And then dreams started to come true

My recent years are full of hard-work, self improvement, health improvement, self control and fighting with every obstacle, which I could noticed.

In this article I’ll approach the topic of getting job as a software developer but in a way of self improvement. In later articles I’ll come back to strict tech history. Let’s get started…

This is the fourth article from my story about achieving one of my biggest dream — to become a software developer. If you want to know previous ones, here they are:

First story:

Second story:

Third story:

… was when I was still on the first year at the university. I needed money and also I was very eager to dive into the big water of commercial programming.

So I’ve started looking for a job. For this moment I had two real jobs. One when I’ve just finished 18 — work on the production line of one of the biggest tire producent (physical work, very hard but quite well paid) and second when I needed money to buy new phone — counting specie in money sorting company (also physical work and hard as well, oh, and they paid like nothing).

I had problems with searching. Then, an opportunity came in — my father knew a guy, and this guy had a brother, that brother on the other hand had big company, which was producing software for public sector. This looked like something big for me… So I’ve dressed up in suit and went to the meeting with someone from HR.

That guy just arranged meeting for me, nothing else. I couldn’t count on special treatment or something like that. Interview went quite well. I was questioned about experience, which I didn’t have then, skills (I’ve already done some online courses, so I knew something and I knew few things from university), points of interest, etc. As I said it went quite well, but I wasn’t glad of it. Anyway I got this job and I’ve started right away.

Software developing at that company was mainly focused on delivering web apps. At that time I wasn’t focused on anything particular. I knew few programming languages like C++, C#, Java and JavaScript but i wasn’t an expert in any of these. I was assigned to the team which was composed of seven developers and was focused on big web app.

Project was focused on technologies with I didn’t know or didn’t know as well as needed (React + Redux + JS). So I was going to work to sit and learn all the day. Then I was coming back to home and I was learning again for the work or for the university. It was very hard, I was getting up when it was dark and I was coming back to home when it was dark…

When you don’t have very precise goal at this point, you’ll most probably fail in best case. To make matters worse I was earning so crappy salary, that I had money to pay for public communication and food only. No savings, no own pleasures, nothing… I was questioning myself “Why you’re doing this? For what?”.

After a few moths of hard learning and getting familiar with enormous commercial project I’ve started to work along with the developers assigned to this project. To be precise — I tried to do so. Jumping straight into so big project may be a good way to learn many new things, but it also requires commitment at least proportional. Commitment was already in place, but something didn’t work — like in happens in life.

So I was struggling and struggling. I was doing tasks which were assigned to me but not so fast as my leader expected. When problem appeared I was first trying to solve it myself and when not successful I was asking other devs for help. If i had to summarize my feelings and overall effects in one sentence I would probably use metaphor:

My metaphor ended when leader gave me different task. I had to create automation tests. It was very easy for me. Too easy… I was resigned with the awareness of failure and unfulfilled ambitions. But I didn’t say a thing and for few moths I was doing all the same all the time.

Susan Nolen-Hoeksema, the chair of the department of psychology at Yale University and the author of Women Who Think Too Much: How to Break Free of Overthinking and Reclaim Your Life wrote:

But she also added:

Another psychologist and author of “The Worry Trick: How Your Brain Tricks You into Expecting the Worst and What You Can Do About It.” David Carbonell says:

So at that time I was also struggling with myself making harm to my brain. But I clung to this approach, which described Bruce Hubbard, the director of the Cognitive Health Group and an adjunct assistant professor of psychology and education at Columbia University:

And that was it, I interpreted this situation as another lesson, time to gain new skills by myself (after work unfortunately, but at least) and just another period of time, when I had to climb instead of glance off. With that in mind I survived and holidays came in. At that point I’ve already screwed up the university so I took three moths of vacations.

Before I took vacations I talked with CTO and I agreed with him that I would return and it’s not a problem. I came back and it was ok, but I’ve been delegated to another team, the team of testers. It was another blow for me, because I knew what does it mean. Once again it was very hard to accept that and once again it was very hard to deal with my demons.

Once again I was writing automation tests, but not all the time. I was also just testing manually. Salary wasn’t great, but bigger than the intern’s. But still, it wasn’t it. It wasn’t this job, which I was dreaming about, for which I’ve put so much effort, for which I was fighting all the time with myself.

I worked as a tester for one year. For one year I was overwhelming my demons. At this year I didn’t attend to the university, I had one year off. Because of that I had more money for myself and I’ve managed to make some savings, not much maybe, but it was starting point at least.

Everyday after work I was learning, practising and polishing my developer skills. I’ve done dozens of courses, read dozens of books, wrote hundreds lines of code. I’ve started daily reading developer news, watching meetings and speeches. I was grabbing everything which seemed to have good impact for my dream.

Another tight time. But somehow I survived again…

After year working as an automation tester I took one month of free time to on a holidays. I was settled up with CTO about this and about my coming back. I had great time by the way. I was on a great holidays with my girlfriend in the Taiwan for two weeks…

When I came back and wanted to get back to work CTO told me that “there’s not enough work for me etc. etc.”. In general he wanted me to be part time worker with very low amount of working time. Very low working time = very low salary… And he wanted me to be manual tester for some very boring project. That was it… One hour later I’ve set up talk with CEO of the company.

I talked with CEO. I presented my dreams, what I want to do, my skills and so on. I got my first job as a real developer! One month later I was assigned to big project based on JS + React + Redux, so same stack which I was working with as an intern. But this time it was different and I knew what to do. It wasn’t easy, but I handled that.

At the same time I was making another try, to continue my studies. Like always it was very hard, but I’ve managed to finish first year. But it can’t be that easy — I wasn’t accepted on the second year, because there was not enough places at the university…

Project came to the end and I was assigned for creating and maintaining big websites build with Wordpress, PHP, JS, jQuery, SASS and CSS. I worked with it for several months until this December. I left that company two weeks ago and now I have very big possibilities. Also I’m working part time in cool start-up and also part time in software company responsible for delivering electronic signatures. I’m also doing freelancer’s projects (around one or two in a week).

Next article will be about brighter side — my current situation. And once again it will not be focused on the tech. Also, I’m preparing article focused on the tech side of my little success, so anyone who will be interested in such topic is welcome here. Stay tuned and thank you for reading my not perfect articles!

A.S.

Next article from this series:

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