Lifehacked (Allen Wong) by Allen Wong

Author:Allen Wong
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

10

CAREER PATH

While I technically started web development in my early teens, I never got paid for my work until my late teens. Web development was great, because it combined several skill sets that I wanted to develop. It was a mix of graphics design, coding, and marketing.

My graphics design skills were a natural talent of mine. Since I was very young, I could draw things in small details with accuracy. It could have been a talent passed on by my father, because he was an excellent artist as well. As I looked at more artwork from other artists, I got a better understanding of what was considered beautiful and what was not. Once you had the eye for that, then graphics design became easier.

My coding skills were a natural progression from my skills with logic and creative thinking. Those two skills were the reason why I kept scoring in the 99 percentile for national math exams. It was my lack of great memory and my small vocabulary that hampered my overall exam scores and prevented me from attending the top schools. Luckily, the ability to code relied more on logic and creative thinking than on memory. And that’s how I naturally progressed into being a programmer. It was a very effective use of my talents and my weaknesses did not hinder my progression in the field.

My marketing skills came from a mix of my experiences and my ability to sympathize with others. By always putting myself in the customer’s shoes, I gained a better perspective on how to market my products better. And through experience, I could tell which marketing techniques worked and which did not.

Through these skill sets, I was able to land a job at my college as a webmaster. I also was paid to code websites for other companies and even for a fraternity once (ZBT). While I had already known HTML, CSS, and JavaScript from developing websites as a teenager, I had to learn how to code in PHP and SQL on my own.

I remembered that when I first interviewed for the job of webmaster at my college, I admitted that I did not know PHP and SQL (skills that they were looking for). I showed them my portfolio of websites done in Flash and JavaScript, and they were impressed enough to give me a chance. I basically had a few weeks to learn enough PHP and SQL to create an entire chemistry department website. So, I used my free time to quickly pick up PHP and SQL. To this day, I’ve never taken a formal class on PHP. And yet, when I took a proficiency test at a head hunting firm, I passed the PHP test with flying colors. This pretty much gave me the confidence to believe that if I were given enough time and educational resources, I could learn and develop in any computer language in a short period of time without ever going to school for it. This confidence later gave me the motivation to learn Objective-C and to create apps when few people knew how to create apps.

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