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December 21, 2020 08:34 am

Successful IT Workers Applaud Non-Traditional Paths to Tech

Tech columnist Chris Matyszczyk describes what happened after Microsoft's senior cloud advocate tweeted "Hire folks with non-traditional paths to tech."Thomas Zeman, whose Twitter bio declared he's "scaling pods at daytime, working on a docker based raspberry pi router at nighttime," mused in reply: "Depends a bit what tech you are talking about. When doing machine learning for cancer recognition on medical images I am sorry but dont believe baristas will crack it...." Oddly, Zeman's comment received what might be termed a reaction.... In wandered David Brunelle... "Hi Thomas!" he said. "I'm a vp of engineering at Starbucks. I started my career as a Starbucks barista. I have no college degree. Most of my early-in-career training came from the Navy. All non-traditional. And I lead one of the biggest digital payments platforms in the world...." Here's Twitterer Ew, Ryan: "I've worked as a delivery driver, tuxedo salesman, sandwich maker, gas station attendant, server, a few summers as a plumbing apprentice, and I could go on and on... but now I've worked at Google, Twitter and TikTok. Don't confuse past work histories with future capabilities." Or this from someone with the adorable Twitter handle @SecuritySphynx: "Gatekeeping is a bad look. 4y ago I was stamping envelopes/answering phones for $12/hour. Now I'm engineering security solutions with some of the worlds largest orgs Almost no one started in tech and never did anything else before. Check your classism at the door, please...." The article ultimately asks how many tech companies (and their HR departments) "persist in seeking those with a particular qualification and a particular past history? How many think there's a tech type?" But at least the Twitter thread provoked this clarifying correction from the pod-scaling, router-builder who'd started all the reactions. "I totally believe anyone can learn and master anything (including Baristas of course) without any doubt. The point is that mastering things will take a lot of time..."

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