It all started out of frustration

I was alone in my room, waiting for the next year of high school to start. Many thoughts going through my head. Will I fit in, will I like it? I just want to code and fix the world! It didn't matter. It wasn't my decision, it was my family's.

My worst fears proved right. I was out of touch with the environment around me. In between lessons, I would pull out my laptop and code, while the classmates around me were planning the next party.

Once a teacher came up to me and seemed concerned about my behaviour. I remember him quoting to me: "Alvarez, den Mutigen gehört die Welt. Wussten Sie es nicht?" which roughly translates to "Fortune favours the brave. Didn't you know?". I didn't feel I was a coward, but I started having my doubts.

Then I met a girl, my future wife, also a nerd. We had the same hobbies and preferences. We wanted to be together, but our families disagreed. There was a lot of drama, but thankfully it didn't end like Romeo and Juliet. We moved in together. We were suddenly alone, but together.

Something lit up in me, I felt alive. I would do whatever is necessary to get us out of our dire situation. I talked to companies, introduced myself to strangers. I did everything that school claimed I was not prepared for.

One consultant agency gave me a chance. I would study and work full-time. They would give me a low starting salary. Immediately I knew this was my chance, and I gladly took it.

My grades at university did not reflect the excellent work I was doing at the job. Thankfully, I was allowed to take some technical subjects that didn't require so much oral participation. Meanwhile my colleagues were unsure if I would ever succeed in the field as an introvert. They could talk faster and sounded convincing. They saw my good work as just "luck".

But the moment of redemption came when one of the main consultants fell ill and I had the chance to start negotiations with what would be the biggest client in the firm's history.

I had already engineered my own methods and tried them out during my presentation; A short pitch telling what the consultancy is and what it offers and then I proceeded to ask: "But enough said about ourselves! How do you think we can help you? What are your biggest pain points right now?"

There was silence. The managers were taken aback by this approach, but it worked nonetheless. To my boss it seemed like a desperate move to put me as the replacement of one of his top consultants, but he didn't believe we would gain this huge client anyways.

When I called him that evening and told him about the deal, he had no words to describe his joy. Over a short period of 3,5 years I would go from coder who spent hours changing CSS back and forth because of a client's desires, to top consultant, leading an entire department. Through the years, I got new jobs and opportunities, which helped me grow further and here I am, armed with lots of knowledge and methods ready to give them to you.

Fellow engineer, what about your story?
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