From Computer Networking to Software Development

2025-07-16

The year was 2003 when I got my first tech job as a Network Administrator. I managed 100+ computers in 12 buildings over an 8 mile radius. One of the best accomplishments was getting every building connected via fibre and managing the locations in a central area. With the managed switches, I was able to even move someone to a site without DSL internet and seemlessly let the remote support team manage the system over their own little logical network.

Moving toward development

When I started working as a network administrator, the business had another online business of selling goods online. My supervisor wanted me to be a part of the development and I started learning PHP, which was the backend language used back then.

At the time, I really didn’t have the problem solving skills to understand some of the most basics of decision making in code. After spending about two to three years working through problems, I took a break from coding. It was pretty difficult to make the time with all the other responsibilities I had on the network. I decided that it would be best to wait until I transferred to University to pick up coding again.

Starting University

In the Fall of 2010, I started attending University for my degree in Computer Science. After the first couple of quarters, everything that I was stumped on while working started making a lot more sense. In hindsight, I had also been working on my critical thinking skills while improving on my math before transferring.

I really enjoyed my experience while attending University, but it didn’t come without some hardships. When I attended, I was raising three little children from under two years old to age seven when I started. My second quarter, I had a medical scare. I was able to mitigate everything, but my mental health was affected for the last three years of going to school.

I was thankful for the support I had from my family and my new best friend that I met in the program. We are still best friends today and I don’t know if I would have made it in the last year without him keeping me going.

Post Graduation

After graduating university, I got a job at a local software shop building safety software for Oil refineries. It was a great little small shop using class ASP scripting at the time. I got to make a few little utility scripts to help find information out in the source code that wasn’t readily documented. I got to create a bug tracker app for the product we would be shipping out to customers. Unofortunately, my time was pretty short with the company and I moved my kids and I to Canada to be with my new partner

Moving to Canada

After a year with the local software company, I moved to Canada to be with my new partner. I had a contract job as a Content QA at the time. The job was contracted through June of 2016, but was cut short by four months due to overspending.

Thankfully, before I got that notice I had already been granted permenant residence in Canada and could start working for work in my local area. Unfortunately, that was much harder to do in the area I was living in.

It turned out that the biggest issues I had with finding a job in tech were the following:

• Internet Speeds - The fastest at the time I moved here was 5Mbps, which barely ran Netflix.
• Trades Area - The job market in my little rural area was mostly for trades or agriculture.
• Nearest Tech Market - The nearest tech market was about an hour and a half drive from my location.

I was able to pick up a developer contract for a few months, but I had a pretty bad habit of trying to study at the same time. The studying was from the belief that I needed to know everything, which I found out later was a misunderstanding on my part.

I eventually landed an Information Management coordinator job for about seven months after not having any sort of job for a year and a half. My goal after that job was to focus on starting a business to support local clients with their computers and tech needs. Unfortunatley that fell through and I eventually got a job at a University.

I have been working at the University for the last seven year primarily working in the Oracle Database with SQL and PL/SQL. I have been working on upskilling to find a job that is more software development focused, which has been a big struggle to get going on.

Learning in Tech

One of the biggest lessons I have learned while trying to improve upon my Computer Science fundamentals is focus on an area of interest. I thought I had to know multiple different areas of the stack to get a job as a developer.

The part is to only have one or two learning subscriptions. For about seven years, I had multiple learning subscriptions witht he plan to go through them all. It really made it hard to focus on the one or two subscriptions that I have. At this point, I have three subscriptions up for renew in the next six months and I will let those ones expire. I have the two that I need for myself. They are specific to job roles that I want to apply for over the next few months.

Finally, learning how to learn is also important. I have spent some time learning how to learn and using the Pomodoro Technique is a tool that has come up consistently. I used to spend hours trying to go through my learning resources only to tune out after the first hour. The importance of having unfocused time after focusing on the material will helps with committing it to long-term memory. When I started to learn after moving to Canada, I didn’t have those tools to make my learning easier. So definitely worth the investment to learn how to learn.

Conclusion

Transitioning from networking to software development for me has been a long road with the choices I made to move to Canada. The path to transition today from fifteen years ago is a little easier and there are an abundance of learning material. I don’t regret my experience at university and the opportunties that I have with having a degree. I just would have seasoned myself as a developer a little longer before moving to Canada.