It may not be much, but it means a lot to me, being my first ever qualification in the industry (despite having been in the industry now for over ten years!)

God, I’m getting old.

I feel I wasted a lot of that time in dead end jobs, never really progressing much and being a jack of all trades, master of none.

Since starting my job at Magma Digital a year ago (almost to the day!) I feel like I’ve progressed exponentially. I no longer that nagging feeling of imposter syndrome. Having no formal education has never held me back in the sense of programming capability, but I’ve always felt out of my depth when it came to talking about programming. It’s been great to actually have peers and mentors, people I can ask questions instead of having to feel my way around in the dark and finding a solution that works, but isn’t ideal (and half the time, not even knowing why it’s not ideal).

I think we built it up to be a big thing. All of us at Magma are looking to get Zend certified over the next couple of months, and we’ve all been putting it off for ages. I’ve spent 4 hours a night revising for the exam for the last week and it really wasn’t anything to worry about. It covered some topics that I don’t often touch, which is where I tried to prepare most… And there weren’t even any bloody bit shifting questions.