I spent a large chunk of my career making the worst mistake for career development: I didn’t have a plan.

A lot of people have a plan for their life. Being a software engineer wasn’t the clear plan for me for a long time. Programming started as a hobby for me and then was a side hustle in college. Ultimately I thought I would end up doing something in cyber forensics or cyber security. But I just kind of made decisions as they came up. I quit college because I was bored, worked full-time at the Apple Store, and moved to Maryland to live with my parents at 24. Not exactly what every 24-year-old plans on doing.