From Curiosity to Solutions Architect: My Journey (so far) at Domino's
“Wisdom is not a product of schooling but of the lifelong attempt to acquire it.”
I've always been fascinated by why things are the way they are, and in turn, how everything works. My interest began with something seemingly mundane: the weather. As a child, I would become enthralled by thunderstorms, these magnificent but terrifying processes that occurred on a scale far larger than I could fully comprehend.
I'd often feel the pull of intrigue as a distant storm rolled towards me, its booming thunder heralding its arrival. Whilst others fled to find shelter, hoping to avoid getting wet, I would instead seek the nearest open space to provide me with the best seat possible: at its heart.
Experiencing these events sparked something in me, an intense desire to understand, to find the answers to how the storm swirling around me was capable of even existing.
My curiosity continued, expanding with a thirst to comprehend other weather events, and in particular, extreme weather. Tornadoes, hurricanes, volcanoes, earthquakes, and monsoons, all treasure troves waiting to be understood.
Unsurprisingly, this quest to attain a greater understanding of the world around me led straight to Physics, and in particular, computers and space. To me, space was a natural continuation of my obsession with extreme weather; the universe is filled with wonderous celestial bodies and processes that we can only observe from a distance (a mind-bogglingly great distance!). Stars, black holes, red dwarfs, gamma-ray bursts, and supernovae, all spectacular and mysterious occurrences waiting for their secrets to be unlocked and enhance our understanding of the universe.
Whilst space energised my imagination, computers, on the other hand, were something much more tangible. I'll always remember the first time my older brother sat down alongside me to help me write my first line of code on an Amiga 500: making the screen change colour. Of course, it's incredibly simple by today's standards, but that excitement I felt as the screen cycled through colours was something very special indeed. I not only understood something, but I could create something using that newfound comprehension.
A side note, I highly recommend watching The Royal Institution Christmas Lectures that take place every year after Christmas. Whilst they're aimed at children, they're delivered in a way that remains engaging for adults alike. They cover all sorts of topics and have been held since 1825, only stopping for World War II!
CHRISTMAS LECTURES | Royal Institution (rigb.org)
Interestingly, I did not go on to study Computing at university. For whatever reason, the open days I attended never resonated with my instinctual need for understanding. This led me to seek it elsewhere, and naturally, my thoughts returned to Physics. After attending a number of demonstrations, I settled on my degree: Physics with Cosmology.
Fast-forward to the end of my degree, and I was keen to get out into the world and apply the skills I'd developed during my studies. However, I yearned for something tangible to work on, something I could learn and use to help create something new. Of course, my thoughts drifted back to computers, specifically software development.
Alongside my degree, I'd continued to learn about programming in my own time, playing around with various technologies that piqued my interest. However, when it came to applying for jobs, I hit a barrier. In every interview I attended, the same question was asked,
"Please give examples of work experience in software development outside of education and study". I felt like a joke had been played. In the fortunate position I was in, I had not been forced to split my time in order to pay for my studies. Yes, I'd had a couple of jobs growing up, but nothing relevant to software development. I'd dedicated years of study, and yet at that moment, all of it felt useless.
Knowledge, wisdom and understanding, was not something I could acquire through study alone.
“This is Just the Beginning”
Whilst I wasn't able to attain a software development role directly, I was able to get my foot in the door by becoming a Business Systems Analyst at a small, start-up-like company and taking every opportunity possible to apply my self-acquired software development skills to the role.
Four years later, I sat across a table from a Senior Developer and a Development Lead. Intensely nervous, I shifted in my seat as they began assessing my capabilities to determine whether I was a suitable fit for their company.
Undoubtedly, any minute they were going to discover I was underqualified for the role and that I was a fool for even believing I might be up to the challenge in the first place. Up to this point, my coding knowledge had been crafted through self-learning only, with a few opportunities to apply it in my previous job. However, unlike before, those times I'd applied my skills gave me examples to demonstrate my knowledge and understanding.
