My brief path of being a Software Engineer 🔥

Hey everyone! My name is Nick, and I’m a Junior Software Engineer @ OCTO Australia. I totally randomly bumped into dev.to, and after a brief browsing around , community vibe made me register account almost instantly, keep up a good work!

Usually I post on all random sources: Medium, my personal blog and so on. This time, let’s give a try to dev.to!

My career path was very interesting: while I was studying in a high school in Europe, there was absolutely nothing pushing myself to go towards Software Engineering or IT in general. Not going to lie, I learned hot keys on Windows machine when I was 18. My English knowledge was limited to a set of very primitive phrases such as “London is a capital of great Britain” and “Who is on duty today”. Career path wasn’t obvious, so I didn’t care much. Things got even worse very soon.

Shortly after graduation I became a student in a local technical university on a faculty of Software Development. It was a random choice, since there was nothing I was particularly interested. My first programming languages were Delphi and C++. From the beginning, I started to get excited a little by little with fascinating world of programming. I found like-minded friends and we even started to study together on personal projects. However it didn’t last long: I started to struggle with material, and instead of providing of support, my tutors just asked me to think about changing the course for something different. My enjoyment shortly converted to anger, and then - despair. I couldn’t believe my only spark of enthusiasm towards technology was deemed so fast…

…and I didn’t believe it. I felt that I had to continue even when my own teachers recommended to give up and transfer the faculty.

One day I made a choice. A choice to move. Not a university or city, but a country. Australia looked like a great place in my case to start my post-teenage life from a new page. After a couple of months of intense English preparation and working hard for my flight ticket - I was already crossing an Indian Ocean for my new life.

Changing environment was like a breath of a fresh air. New language, people, culture. It was amazing. However, first couple of years were unbelievably hard for settlement: I had to manage university, career and always lift my spirit even during the toughest moments of my life. But the change was incredible.

My new university gave back an excitement about development. I faced new teachers that supported me on every step, proving that anyone can program - and I did. Presentations, conferences, competitions, it all suddenly started to grow a base for successful career in IT. New friends involved me in technical meetups in offices of Google and Atlasssian, where I met great people who eventually helped me with internships. The dream came true. I could feel it. Every single bit.

Software Engineering became a constant part of my life: I started to work on multiple projects, learn new technologies and share/teach my uni friends. I could easily start developing at 11:00PM and finish at 5:00AM next day without any feeling of time, how great was it. My wardrobe was full of Google t-shirts considering I was attending meetups and conferences almost every week.

Finding a job for international graduate was a real problem, however my luck and amount of experience gave me an opportunity in amazing French, Australian-based company, where people believed in my skills and enthusiasm. And cheers for that!

And now it has been two years since my career in Software Engineering. I had a chance to work on infinite number of stacks with numerous technologies: from front-end, to back-end. From Big Data to dev-ops and Machine Learning. And the best part is that we are all like-mined in our passion towards craftsmanship and considering development as an art.

In conclusion of this brief/random post:

Everyone can start programming. You just need to push it very hard to achieve your dreams. Want to learn some new language? Start some small project. And push it until you feel confident. I have a lot of friends who switched from various fields such as Art or Business to Information Technology. Involve yourself in a community of people who are passionate about development. And if you are here, reading this post - congratulations! You are on a right track!