Job change

I changed my job from an Automation Engineer to a Front-end Engineer.

Why front-end? I don't know, actually.

I didn't know what exactly I wanted to be. I was considering front-end, back-end, or going into the data side: data engineer, business intelligence engineer, data scientist, machine learning engineer. The problem at that time was that there were too many options and I couldn't decide on one.

Until I found an opportunity of a 3-month part-time bootcamp that focuses on front-end. I wasn't choosing front-end per se. I chose the front-end group because I saw that the project was interesting. It was to create a quiz app to find out how earth-friendly you are. That's very interesting. I didn't have any idea how to create a quiz app. Moreover, the coaches were quite interesting. They were quite well-known in the industry. I believed it would be good to know these people.

Maybe it's fate. So after finishing that, I started looking for a front-end job. And I found some, and ended up here as a front-end engineer.

Talked to my junior about it. He asked, "There are so many computer science graduates. There are so many bootcamp graduates. Aren't you worried that the job market is getting saturated?" Yes, of course that's the truth. At that time, I told him, "Then you just need to be good. There are a lot of mediocre engineers, and few good ones. You just need to be the good one."

Of course, it's easy to say that. I aim to be the good one. I hope I will be able to achieve that.

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Work so far has been quite fun. I like learning these things that I'm learning. I like creating things and seeing my creation being used by people and helping them. I like working with like-minded people. These people I'm working with (my colleagues, my project manager, my clients) are all passionate about creating website / web app that will truly help people. And we aim for very high standard. We are not satisfied with the as-long-as-it-works quality. And we went the extra mile to ensure this high standards.

It kinda reminded me to the old days, when one of my engineer colleagues told the marketing person, "It works, right?" when he finished the demo kit full of wires. Yes it works, but it's not presentable. From the engineer's point of view, he only cares about the functionality. From the marketing's point of view, the presentation matters, too.

That was the mindset of a mediocre engineer. I agreed with him. I was a mediocre engineer.

From now on, I hope to grow and become a better person.