37M - Salary Progression, Late Start: Lazy Bum playing WoW to Help Desk to Director. No Degree.
As described in the title, I’m ashamed to say that I spent a better part of my 20s just bumming around playing video games, leeching off my parents, and half heartedly trying to take classes at a community college.
Looking back, there were clear signs of depression that I wish I took more seriously. Things that, if addressed at the time, would’ve put me in a better position in my 30s. Instead I spent most of my timing raiding in WoW.
What jolted me out of this was my mom passing away in 2013. She was diagnosed in her early 30s somewhat early, went into remission for about 25 years, then it came back suddenly and aggressively.
I was 26 at that point and around that age, even as recent immigrants to the US, my parents were married, bought a house, had their first child. Meanwhile all I had going for me was a hoard of DKP for loot in World of WarCraft.
2013: Studied my butt off. Got my CompTIA A+, Security+, and Network+. 2014: Got my first job in help desk. Just under $40K plus decent benefits. Took on everything they could throw at me. Learned as much as I could. 2015: Moved on to a network engineering position at a Managed Service Provider. Primarily Sysadmin work with a mix of DevOps. 2016: Recruiter reached out and offered an interview for a sales engineering role. Took the meeting, and fell in love with the role. 2017-2019: Hit quota every year as an individual contributor. 2020: Took a team lead position managing a small group of sales engineers. 2021-2022: Promoted to manager and managed a team of sales engineers across the country 2023-today: Promoted to sales engineering director. Manage 5 managers, with 35 sales engineers across North America.
Been with the same company from 2016 to today.
As described in the title, I’m ashamed to say that I spent a better part of my 20s just bumming around playing video games, leeching off my parents, and half heartedly trying to take classes at a community college.
Looking back, there were clear signs of depression that I wish I took more seriously. Things that, if addressed at the time, would’ve put me in a better position in my 30s. Instead I spent most of my timing raiding in WoW.
What jolted me out of this was my mom passing away in 2013. She was diagnosed in her early 30s somewhat early, went into remission for about 25 years, then it came back suddenly and aggressively.
I was 26 at that point and around that age, even as recent immigrants to the US, my parents were married, bought a house, had their first child. Meanwhile all I had going for me was a hoard of DKP for loot in World of WarCraft.
2013: Studied my butt off. Got my CompTIA A+, Security+, and Network+. 2014: Got my first job in help desk. Just under $40K plus decent benefits. Took on everything they could throw at me. Learned as much as I could. 2015: Moved on to a network engineering position at a Managed Service Provider. Primarily Sysadmin work with a mix of DevOps. 2016: Recruiter reached out and offered an interview for a sales engineering role. Took the meeting, and fell in love with the role. 2017-2019: Hit quota every year as an individual contributor. 2020: Took a team lead position managing a small group of sales engineers. 2021-2022: Promoted to manager and managed a team of sales engineers across the country 2023-today: Promoted to sales engineering director. Manage 5 managers, with 35 sales engineers across North America.
Been with the same company from 2016 to today.