I’ve been a student at OSU now for a little over 3 years, and it’s a bit of an odd feeling to realize that this will be my last course. Like most students in the post-bacc program I was frustrated with my previous career path and needed a change. While I think I could have moved onto a different career path without going back for another degree, I do think OSU provided the structured path to learn fundamentals that I was looking for.
Previous to my current position I worked for a public accounting firm in international tax focusing mostly on improving engagement efficiency and developing models for our clients. A lot of my day-to-day was either pushing forward Excel/VBA models, or migrating existing models to other platforms. While this did provide plenty of opportunity to develop from a coding perspective (I migrated a ton of models to web-based CRUD applications), I was the most senior technology resource on my team at the time, and didn’t feel like I was developing my technical skillset as quickly as I’d like.
My decision to attend OSU happened right around the same time that one of the models I was developing was picked up to be moved under an enterprise development team. As I was tasked with managing the direction of the development with this offshore team I had a bit of imposter syndrome with my self-taught background. OSU did an excellent job in helping me develop my background on fundamentals, and really did help me feel more confident working with a highly technical team.
OSU also allowed me to network more directly with those sharing similar interests as me. Previously most of my professional network consisted of those in the accounting world. It was difficult with my background to find interesting technical opportunities. Participating in the unofficial OSU Slack has allowed me to expand this network, and to find more interesting opportunities.
Just a few months ago networking paid off, and I found an interesting opportunity with a start-up through a classmate on Slack. I was eager to work in such an environment as opposed to simply moving on to work with another large company/development team. The opportunity was also perfect from a technical perspective as their engineering team is made up primarily of former FAANG employees. It seemed like the perfect opportunity for me, and I made the decision to leave the world of accounting.
So far, I’m very happy with the decision. Being able to concentrate purely on a technical role has been a breath of fresh air, and I’ve enjoyed the learning opportunities. The team members I’ve worked with have taught me a ton, and I feel like I’m growing as an engineer. I’m excited about where I’m currently driving my career, and I’m not sure I’d be in the same place without OSU.
