Last week you showed me where you code. This week I want to know how you ended up there in the first place, and whether you're planning to stay.
I'll go first. Grab a snack, mine has a plot twist šæ
The gadget kid
I've loved computers and gadgets for as long as I can remember. If there was a new device in the house, I wanted to know how it worked. So growing up, getting into tech felt natural. Why wouldn't I spend my life doing the thing I loved? In high school, I chose ICT as my elective and joined the school robotics club. We even made it to a regional robotics competition and came third! At that point, my future felt pretty obvious.
Our third-place robot, built with LEGO Mindstorms. Sadly, LEGO has since discontinued Mindstorms, and I would have loved to keep using it for hobby projects.
Plot twist: I studied Development Planning
Then it was time for university, and life had other plans. Development Planning was my second choice, and my parents didn't want me leaving our city for my bachelor's. So that's where I ended up, spending four years studying something I had no real interest in.
If you've never heard of it, a lot of Development Planning is about how communities and cities grow: where roads, schools, hospitals and housing should go, and how to make places work better for the people living in them.
But tech found me anyway
Somewhere in the middle of that degree, we were introduced to GIS (Geographic Information Systems), and it was the coolest thing in the whole course for me. GIS is software that lets you put data on a map and analyse it. You stack layers like roads, rivers, buildings and population on top of each other, and suddenly you can answer real questions. Where is the best place to build a new school? Which areas are most likely to flood? Which neighbourhoods are too far from a hospital? For the first time in my degree, I was using technology to solve real problems, and I was hooked.
That led me down a rabbit hole into smart cities and smart buildings. A smart city uses sensors, data and connected devices to run things better, like traffic lights that adjust to real traffic, bins that tell the council when they're full, and buses that share their live location. Smart buildings do the same on a smaller scale, controlling lighting, heating and energy use based on who's actually in the room. It was the perfect mix of the two worlds I was stuck between.
Teaching myself on the side
So I started teaching myself. HTML, then CSS, then JavaScript. Lots of tutorials, lots of broken layouts, and lots of console errors I didn't understand yet. I built some cool things just because I could, and every time something worked, it reminded me how much I loved this.
The question that changed everything
As I got older, one question kept coming back to me: do I really want to spend the rest of my life doing a job I don't even like?
This time, nobody else was making the decision for me. So I made it myself and went for a Master's in Computer Science, a conversion course made for people coming from non-tech degrees.
So, am I staying?
Yes. If anything, the detour made me more sure. I know what it feels like to spend years on something you don't love, and I'm not going back. One day I'd love to bring my two worlds together and build tech for the buildings and cities I used to study.
I'm asking you because tech feels different right now. Junior roles feel harder to get, AI is changing what our jobs look like, and a lot of people are wondering if they should stay or try something else. I think those conversations are worth having out loud.
Now it's your turn
How did you end up in tech?
Are you planning to stay, or are you thinking about moving into something else?
If you've ever left tech or come back to it, what made you decide?
And if you're studying or working in something you don't love right now, let this be your sign that it's never too late to switch. I'd love to hear your stories. :)š
Top comments (18)
After reading your story, it reminded me that we briefly mention about Lego Mindstorm back early in 2026 in the article on why I became a developer.
Why did you become a Developer?
I was about to write my story here, but realized that it was already answered lol. Might do a remaster later next year, but idk yet.
Thanks for sharing though :D
I remember that thread! I told you about the RISE software and you told me about your uncle building a Rubikās cube solver with Lego Mindstorms. Funny enough, I still have Rubikās cubes on my desk, so maybe I need a solver too š And now that Mindstorms is discontinued, maybe itās finally time I try Arduino like you suggested. You should definitely do the remaster, Iād love to read it.
Will prob actually do it on the DEV one year anniversary for me! Look forward to it and looking forward on the Arduino as well (if your planning on sharing ofc)
Yes, Iāll definitely share it! Once I finish my Masters next year, Iām planning to start playing around with Arduino as a hobby. Your one year anniversary on DEV is in January, right? Thatās not far at all, Iāll be looking out for the remaster!
Yep! I am also planning on the DEVengers announcement as well along with that (I think it's on the same day as my one year).
Speaking of which, what do you think of joining us?
cc: @georgekobaidze @hemapriya_kanagala @dj29
I'd love to join! How do i get started?
I sent an invite to your email. You should see it there either in Junk or in the primary inbox.
For the posts under the org itself, I would say post anything that is high quality and is simple to read like the post you read from @dj29 on C!
I am planning on creating a discord server in the near future, so that you can contact me there, though soon lol
Awesome !
Welcome to the team, Maame š
Thank you Hemapriya! Excited to join :)
I got into this field out of curiosity and a sense that my other possible career directions lacked creativity and agency.
It's been a long and windy journey but I'm in it for the long haul.
Iām so glad your long and windy journey led you here, because it gave so many of us a place to learn and share. Hereās to the long haul! ļ¼ļæ£ļø¶ļæ£ļ¼āć
I also followed an irregular path just like you: I studied business and finance at University after which I started my drone filming company. I realized during my time building out my drone media services that I had all these ideas to build software around the services offered. That's when I enrolled into a coding bootcamp. Those 9 weeks of learning web development were intense but have changed my life as I then went on to work professionally as a software engineer and still am to this day!
