Luck Opens Doors. You Still Have to Be Standing in the Hallway.

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"Entry level COBOL. Insurance a plus."

I read that job posting and felt something I hadn't felt in a while — the specific relief of a person who has been wandering and suddenly sees a sign pointing home. I had COBOL. I had insurance. I had a degree I had fought for over seven years to finish. Every strange turn my career had taken suddenly looked less like a mistake and more like preparation.

But let me back up. Because that moment only makes sense if you know how I got there.

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The Music Major Who Found a PowerBook

I started college as a music major. Opera, specifically — I wanted to conduct, to sing, to build a life around the thing I loved most. I had a good voice. What I didn't have was a good ear. In music, those two things are not the same, and the gap between them is not something you can practice your way out of. Four years in, I had to be honest with myself: this was not going to work.

Then the education department at Mizzou got PowerBook 1400s.

I don't know exactly what happened in me when I sat down at one of those machines, but something clicked. I started learning networking. I found my way to early internet communities. The curiosity that had always driven me — just pointed somewhere new.

I transferred and pursued a degree in Computer Information Systems. It took three more years on top of the four I'd already spent. Seven years total to finish an undergraduate degree. I worked through it, struggled through it, and I am not ashamed of any of it. That degree was earned, not handed to me.

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The Y2K Flood and the Quiet Smart Move

I graduated in 2002. If you were in technology in 2002, you remember what the job market looked like. The dot-com bubble had burst. And the Y2K work that had pulled COBOL contractors out of retirement had dried up, leaving the market flooded with experienced COBOL developers who needed new jobs.

I was a new grad trying to break in during one of the worst tech hiring environments in recent memory, in a language that suddenly had more supply than demand.

I made what I now recognize as one of the best decisions of my career: I stayed put. I was working at an insurance company. I knew the business. I knew the systems. I became a claims adjuster while I waited for the market to shift.

It wasn't glamorous. It wasn't the tech career I had imagined. But it kept me close to the industry, gave me business context that most developers never get, and taught me that sometimes patience is the most strategic move available.

I wasn't waiting for luck. I was staying ready for it.

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The Job Posting That Had My Name On It

About a year into adjusting claims, I saw it. A posting at another insurance company. Entry level. COBOL required. Insurance background a plus.

That posting was not written for a generic candidate. It was written, almost precisely, for me. I had the technical background. I had the business context. I had spent a year understanding the actual work that the systems I would be supporting were built to handle.

I got the job. I coded COBOL for four years and then moved into SQL Server. The path was starting to take shape.

Was it luck that the posting existed? Yes. Was it luck that I was qualified for it? No. I had built every piece of that qualification, some of it intentionally and some of it through sheer stubbornness.

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The Springboard and the Call From AWS

Years later, I was ready for the next step. I moved into a Systems Architect role — what I think of as my springboard job — helping set the direction for SQL Server at scale. I was in the room where architectural decisions got made. I was developing opinions, building a point of view, accumulating the kind of judgment that only comes from making consequential choices and living with the results.

Then AWS called.

I want to be honest about what I felt: I didn't think I would get it. I was honored to be considered. The idea of becoming an Amazonian felt like something that happened to other people — people who had taken cleaner paths, made smarter choices earlier, avoided the detours I had taken.

I got the job.

That role set the trajectory for everything that followed. It accelerated my understanding of cloud architecture in ways that years of self-study couldn't have. It opened doors that I didn't even know existed. It was, by any honest accounting, a lucky break.

But here is what I have come to believe: AWS did not call a music major who wandered into computers. They called someone with deep SQL Server expertise, enterprise architecture experience, and a business context that most technical candidates don't have. The luck was that they called. The reason they called was everything I had built before the phone rang.

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The Parts Nobody Posts About

I want to talk about the bad luck too. Because any honest version of this story has to include it.

There have been layoffs. Roles that looked right and turned out to be wrong fits. Family challenges that didn't care about career momentum. Periods where the forward progress I thought I was making turned out to be sideways movement at best.

None of that goes away because the overall arc looks good in retrospect. It was hard when it was happening. Some of it still is.

But I have come to see those periods differently than I used to. The wrong-fit roles taught me what I actually need to do good work. The layoffs forced me to take stock of what I had built and what I wanted to build next. The hard stretches developed a kind of resilience that good times simply cannot produce.

The setbacks were not interruptions to the career. They were part of the construction of it.

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What I Actually Believe About Luck and Merit

I have heard the argument that success is mostly luck, and I have heard the argument that luck is just preparation meeting opportunity. I think both of these are partially right and that the tension between them is more honest than either position alone.

Luck is real. The PowerBook showing up in the education department at Mizzou was luck. The job posting existing was luck. AWS calling was luck. If any of those things had not happened, the story would be different. I am not going to pretend otherwise.

But luck is not sufficient. The PowerBook only mattered because I sat down at it and started learning. The posting only mattered because I had seven years of education and a year of business context behind me. The AWS call only mattered because I had spent years building something worth calling about.

Luck opens doors. You still have to be standing in the hallway. And you have to have done the work to deserve what's on the other side.

If you are early in your career and the path looks strange, or longer than you expected, or nothing like what you planned — I want you to hear this directly: the detours are not disqualifying. The music degree is not a liability. The year you spent doing something adjacent to what you wanted is not wasted time. It is context. It is business knowledge. It is the thing that makes you the right candidate for a posting that seems to have been written specifically for you.

Stay ready. Do the work. Be standing in the hallway.

The door will open.

Twenty years in, this ride has been equal parts exhilarating and humbling — a roller coaster I wouldn't trade for anything. By embracing the luck that came my way and leaning into the opportunities God placed in front of me, I have built something I am genuinely proud of. I cannot wait to see what the next twenty years holds.

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