“Never do I feel more alive when I'm coding.”
That was what I thought to myself while writing Bash scripts in the TV industry back in 2022.
It was a stark realisation I could not ignore. A turning point in my life.
It was then, after a nine-year career in film and television as an Assistant Editor that took me to Los Angeles, Adelaide, Sydney, and London, and a four-year career as a Digital Marketing Copywriter in Beijing and Taipei, I knew it was time for a change. It was time to dive head-first into software development.
How life has tempered me.
Life is filled with turning points. It can be like a rollercoaster, suddenly veering you in unexpected directions, or it can be as stable as sponge cake. Change is inevitable. Either you can let it come to you, or be ahead of the curve and embrace it. Life for me has wavered between both extremes.
Moving to a new city or country usually starts with intense chaos followed by progressive stability. I subjected myself to this 6 times.
But ‘why’ you might ask?
Love. Exploration. Challenge.
All of the above. To me it was about conquering the next frontier of life, but it also satisfied my innate desire for life-long learning. Whether it be learning a new environment, a new career, the bizarre banking systems in China and the U.K., Mandarin Chinese and Chinese culture, or the art of copywriting.
Skills are important to any software engineer, but their long-term success lies in their ability to constantly learn and manage change.
Like a glassblower works molten glass into shape, or a blacksmith tempers steel into a sword, life and its many challenges have sharpened me into a learning machine.
And the best learning has all happened after graduating from University.
What have my careers taught me?
On the surface, working in film and television have taught me the ins and outs of video production. Bit rates, codecs, container formats, aspect ratios, frame sizes, working with images etc. But most of all it taught me how to be a professional. How to get work completed on time, how to talk to stakeholders, manage expectations, and work in a team.
Freelancing in London had me visit over twenty media production companies within a year, adapt to varied production environments, and fulfil unique requirements of each client.
When I landed my first job as a copywriter in Beijing, having no prior professional experience, I was quick to read all I could, learning how to sell with emotion using as few words as possible. The real challenge though was adapting to Chinese culture and spending my lunch break everyday learning Chinese with my tutor via WeChat video.
The biggest thing I learned while living in Beijing and Taipei was that there is really no right and wrong. It’s okay to do things done one way in the east and have them done in complete opposite in the west, because they all make sense within their own cultural context. This is true for countries and for companies.
Moving forward. What are my ambitions over the next few years?
I want to spend the next one to two years becoming a master at frontend development.
This means finding full-time work and spending a year or more honing my craft in this area.
From years three to five I want to move onto backend development and become a full stack engineer so I can build fully-functional applications from the ground up.
At year six onwards I want to move into either games, AI, or blockchain development.
What skills do I have?
Over the last few years I have consumed Youtube videos, courses on Udemy and Code Academy, and worked on algorithm and data structure problems on LeetCode, Codewars and AlgoExpert.
This has translated into experience building apps with HTML, CSS, TypeScript, React.js, and Node.js.