Joel Taddei – Tech Hero Series

Joel Taddei

Joel Taddei – Developing the Next Generation of Tech Professionals!

I work at Carolina Code School in Greenville, SC developing and instructing our backend web curriculum classes.

The Ultimate Career

I was searching for a field that had high job security, was lucrative, and a high amount of available jobs. Plus I was handy with a computer. I’ve been a professional software developer for about 8+ years, a few more if you count doing it as a hobby and making little games.

My degree is in Architectural Studies, so other than instilling a strong work ethic, it didn’t provide any technical skills relevant to software development.

A Friend and Mentor

A high school friend was an established software developer around the time I was looking to transition careers. He made sure I always had someone to bounce an idea off, provide some code help when I couldn’t figure something out, or just check in on me when it seemed like I wasn’t making progress. It was fun to progress through the “ranks” as a software developer and become more and more competent so we could work on harder projects together.

What the Future Looks Like

More code is being written for the frontend (browser) than ever before. Javascript is very hot and in demand. Connected “smart” houses will be a larger platform to develop apps for in the coming decade. Even though I don’t fully understand it, blockchain seems to be getting a lot of people’s attention.

AI (Artificial Intelligence) will help humans make decisions… and we will be surprisingly accepting of AI. The gap between training simulations and video games will narrow. Virtual and Augmented Reality will become more affordable and the quality will increase. Perceptions of privacy online will shift back to a pre-smartphone era – but not on a large scale.

To Succeed in this Field, You’ll Need…

Fearless curiosity. Have the mindset that it is okay to fail. Turn a failure from something bad into a learning opportunity.

It will be hard. Maybe not right away, but it will be. If you’re able to stick with it and press through the difficult times and learn from them, you will be successful in a career in IT. So make sure you enjoy it!


Joel TaddeiJoel Taddei is a software developer at the Carolina Code School in Greenville, SC. He is an IT-oLogy Tech Hero!

 

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