Down the Rabbit Hole
Moving from Business Analyst to Software Engineer at Chick-fil-A
When I first started my job as a Business Analyst at Chick-fil-A, I would have never guessed where it would take me 11 years later. I enjoyed the role because it had many different facets to it: problem solving, interactions with different groups of people, and I didn’t need to know how to code. I quickly learned I really enjoyed the technical aspects of being a Business Analyst.
So just like Alice in Wonderland, I followed the white rabbit deeper into the depths of what it means to be technical. Fast forward to today: I still work at Chick-fil-A, but have made a few changes, and learned a lot along my journey. Through curiosity, communication, mentorship, and reflection, I developed technical skills which led me to become the Lead Software Engineer I am today.
Curiosity
Soon after I began my career at Chick-fil-A, I found myself gravitating towards technical curiosities like how our systems could talk to each other, how I could use SQL to view specific data in a database, and how I could connect different AWS services to solve a problem.
I leaned into a desire to build my technical skills and started with SQL.
SQL opened up a whole new world for me: it felt immensely gratifying to write a query, hit run, and see the data return in the console. I wanted more of that. I continued to learn on the job, but also followed my curiosity outside of work and invested in learning and growing my skillset. I took online courses and read a book to learn Python (Python Crash Course by Eric Matthews). I also dove into the world of AWS as my team started using the AWS S3 service. I began reading through AWS docs for S3 and took the AWS Cloud Practitioner exam to solidify my basic knowledge of AWS.
Communication
Throughout this time, I had regular meetings with my People Leader to discuss current projects, if I needed guidance, and my interests. By communicating my desire to learn more, my manager was able to give me opportunities that aligned with growing my career.
My communication eventually led me to apply for a more technical, internal Systems Analyst role which focused on making data available for our marketing partners to perform analytics. I learned about our data and what systems were in place to make it available. I also gained experience in informing requirements for new data pipelines, standing up AWS infrastructure by writing CloudFormation, and coding some of the data transformations in Python.
Mentorship
My People Leader helped me find a mentor, which was with an established Architect, and it helped immensely to give me more confidence in my skillset and focus on my journey. I learned so much about the Architect role, getting feedback on code I put up for review and where I should focus my learning. There are so many areas to explore, which felt overwhelming at times, but my mentor suggested I start by gaining experience with large scale APIs and to consider moving into an engineering position based on my interests and desire to continue moving more technically in my career.
This was going to be a big move and would require me to take a role at a different level. After a conversation with my leadership about how this could work, I created a development plan to lay out the steps to become an engineer. I also invested more time outside of work diving deeper into AWS services. I wanted to continue exploring the architect career path as well, so I took the AWS Solutions Architect Associate exam.
Reflection
My journey of continuous technical learning will probably never end. I spend a lot of time reading various documentation, wikis, blogs, and articles, as well as listening to technical Podcasts. And reflecting. All of this led me to continue honing my coding skills and applying my development plan to become an engineer.
I’ve now been in my role as Lead Software Engineer for about a year and a half and am truly loving it. I’m still on my journey down the rabbit hole learning so many new things, but with more curiosity and excitement for the engineering adventure I’m on…and for what comes next.
