I've been in the IT industry for more than 8 years and now what?

Short biography

My story is not so typical computer nerd turned software engineer cliche, I just wanted to share how I got to here. I wasn't good at computer when I was a kid, I had the end-consumer mindset. I don't have the curiosity of how softwares work as long as they work. Over the years I grew interest to it (thanks to my buddy who shared the same curiosity with me) which led us taking up Bachelor of Science in Computer Science.

I entered college, learned more about programming and dived into the rabbit hole. I used to listen to tutorials, but later on focused more online courses (e.g. cs50), and lynda.com - now known as linkedin learning (we always found ways to hack around these paid courses and study advanced lessons). Thanks to those, I am able to speed up understanding advanced topics (university curriculum is super outdated) and use it on my personal projects which turned as a training ground for me. I started reading documentations, pdfs (O'reilly), and articles (e.g. medium). Knowledge grew more, and because of these efforts, I am able to graduate!

Here's a picture of me with my college friends :)

Work

I was able to get a job before we graduate. There, I was the optimistic junior not knowing his ass is going to whipped. I was enjoying it first time, but later on it got a bit overwhelming! Microservices, CI/CD, EDA, CQRS, SOLID, DRY, YAGNI, KISS, you name it. I didn't know any of this at all. I spent more time to learn these stuff in order to catch up! Over time I am able to understand it all, more time to focus on other stuff and tried new things during free time. I started attending meet ups / events, and participated in brown bag sessions.

Here's a pic of me participating in GDG Philippines event in BGC (lol)

I even participated to hackathons. After few more years, I started thinking to try to join talks, not as a participant but as a speaker (reflecting on paying back to the dev community), but my imposter syndrome kicked in. I lost courage and focus on other skill / activity instead. Then pandemic came.

Interest shift

During pandemic, I explored the skills I didn't learned when I was a kid. I do not know how to swim, ride a bike, nor operate a motorcycle. During downtime, I spent time to grasp those one at a time. After a few tries (with the help of my friends) I am able to do it by myself! That’s how I am able to rebuild myself, I can now disassociate myself as a person who only know how to write a code and sit in front of computer. I want to have a life outside work, discover new places to meet or reconnect to people. Before I started, all I could think of was its a waste of time, I'm happy I didn't listen to negative thoughts and focused more on the brighter side.

Here’s one of the few diving attempts when I just learned how to swim.

I also got into writing tech related articles, getting some courage to share my thoughts to the public and published those on dev.to then went back to my cave and never posted again lol. I think I enjoyed my life more than enough and promise myself to not make any regrets in the future.

Current state and future

I still love shipping features/solving real world problems. But the shift opened a new world to me. I didn't gained that much of experience I was aiming before but I didn't feel any regrets. A small progress is still a progress, isn't it? I always thought about what ifs before, and now I have gotten my urge to learn new things outside my comfort zone. I am able to uplift people because of this, I am able to widen my perspective in life. :)

Right now, I’m trying to speak my thoughts through writing (again). I'll start by revisiting each of my skills and improve them one at a time. This is an initiative of me to organize my thoughts and communicate it properly to people. I still have a lot of things I need to improve but hopefully over time, I can see some difference or improvements.

Takeaways

• Its okay to shift focus on other things as long as it interests you.
• Don’t spend too much time on things that don’t add value to your life/experiences.
• Enjoy every improvements even how small it is.
• If something’s hard for you, that means you’re learning!
• Last but not the least, enjoy and trust the process!