Thanks so much for sharing this, Julien! A drone filming company is such a cool starting point. I love that the idea to code came from seeing problems in your own business, thatās the best kind of motivation
No one can stop one from being interested and doing these things as a hobby. There are limits. In Eswatini, you cannot get Lego Mindstorms, SparkFun, or PCBway stuff delivered to your doorstep. You cannot even go to town and purchase these things. I don't know what hobbyists do here, I used to collect broken appliances. It is hard to make anything with broken stuff. I went to the USA and thought I made it when I started buying parts. It was like heaven. Then I got stuck on a build and approached the physics department for help. They basically threw me into a tinkerers heaven... a physics lab of nothing but parts. They said I could use whatever I wanted. I was kind of scared, I was so unsure what to use I used nothing, returning to my room to continue with what I had. I did not want to steal. I am back in Eswatini. It is dry as heck. I have my arduino UNO around here some place... it never made it into a permanent build. I threw out my expensive propellers, and a couple of other parts when I moved. I hate that, especially when I get bored. If they open a hobbyist shop and I get money, I am getting back into it. I do want kids ā lol. How did I get in? Curiosity and money. Can't do much without those two.
You are pretty but am only asking girls out in 2027 for no real reason, I am adding you to the list of those that got away. Lol.
Hi Phumelela, thank you for sharing this! The physics lab story made me laugh. Being given a whole room of parts and walking away with nothing because you didnāt want to feel like you were stealing is such an honest reaction.
Itās sad that parts are so hard to get in Eswatini. It really shows how much access decides who gets to tinker and build things. I hope a hobbyist shop opens there soon, and that your Arduino UNO finally makes it into a permanent build!
The GIS rabbit hole is such a good origin story ā that moment of "wait, this software answers real questions" is exactly what hooks people, and it's usually not the thing they set out to do.
Answering your questions honestly:
How I ended up in tech: I didn't plan it either. I started in a completely different field, got bored faster than I expected, and the thing that pulled me over was the same as your GIS moment ā realising that the work I was enjoying on the side was actually the work I wanted to be paid for. The switch was less a decision than a slow admission.
Am I staying? Yes, but for a slightly different reason than a few years ago. It's not that I'm sure tech is stable ā it clearly isn't, and your point about junior roles is correct. It's that the part I actually like (understanding how things break, and building something that doesn't) seems to survive every shift in the stack. The tools change; the problem-solving doesn't.
On the detour: Development Planning plus CS isn't a detour, it's a combination that most pure-CS people don't have. The smart buildings space is genuinely short of people who can read both a site plan and a schema. That's a real advantage, not a consolation prize.
Good luck with the master's ā you sound like someone who's already done the hard part.
Thank you so much for this, Oleksandr! āThe switch was less a decision than a slow admissionā is so relatable. Thatās exactly how it felt for me too.
I really like your point that the tools change but the problem-solving doesnāt. Thatās a good way to think about staying in tech, especially with how uncertain things feel right now for junior roles.
And thank you for what you said about Development Planning plus CS. I used to see it as a detour, but youāre right, being able to understand both the planning side and the tech side is something I want to lean into more.
Good luck with JSONex Lab too!
Funny how GIS ended up being the turning point when it wasn't even what you went to university for. And combining that background with CS to work on smart cities sounds genuinely interesting. Hope you get to build something in that space!
Thank you, Hanzla! It really is funny how things work out. Smart cities is definitely a space Iād love to build in one day, so Iām hoping I get the chance. Thanks for reading!
I like how your story shows that getting into tech doesn't always mean taking a straight path. Sometimes the thing that pulls you in is something you discover along the way. I'm curious whether the mix of Development Planning and Computer Science will eventually lead you toward building solutions for cities and buildings.
Iām getting curious myself about combining the two. Seeing how tech can solve real problems in cities and buildings makes me want to explore it more, so who knows, that might be where I end up. Thanks for reading, Mohsen!
I got into tech from my love for puzzles, logical games, things like chess lol. Then the curiosity about computers sprung up, learning how things work. Its funny since i was a kid i always imagined being the one to build an AI as a buddy, now im living in an AI age,and I'll stay as long as its fun.
Thatās such a cool story, Michael! Imagining building an AI buddy as a kid and now actually living in the AI age is wild. Puzzles and chess make so much sense too, coding really is one big puzzle sometimes.
Started writing code aged 7 (back in 1983), fell in love with it, and never really stopped š
Wow Jon, coding at 7 is amazing! Not many people find what they love that early, so thatās really special. Glad it stuck with you all these years :)
I studied Geophysics (not computer science) at FUTO and self-taught programming to go parallel with my education.
Today, I use data to build machine learning agents that interpret groundwater geoelectrical surveys in the Niger Delta.
So, what's your perspective on this confluence of tech and the built environment? What have you learned through your own work with GIS that the majority of developers don't understand?
Going from Geophysics to ML agents that read groundwater surveys in the Niger Delta is such a cool path, Daniel! Thatās exactly the kind of work that excites me, tech solving a real problem on the ground.
I think the built environment is one of the biggest opportunities in tech. Cities and buildings produce so much data, but very few people understand both sides.
The biggest thing GIS taught me is that location is never just two numbers. Every point on a map has people, land use, history and rules attached to it, and the map is often different from whatās actually on the ground. Most developers treat location as coordinates in a database, but the real answers are in the context around it. Planning also taught me to think in decades, because you canāt roll back a road the way you roll back a deploy.
Iād love to explore that combination more and see where it takes me.