Pre-employment: Knew pc repair in general. Helped a friend of a friend replace some laptop screens. Said friend turned out to be manager of desktop support at a company. When a position opened he brought me in.

Year 1: Learned the ropes fairly quickly and worked my ass off to learn as much as I could.

Year 2: Took on bigger projects. The images that came down from HQ never worked, so I learned how to break them open, fix, and repackage so we didn't have to wait around for them. Began learning programming in my spare time.

Year 2.5: Director of Desktop hears through grapevine that I have learned programming. Tasks me with building an iPhone app for desktop to use. Built it, it got the attention of the CIO, and he brought me over to HQ as a Jr. Programmer.

Year 3: Again, took on bigger projects that presented themselves. Became lead of new intranet development project in addition to other mobile and web development work.

Year 4: Continued to work ass off. Asked for promotion. Was promoted to Programmer.

Year 5: Continuing to work ass off and hoping for a promotion when I get my yearly review this month. Now hiring consultants, negotiating contracts, and other things in that realm in addition to my development responsibilities.

Throughout this, the one biggest thing I have learned is to take any opportunity that arises. A lot of people have though I was crazy for taking on certain responsabilities before I got my promotions. But, if I hadnt done so I would never have gotten the promotions. Sure, I may have missed out on x months salary that maybe I should have received, but when you think like that you may not ever get to the position where you should be promoted. I also dont have a degree, so I have had to work extra hard to show my skills. In any case, after five years, now I have a pretty decent resume of work, have a great deal of professional experience, and hopefully a great career ahead of me.