Two and a half hours into the interview, now sitting with the Head of Development across the table, the question came that always causes a moment of doubt: Give an example of when you've made a mistake. In this moment, all those feelings of self-doubt come to the fore: See? They're about to see how I'm not fit for the role, that I'm not good enough.
Taking a deep metaphorical breath, I began explaining how shortly after starting at my previous company, I'd pushed something into production only for it to bring the website down the moment it deployed. Naturally, being just out of university, my stress levels skyrocketed; who wants to be the one to break everything? To top it off, this was a manual deployment via a CMS (we had no CI/CD!). The built-in rollback didn't work, meaning the website remained offline with no means for me to fix it.
Of course, my boss was in a meeting with the CEO at that moment, meaning I had to make an embarrassing interruption to inform him of what had happened. He quickly resolved the issue by manually updating the files, the problem caused by a lack of permissions.
Taking me into a side room, my boss proceeded to dress me down. Initially, I was a little confused; he'd told me to release this morning... hadn't he? And there it was, at that moment, as he explained he hadn't meant for me to trigger the release, I realised the most crucial thing: communication, and how easily it can go awry.
“Many of the truths that we cling to depend on our point of view.”
Fortunately, I hadn't sabotaged my chances of getting the Software Developer role at Domino's, and despite my self-doubt arguing otherwise, they thought I was the right choice for the job.
Elation and relief are often the first feelings to surface when receiving good news, but self-doubt can quickly reassert itself, sapping any much-needed confidence before you even begin. And guess what? Confidence is a critical component of communicating effectively.
Expressing your ideas is a vital part of any role, but how can you expect someone to understand and subsequently engage with your ideas if you portray little confidence in them yourself? The interesting thing here is that it's less about how you feel inside and more about how people perceive you from the outside.
I was having a conversation with a colleague some time ago, and the subject of confidence came up in the context of them giving a presentation. In response and hopeful support, I expressed how I can get incredibly anxious when presenting or talking, sometimes to the point that my heart is beating so fast I can hear it in my ears, and I struggle to breathe normally. What did they say in response?
"You? But you've always been so confident!". This hit me like a ton of bricks; how did this person get that impression? That's not me; I'm not that confident.
Of course, everyone has their own experience of the world around them, with each being unique. If people all have their distinctive perceptions, then it follows that everyone you meet has their very own version of you. The logical question that follows is, which version is the real me? Well, both.
It might sound strange initially, but no one can know your mind. It follows that nobody has a complete picture of you with only your words and actions to make judgements upon, and someone's judgement is shaped by their own biases.
OK, but someone else's view of me is incomplete, so surely my view of myself must be the real me? I'm the one in my head, after all! Well, yes and no.
You, too, are affected by biases, and it's unlikely you're aware of them all. This means your perception of how you're coming across to others is also affected. Just as others can't truly know your mind, you can't know theirs, and so never really know how you're being perceived.
Neither party has the whole picture, but neither is wrong. They're both true; it just depends on your point of view.
This is another area of interest that perhaps should be a topic for a future post, but for now, I'll link to an article on the Johari window and how it can help build better awareness and confidence:
The Johari Window - Building Self-Awareness and Trust (mindtools.com)
Biases also deserve a dedicated post, significantly impacting how people treat one another. In recent decades, women have had difficulty breaking back into IT and software development. With the stereotype being a man with poor hygiene, a lack of social skills and who rarely sees the light of day, it's no wonder young girls have drifted away from the discipline as a future career.
Things are changing, but old biases, such as men being more naturally suited to technology, being more logical and level-headed, and women being more emotional and less rational, still impede progress towards a future of fairer opportunities. This, and the possible solutions, will be explored in a future post.
“Do, or do not. There is no try.”
For much of my first year at Domino's, I struggled with imposter syndrome, something that many people reading this will be all too familiar with. However, this is also heavily related to confidence stemming from how you believe others perceive (or even judge) your abilities and skills. To emphasise, this is based on what you, and not what they actually, believe.
