Do you know those people who have known very well what they want to do, what career they are going to follow? Yeah, I was not one of them. When I was younger I wanted to be an astronomer, an oceanographer, a biologist, a psychologist - this last one I even went to college for a period.
But if there was one thing I was sure I did NOT want, it was being a teacher. In my family there are many teachers, including my mother, and knowing their daily lives, I thought teaching children was not for me. But by circumstances of life I ended up taking guess what? Pedagogy. Yes, I became a teacher.
I graduated in pedagogy and worked as a teacher for a few years, but I did not love doing it, at least not all the time. After some time, teaching began to make no more sense to me and I went looking for new challenges. I chose a totally different area and changed my focus to technology.
About 5 years ago, I left classrooms and started working in technology companies. In that time I was able to work a little in each area of these companies: commercial, marketing, processes, even writing some code from time to time and in the latest years I worked as Product Owner / Manager. I was the interface between development teams and stakeholders, analyzed the quality and specifications of the software, scoped tasks and prioritized deliveries. But I had that feeling that something was missing, you know?. So I decided to leave a stable career and change again. Now here I am, again, on this beautiful and confusing journey to become a developer.
But why developer?
There are some reasons that made me start this journey. First, I always liked the technical side a lot and felt a bit disappointed that I could not fix things by myself. I am a doer and having to wait for the development team with their infinite demands frustrated me and made me anxious. I had the ideas but not the knowledge to apply them.
Another reason is that this is a career that gives you many possibilities, you can choose between different areas in programming (frontend, backend, fullstack) and also various work environments (corporations, startups, consulting, freelance, agencies). As you may have already noticed by reading this article, I get bored easily, so working in an area that is constantly changing and that is always challenging makes me motivated.
It also has the satisfaction of creating something that can still be useful to others: softwares transform and make life easier for people and directly or indirectly we end up making a difference for those who use them.
And last but not least, I ended up finding that programming is really fun. Writing code is a creative process,there are several ways to do the same thing and different tools and languages. Besides the sense of accomplishment when you can solve a very complicated problem and your code runs without any error is inexplicable.
I have a long way to go, but do we have to start from somewhere right ?! Sometimes we have to take a few steps back or to the side, to reach our true goal. Starting over does not mean that you have failed, rather it is a way of recognizing that you might be following the wrong way and finally decided to take another path and face new challenges. Being happy is a matter of choice, find a purpose and let go of what no longer serves you.
What’s this blog about?
I still do not have much experience as a programmer, but I hope I can share what I already know and what I will learn through this blog and help others who are willing to learn from my experiences and challenges. Here I intend to talk about career, technology, personal development and well, maybe other things about life.
I hope you enjoy the content I will write and give me feedback. To follow more of my journey, follow me on instagram .
What about you, did you always know what you wanted to do, or did you change careers? Tell me here, I’d love to know :)