How Pluralsight Changed My Life Twice

“Skills speak louder than words”

Indeed they do, but the “actions” part is step 2 once you get “skills”.

This is the story of how skills + actions with @pluralsight changed my life TWICE.

Let me tell you why

I’ve been in training since around 2002, when I co-created and delivered the 32-bit to 64-bit migration labs for @Microsoft, @HP, and @Intel while working at Artinsoft.

We were teaching enterprises all over the world how to migrate their code from 32-bit processors to 64-bit. This was part of an initiative led by Microsoft and since Artinsoft created the VB6 to VB.NET migration assistant, we got a chance to help companies worldwide migrate their code.

The effort was called Route 64, and we got a chance to train companies of all sizes while traveling the world (the travel part was fun, check out a list here: https://www.xaviermorera.com/road-warrior/) .

One of the locations where we gave our trainings was Building 20 in Microsoft’s main headquarters in Washington.

At the time, there was a small company giving trainings in Building 20 as well. Who knows, maybe I even crossed paths with some of its founders back then.

At the time, Pluralsight was instructor-led training–the online part had not been born yet. A few years later, it did and that’s when my life started changing.

I became a subscriber and started working on my skills, which helped me become a better programmer and engineer.

This was life-changing moment #1 for me.

My skills improved and I kept getting better at what I did which also allowed me to help some of my peers one-on-one whenever they are stuck in their work (something I still do and enjoy today).

One day I had an idea, what if the things I am teaching and helping my peers with… what if… I create video trainings that I can then share?

So I sent this mail in their ticketing system.

They replied a month or so later and I started my auditioning process to become a Pluralsight author.

This was life-changing moment #2.

I got accepted and started working nights and weekends creating trainings until I was able to fire myself from my day job and dedicate myself to work on my passion… creating trainings!

And so Big Data Inc was born… (story to be continued)