Career Spotlight: From Landscaper to Mid-Level Platform Engineer!
Neil McMahon worked as a Landscaper and Gardener until the financial crash of 2008 saw him re-training as a PHP Developer. After graduating from Blanchardstown IT with a BSc. Computing, Neil joined Distilled SCH as a Junior Platform Engineer, and has since progressed to a Mid-Level. We chatted to Neil about life, career, and the advice he would give people starting out on the same career path as him.
Tell us about your career before Distilled!
I took the long way round to get to Distilled — I was a landscape gardener before joining! When I left school, way back in 1999, I did a horticulture course in the National Botanic Gardens and from there started working in the landscaping industry. I worked in pretty much all sectors of landscaping and gardening and enjoyed it up until the 2008 financial crash when the company I worked for had to let my section go.
It was hard to find work after that as a landscaper, so I decided to re-train in the tech industry, as I’d always enjoyed tinkering around on computers. Finally, I got around to doing a conversion course in Blanchardstown IT in 2014, and after 2 years I got a B.SC in Computing.
We covered loads of areas in the course, but my favourite was web development in PHP. After the course finished, I applied for a couple of jobs as a PHP developer, but had no luck. So, I decided I needed something else to boost my CV and started doing websites for friends etc. As luck would have it, I saw a PHP developer role advertised in Distilled in late 2017, sent in an application thinking, ‘I’ll never get that job, but if I got an interview, that’ll do’!
Anyway, another stroke of luck, one of the engineering managers at the time had seen a website I had done and liked it, so I got the interview and must have done something right because I got a job offer soon after. Happy days!
Why did you choose Distilled at the time you joined?
Daft, Adverts and DoneDeal are pretty much household names and have been for a long time, so a chance to work on any of these sites was brilliant. I’m happy to say that it’s been a great experience. Distilled is an extremely welcoming place so from day one you are made to feel part of the team. Nice, friendly people and loads of interesting stuff to work on. One of my favourite things about Distilled is that no two days are the same and there is always loads of interesting things to work on.
What was your first role in Distilled? How have you progressed since first joining the company?
I started in Distilled in 2018 as a Junior PHP developer for Daft. I started out taking care of daily support tickets and was then moved on to a cross-functional team working on the GDPR project as new data privacy laws were coming into effect at that time. After the project was completed, I joined the Daft product team implementing new features on the Daft platform and that’s where I’ve spent most of my time at Distilled. Since then, I’ve progressed to a mid-Level position and have worked across numerous projects on both the Backend and Frontend.
What would be your advice to graduates just starting out their career in this field?
I think it’s hard to get ‘the foot in the door’ so to speak, so I would say don’t be discouraged if you don’t have any luck getting a job straight away after graduating. Keep building up your CV and Github profile. Also, try not to be too intimidated by job requirements, apply anyway, even if you feel you don’t have all the skills listed in the job description.
What is the best piece of advice that you’ve received that has helped you get to where you are today?
In terms of getting a first job in tech, the best advice I received was to have something ‘real’ to show employers. Whether that’s a website or an app or a Github profile, I believe it helps your CV stand out a little bit. And that’s sometimes the difference between getting an interview and not. So for me, that was the number one best advice I got.
