Jul 19
The beginning of a self-made guy
As mentioned in my “About” page, I have a so-so job and no post-secondary degrees or diplomas. On the other hand, I’m probably smarter than 83% of university graduates where intelligence is defined by your capacity to understand and adapt to change.
When I finished high-school, I was accepted into a Computer Science program in college. At the same time, I was learning other subjects outside of my required coursework. After 1 year of beating my head on the desk, I decided to stop attending class because I was offered a job doing exactly what I was studying to become: A programmer. I chose work experience over school. This worked out well because PHP was much more fun than COBOL.
I’ve read tons and tons of books throughout the years. At first they were mostly computer-oriented: PHP, C++, JavaScript, Networking, Linux… but with time I developed a growing interest for business-oriented books: Marketing, entrepreneurship, sales, management…
Despite not having official post-secondary papers, I must point out the importance of knowledge and education. If it weren’t for the hundreds of books, eBooks, tutorials, HowTo’s and other sources of information, I would not have sustained the life I’ve had up to now.
I’ve had a lot of help along the way, mostly from friends, family and people I’ve stayed in contact with throughout the years. Being a self-made guy requires you to maintain positive interactions with everyone you meet, while offering help to anyone who may need it.
I would love to hear from other self-made people, women too. Feel free to share your story in the comments below.
July 20th, 2008 at 10:33 pm
Where do I start? After graduate out of university at the worst possible employment year, I decided to start in Asia. Despite my speciality was in software engineering, I ended up doing System BIOS for laptop ODM in Taiwan (where else? they make most of the consumer electronics in the world). Asian culture required me working long hours. But the main driving force for me was to hopefully earn my right to come back to North America to work, which considers my work in Asia experience as an add-on value to my resume. That was the primary thing on my mind. After recognize that Laptop industry is predominate by Taiwan, meaning it is not considered as highly value in North America, I’ve moved on. First of all, tried to startup on web development. But in a very hardware oriented market, it was short-lived. Back to being an employee, as a software engineer for WinCE/Windows Mobile. Eventually earned my right to come back to North America to work. Now I work at Qualcomm helping ODM to develop their next generation cellular phones. Building up an reputation worldwide as one of the top systems engineer for cellular phones. Living in the beautiful San Diego. I can proudly say that I’ve made it. Moreover, this is just the tip of the iceberg. More success are destined to come! All come in the cost of hard work and lucky.
With that said, I see myself wondering off further and further from my peers. Losing friends. Losing my life. Consumed by work. I can say this is probably a good thing… if I am 35 with a kid or two. But at my age, it’s rather…
I can say I made it.
September 17th, 2008 at 1:25 pm
My key to success is that I constantly strive for perfection in everything I do. I accomplish this by asking myself and others how can I make something better. When I reach my goals I feel like i gain more control over my life and that propels me further.I like to surround myself with individuals who are as ambitious and focused about their goals as I am.