What I wish I knew - Getting started in Tech

What I Wish I Knew

Three technologists. Three career stages. Three honest answers.

The tech industry looks different from what it did five years ago, and it will look different again in five more. AI has changed what junior work looks like. Hiring patterns have shifted. Advice that worked in 2018 doesn't always hold up now.

So we asked three people at different points in their careers to answer one question: what would you want to know if you were starting today?

The Format

Three speakers. Fifteen minutes each.

• Early career - Someone still in the first few years, close enough to the entry point to remember what it actually felt like. What the job ads did not tell them. What they wasted time on. What mattered.

• Mid-career - Five to twelve years in, past the first promotions and probably a few pivots. What holds up over time. What they would do differently with the benefit of hindsight.

• Late career - Fifteen years or more, with enough pattern recognition to separate genuine shifts from noise. What has survived every technology cycle they have worked through.

Each speaker covers the same three areas:

• The skills that stay valuable no matter what the tooling looks like.

• What new graduates should actually focus on right now, given the current state of hiring and the work AI is already absorbing.

• The transferable skills that travel between roles, companies, and technologies.

We finish with an open Q&A and time to talk properly afterwards.

Already Working in Tech? This One Is For You Too

The theme sets the scene and opens the conversation. Everyone's job is shifting. The work you did eighteen months ago probably looks different now. Code review has changed. Estimating has changed. What you delegate and what you keep has changed. Some of us have picked up work we never expected to own, and handed off work we used to be known for.

The job search has changed too. Different interview formats, different expectations around tooling, different signals hiring managers are reading.

Most of us are working this out on our own and assuming everyone else has it sorted. They do not. This is the room to compare notes properly - what is actually different in your role, what you have had to relearn, what you are still figuring out.

Bring a question or a war story. The Q&A and the time afterwards are where the value sits.

Who Should Come

Students and new graduates working out where to start. Career changers deciding whether tech is worth the jump. Working technologists thinking about their next move or adjusting to a role that has shifted under them. Anyone who hires, mentors, or manages people early in their careers.

Agenda:

• 7 pm - 7:30 pm- Conversations and Pizza

• 7:30 pm - 8:30 pm - Facilitated Discussion

• 8:30 pm - 9 pm - More conversations & Pizza (if there's any left)

Thank you to our regular sponsors:

Ligantic: the essential emerging tech platform, from prototype to production.

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