To put it simply, you have to stop trying to be a mind reader, believing you have some magical ability to know other people's thoughts. People are often their own worst critics, and learning to recognise that these thoughts and feelings are, in fact, not a statement of reality can go a long way to improving your self-confidence.
When working on your confidence, it's essential to keep this in mind. It won't suddenly appear out of thin air; it takes practice, meaning you need to fake it till you make it. And this is where the magic lies; because even though you aren't confident within, you know people can still perceive you as such. This leads to better engagement with your ideas, which in turn leads to greater understanding and you feeling positive about yourself. Positivity drives confidence and greater exploration of new ideas, which yields new solutions for you to convey. And so the feedback loop begins.
So, how does this relate to my desire for greater knowledge and understanding, and wielding them to create new things? Well, if perceived confidence drives greater engagement, and engagement drives further development of your ideas, then the natural conclusion is that confidence increases the likelihood of discovering new perspectives on the problems we face, leading to a greater variety of potential solutions.
Of course, it's at this point that you might realise that for this to work, the way these different perspectives are communicated is vital, reinforcing the need for a sustained effort towards better communication.
“Patience you must have”
Being a software developer was incredibly rewarding. Initially working to find and fix bugs, the satisfaction I felt when I successfully tracked down an issue to its source was addictive, increasing once again once I'd formed a solution. After deployment, I'd be content knowing that the next time a customer used that part of the system, it would work as expected for them to continue happily towards their desire (pizza!).
Over time, I became increasingly interested in getting involved with developing new features, building something new and hopefully grappling with new technologies. Joining my first sprint team was incredibly exciting, and I was fortunate enough to jump straight into a major project. On a whole new scale, the project pushed me to learn rapidly. I was fortunate enough to have some brilliant colleagues to learn from, and I learnt the immense value of pair programming.
Having completed the project, I realised there was an element that had particularly resonated with me; not just working on a single component but thinking about how different components worked in tandem. Designing numerous interconnecting components to fulfil a requirement from the business would mean attaining an understanding of the ask/problem, gathering knowledge of any existing systems and technologies that could help, and finally presenting solutions back to the business for one to be selected and subsequently implemented.
A thread that runs throughout is, once again, communication. A skill I'd need to renew my focus on to help me reach the goal of becoming a Solutions Architect. While not something entirely tangible in and of itself, over time and lots of self-reflection, evidence of my effects became evident in the interactions with those around me.
Perfecting communication is a never-ending endeavour, but one, given time, is well worth the effort. The more aware you are of how you and others communicate, and the differences between them, the more you'll improve your ability to communicate. In turn, this leads to more effective conveying of your ideas, increasing productivity and understanding. People go away happier with more confidence to move forwards. People have clarity, which is often elusive, causing no end to meetings and repeated conversations (and we all love meetings).
“So long, and thanks for all the fish”
Sitting here now as a Solutions Architect, maintaining clarity when conveying my ideas is paramount. How can I expect people to assess and choose from the solutions I provide if they have yet to grasp what these solutions actually offer?
How people digest information is a whole area of study that I won't go into here (a future post!), but it significantly impacts how successful you are at sharing your ideas. Whilst you can't control how your audience digests the information you share, you can control how you express ideas; meaning knowing your audience is critical to success.
Having almost completed my first six months as a Solutions Architect, it's the ideal time for me to take a step back and reflect upon the successes and challenges I've encountered. Analysing these will help me assess how successful my transmission of ideas has been and whether or not they've subsequently flourished. I can step outside myself and look at how I might tailor my approaches (in both communication and solutions) to better serve the various audiences and situations I will encounter in the future.
The result? Becoming a better communicator, and in turn, a more useful Architect. All whilst satisfying that deep-seated need to understand the why and how things work. Whilst I don't yet feel qualified to write about it here (I see you imposter syndrome!), I plan to write about my experiences in a future post.