don’t sell yourself short #techjobs #techcareer #newjob

31 Mar 2025 · 1 min

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In this monologue, the speaker offers career advice to a younger version of himself, urging him not to sell himself short. He explains that throughout his entry into IT engineering, he often lacked formal qualifications on paper, yet his diverse background—double‑majoring in psychology and philosophy, working as a tactical interviewer/interrogator, and doing stand‑up comedy—provided transferable skills. These abilities landed him a project‑manager role despite no direct tech experience, which then opened the door to software engineering. Unfamiliar with coding, he taught himself to avoid appearing incompetent to his team, illustrating a self‑driven transition that snowballed into a tech career.

Chapters

If you can go back in time and talk to young Jeremy on anything, what would be your biggest piece of career advice? Don't sell yourself short. Every opportunity that I've had since I've entered the IT engineering space, I was not qualified for any of them on paper, but paper does not always reflect the total reality. My first job was a project manager, and again, I double majored in psychology and philosophy, training to be and working as a tactical interviewer interrogator before that. I did stand-up comedy to pay the bills while I was in college. I love it. I love it. So nothing that I did In school and my first couple of jobs was geared towards ever entering the field of tech. But because I was able to manage and I could handle projects and I could deal with people, I got that project management role. And then that immediately transitioned into software engineers. I didn't know how to code at all. I taught myself because I didn't want to seem like an idiot to the people that I was managing. I love that. So it was a wild transition that just kind of snowballed on itself.