My Initial Thoughts

This has actually taken me so much longer than it should have to just sit down and pen down my story on this. I had to revisit the series of events amounting to more than a year now.

How It Started

In 2019/2020, I was working as a Process Engineer in an oil & gas consulting firm. Due to the nature of consulting firms and their project-based deliverables, the busyness of the workforce is dependent on the number of active projects that the company has secured at any given time. It isn't uncommon for project teams to have a little of "down" time in between projects or just certain months where project deliverables were on hold.

My situation around Feb 2020 was a little similar to that described above and I had about a week or two with little to no work at the time. As a result, I thought that it would have been useful to take that time to learn something new and useful. Programming had always been something that I had wanted to learn but could never really stuck to it. I tried it once during my university days to learn HTML & CSS from Codeacademy but that was rather short-lived. Even during my process engineering role, there was a lot of tasks that were carried out in Excel that would've benefitted from automation. I did attempt to dip my toes with a little scripting with Excel VBA via the recording macro tool and modifying the scripts from there.

The Discovery Process

In the beginning, I watched crash courses & tutorial videos on youtube on specific programming languages that explained the syntax, types and functions and thought that it was sufficient. Little did I know that it was only the beginning of the lifelong journey of learning tech. At the time when I was already consuming lots of content specifically on tech and programming, I stumbled across this particular video on Front End vs Back End development. That had sparked a particular interest in the Front End domain of development and I told myself let's just do this and see what happens. I soon found a roadmap for myself to stick to from the same Youtuber as I dug a little deeper into his content.

The Grind

Once I had a roadmap and curriculum laid out, I utilised any free time that I could find to go through the resources progressively.

• Before work
• On the commute to work
• After work
• Weekends
• Literally any time that I could carve out

During the process, Malaysia had declared a lockdown in the middle of March 2020 and we were all required to work from home. As businesses and their employees adapted to working online, I found myself in a situation where I didn't have to spend 2 hours on average a day commuting to and fro work. It soon became a daily routine for me where I would be focused on completing my daily to-dos that I would have set up the night before spaced out around the free time I had apart from my full-time employment.

Don't get me wrong here, I was very much loving the new learning process of tech, but I had never neglected my day job and was committed to doing the best work I could during my time there. It took me about 5 months into this journey before I sent out my first job application for a tech role, but the job hunting process would be a story for another day.

The Leap

After numerous applications, online assignment submissions, several on-site interviews and truly by God's grace and favour, I was offered my first ever tech role in a Fintech company followed by a second opportunity in a digital marketing agency a week later. I couldn't believe it myself at the time, that two companies actually saw potential in me despite not having the usual requirements from a conventional IT background. Throughout the whole process, I kept reminding myself of a quote I once heard from one of the guys in the tech industry:

"Companies are looking out for the potential growth in you, especially for junior positions and not what you are able to contribute now."

I kept drilling that motto into myself during my journey, constantly reminding myself that as long as I showcase the passion for the work and also the fact that I am able to learn and transition to new domains adaptively and quickly - this would in turn show the potential for growth. There was a lot of internal processing that took place during this time before I truly came to terms that I was going to hand in my resignation and take up one of the offers at hand.

Even if I wasn't fully equipped or prepared to take on the role, I am already spending so much time and effort outside of my full-time employment to learn and equip myself. Hence, it was a no brainer for me to accept one of the roles as I will then be able to continue doing all of that except that it'll also be part of my actual work this time around, plus I will also be compensated for it!

The Doubt

Imposter syndrome kicked in real quick as I was serving my notice period at my previous employment. I was truly excited and couldn't wait to begin my new role as a developer but doubt and fear kept creeping in.

"What if I won't be able to do the work I'm assigned and I end up a fluke?" "Will I be in a position to be asking for employment back at my old company?"

were just some of the legitimate thoughts that went through my mind during this period of time. This continued on even as I started my new role as a Front End Developer and kept coming back throughout the first couple of months there. You can read more about it in my following post where I intend to share more about how the transition process was for me as a non-techie entering the tech workforce.

Final Thoughts

It has been truly an amazing journey and experience that I am able to sit here now and pen down these thoughts. I've been always wanting to share my story in a more coherent and public manner rather than just through conversations with different ones in person. I recognise that this has been a God-given opportunity and all praise and adoration to Him truly. If this story has been fascinating or resonated with you in any way and you would like to hear more about it and my experience throughout, do feel free to reach out to me. I'd be more than happy to chat. Till the next post. See you all!