[jlees]

I studied computer science at university, but didn't take a programming job straight away - one of the reasons was that I feared being bored (slow death by cubicle). After dipping into grad school, dropping out, starting a company (where I wrote almost all the code for our product, but did a lot of other things too) and spending several years as a product manager, I switched back to software engineering as a career, and I've never been happier.

While I was working as a PM, I spent a lot of time as a hobbyist programmer, and a lot of time learning about how to engineer good software systems. After leaving that job I spent 6 months or so just building stuff. Games, android apps, whatever I felt like. It was awesome. I turned one of those projects into a consulting gig, then another, then got hired full-time from one of those gigs into a startup where I learned like crazy and sought out as much mentoring as I could get my hands on. I maybe could have done a similar side-step at my previous job, but having talked to some folks about what that would look like, I decided to just jump. It worked out. I hope it does for you too.