #softwaretesting I’ve known, so I wanted to share some thoughts on this.

1) You don’t owe anyone an explanation for how you got to where you are in life. Period.

2) The tech industry is OVERRUN with likeminded, timid, sheep that will let incentives trump ethics every time. If you took a chance on yourself and busted your ass to break into a new field, IMO those are the EXACT qualities we need in leaders.

3) IME people with engineering or pure CS backgrounds LOVE to over complicate things. Practical experience helps you cut through noise because you have to live with the consequences of your solution.

Finally, as someone who has come into technology through a “non-traditional” path and suffered my share of impostor syndrome – you have everything you need to do this work and as my pal Angie Jones likes to say, “your differences are your superpower”!