Many of my engineering colleagues are surprised to hear that I have a bachelor’s degree in philosophy. Those on my team with STEM degrees often tell me it’s an advantage to have a non-STEM degree. But the path to becoming a DevOps Engineer wasn’t a short one, and I made mistakes along the way. Many reach out to learn how I navigated the bizarre path from philosophy degree to DevOps Engineer. This article will shed some light on how I did it. In short, it was a little bit of luck, significant family support, and a lot of hard work and patience. But first, a story.
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A Story
I was working at Oracle as a Cloud Engineer when my manager asked if I could do some recruiting at UCSD, my alma mater. When I arrived, the line to enter the UCSD Tech Job Fair was long. I met with such a diverse range of students. Some handed me a resume with a 4.0 Computer Science GPA but couldn’t communicate a coherent thought and others that couldn’t output “hello world” in any programming language.
But I remember one student in particular. She was a non-STEM major with some interesting technical projects. When she handed me her resume I could tell she was self-conscious, worried about how I might perceive her skillset or lack thereof. Before I could even ask a question she began defending her resume. I said, “Hey, I get you”. When I told her that I graduated from UCSD in philosophy her eyes lit up. We later connected on LinkedIn. I gave her some advice and encouraged her to continue.
The Beginning
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I graduated from UCSD with an undergraduate degree in philosophy. Honestly, I had no idea what I was doing. I majored in philosophy as a double major so that I could continue my work with this Voter Registration Organization that I helped start called SOVAC. Upon reflection adding a philosophy major to continue working on SOVAC was a ridiculous reason to stay an extra year in college. My dedication to my student org was getting in the way of my future. When I graduated I realized I had no marketable skills. Luckily, right before I graduated I was awarded a National Science Foundation (NSF) grant to work on a passion project.
The NSF grant gave me just enough money to survive, but I knew it wouldn’t last. The grant snowballed into a company I started with one of my friends from college. We built an online polling service and signed a paying customer, The San Diego Union-Tribune. Having an idea, turning an idea into a product, and selling it to a paying customer flipped a switch. I knew there was something here. I caught the tech bug.
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