My experience with tech wasn't exactly a bed of roses. It's more of a romantic relationship where there were ups and downs, misunderstandings, and euphoria. Tech can be very complex but is never incomprehensible.
I am Ike Gabriel Yuson, currently a 2nd year student taking up a bachelor’s degree in Computer science at the University of the Philippines - Mindanao. I am also a freelance web developer who is also gunning for internships to add to my experience in the industry. Up until this point in my life, I only realized how big, beautiful, and challenging the tech industry is.
Although it was not until high school when I was exposed to tech. During this time, I had my fair share of competitive programming competitions and various hackathons both on-site and online. It was where I discovered different fields in computer science.
Stage 1: Butterflies
People usually incorporate “love-at-first-sight” to a person but in 8th grade, I also had mine. With tech. This was the time I was introduced to programming and computer science. The exhilaration and the rush of adrenaline I experienced when writing my first Hello World program in Java was on the roof! That day I realized I want to come across this feeling time and time again and until now, I still have the same intense addictive rush when solving problems in tech.
All throughout high school, I was able to discover various fields in computer science such as web development, game development, and data science which made me love the industry even more.
Stage 2: Assimilation
Upon going into college, I was already cognizant of what profession I was going to take - to work in the tech industry. A very broad ambition, right? During this time, there were only two things I was sure about - first is that I love programming, and second, I would be taking up a bachelor’s degree in computer science. Never really did I thought about what specialization I would want to take may it be web development, game development, and data science, etc. I was naïve for thinking that a college diploma was all I needed to jump start my career to be a successful computer scientist.
Just around the 2nd semester of my 1st year in college, as I was coding data structures for a course requirement, a thought then hit me - will I really be able to apply this in a professional corporate level? To be fair, I do appreciate the knowledge and logic imparted when studying data structures. Up until now, I practice coding them in HackerRank for I consider it as physical exercise for a programmer's brain and are even used as interview questions when applying for various tech jobs.
However, as I was browsing different job opportunities in the industry, I then noticed that I never even got to learn all these "alien" technologies in the job requirements section such as React, Nodejs, Django, etc. Never did I saw a job requirement indicating "Professional in implementing binary trees and graphs". Impostor syndrome struck and it was precisely at that moment that I considered myself clueless when it comes to the dirty work and technical skills required for a certain tech job.
I then looked at my degree program curriculum and to my surprise, nothing indicated that I would be learning these technologies. I then realized that this was one of those up-to-date technologies that are not taught in my university. And so, I took matters into my own hands.
I decided that I would want to learn web development first. Mainly because I see the web developer job at least 80% of the time when searching for job opportunities.
Stage 3: Building
Learning React was my first goal in mind and this was the start of my insatiable hunger towards learning new things. Up until that point, I was more of a go-with-the-flow type of guy. I just wait what my teachers and professors to tell the class what to study and do and I then follow. I never considered myself as self-taught up until now.
The knowledge I had then for React was then enough to make my own personal website to be used for internship applications. I was fortunate enough to be accepted to a remote web development internship program overseas. This was where I learned about various architectures and technologies fit for full-stack development. Along with my peers, we made a single-page application that rewards loyal customers of small businesses. This was my first encounter with the MERN stack.
During the first meeting with my mentor, I was extremely nervous to the point that I wanted to back-out from the program as he was spouting terms and technologies I haven't encountered and couldn't understand. Impostor syndrome struck once again, and my hands were basically shaking while I was typing my notes as he talks. After the technical talk, I then asked him if I could learn all these technologies in a short amount of time and the only advice he told me was to take it slow.
I then heed his advice and started to research and develop. First up was everything about the MERN stack - MongoDB, Express, React, and Nodejs. For months, I was never aware of the time. When I wake up in the morning, I immediately read articles and watch tutorial videos and at the same time code our MVP. I never noticed that I was already at it for 12-hours straight and next thing I knew it's already 3am in the morning.
One thing led to another, and I already found myself studying about technologies irrelevant to the internship's tech stack! During this time, I always wondered how to publish a full web application on the internet so I was able to fiddle around with docker, switched from Windows to Linux (because why not? 😂), studied web servers like NGINX, and even read articles about AWS.
When my mentor told me that we would be implementing a Serverless microservice architecture with AWS I was super excited upon hearing the news!
This was the time I utterly fell in love with DevOps.
Stage 4: Stability
My tech journey so far has been exhausting and hopefully far from over. Yes, it was quite tiresome and never was an easy ride however, I never thought about stopping. You see, I can be quite the persistent guy, and that’s what I’m doing with programming, too. May it be developing a web application or automating a certain job in CI/CD pipeline, I would never get tired of it!
I realize that this industry will make you feel like you're a complete beginner every now and then. Technology evolves at an exponential rate and who knows, the tech we have now would no longer be relevant a year or a couple of years later.
Additionally, getting Linkedin messages for job opportunities makes me blush every time for these messages are actually a big deal for me considering that I am still an undergrad. This made me realize that there are more valid credentials than that of a college diploma.
Having experienced full-stack development granted me a taste of what I decided to be my profession for the rest of my life. Although dealing with impostor syndrome every now and then can be a pain in the ass, but reliving how clueless I was before and assessing how far I have come somewhat does the trick. My curiosity led me to where I am now.
As of writing, I have now made a carpool tracker web application that follows a serverfull microservice architecture. This was when I got to be hands-on with docker and other Amazon web services such as ECS, EKS, and ECR. I am currently working on an ElectronJS project and studying container orchestration with Kubernetes.
Upskilling as early as now has been one of the best decisions of my life and I can't wait to learn new things in the future!
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