Hi, I am Anders.
You might know me from the stage at Knowledge, where I talk about the nerdy stuff.
You might know me from silly YouTube videos, from my online efforts to promote the idea of getting smarter every day, or from my attempts to bring more fun into the community.
Or you might not know me at all, which I reckon is the case for most people.
But one thing is certain: most people don't know about my challenging past or how it shaped my path towards what I would like to call a great career.
One thing I have come to realise over the years is that people who come from difficult backgrounds, tough upbringings, and poor environments often face the greatest challenges when trying to succeed professionally later in life. I know this from personal experience.
Around the age of 15, I was mostly on my own. I was hungry, and at times, I had no place to live at all. I quickly realised that finding a roof over my head and food to eat was more important than focusing on school. I also had to hide what was happening to protect my parent, who was in no position to take care of me. I barely finished high school and, because I needed to find a job quickly, never went to university.
I see people in this situation all the time.
I see you.
Sometimes, it's all about luck, effort, and timing.
I soon found jobs in IT, which at least took care of the essentials. This was the late 90s, and if you could type on a keyboard, you pretty much had a chance, provided you were willing to learn. And I was.
I had already realised that, to survive and compete with people who had formal education, I had to perform to the best of my ability. I had to be "the best". Otherwise, I thought, I would be out of a job and back on the streets.
I became a Flash developer (a really good one, in my opinion), creating animated websites and games and programming interactive installations for museums and science centres. It was the most fun a programmer could have. It wasn't just some product sitting online. I could see people physically interacting with what we had made and having fun with it. That feedback felt amazing.
Then Flash died as a technology (thanks a lot, Steve Jobs!), and eventually, I lost my job. I didn't know what to do. I was great at Flash and ActionScript (its version of JavaScript), but I didn't really know much else. I had to find a different path.
Fast-forward to ServiceNow.
I had learned about the ITIL framework and was excited about how we could finally bring some structure to IT, where there had previously been very little. I looked at the job ads and searched for "ITIL". Just one result came up. It said "ServiceNow Administrator".
I had no idea what that was, but I sent a short message: "Here's my CV. Let me know if something looks interesting."
Luck, effort, and timing.
I got the job because there was an immediate need for people, and the company understood that, with something as new as this, they needed to find people with potential rather than experience.
Getting my first ServiceNow job in 2015 was weird. Not many people around me seemed to know what they were doing either, and we all had to figure things out as we went along.
For me, it was like starting from scratch all over again. But losing my job this time would have had even greater consequences than before. It would affect my new family, too.
Once again, I felt the same pressure as before: I had to perform to the best of my ability. I had to be the best.
[To avoid confusion, I am talking about a mindset: how to master something, not about comparing myself to others.]
My approach to learning has always been to build things. I don't have a strong academic background, and I'm not a particularly good reader. But I dive deep into the technical details, get my hands dirty, and figure things out. And that has worked for me.
I have always been able to master something technical by shutting out absolutely everything around me and focusing on it until I get really good at it. But that has always taken a toll on my social life and relationships.
Getting diagnosed with ADHD this year explained a lot. Understanding that there are ways to make life easier has been a game-changer.
Realising that men often don't talk about mental health because of the stigma has made me feel that I need to step up and start talking about it myself.
This is a short, condensed story about a difficult and somewhat unusual life that turned out to be great, even though challenges have always been part of my journey. Today, I am a ServiceNow CMA and MVP, and I am sharing my knowledge and wisdom with the community, as people in different communities always helped me before.
There is a point to all of this:
Sometimes, life throws you a curveball. Or a hundred curveballs. But if you stop simply taking them to the face and learn how to catch the ball, or just step aside and decide not to play that game at all, things can change dramatically.
Those curveballs can be what drives us to change, learn, and improve. At least, that's what they did for me!
We have to be grateful for opportunities, and we must always work hard to improve ourselves and the things and people around us - and we have to do that even when life throws unexpected challenges our way.
Because in the end, it's all about luck, effort, and timing.
