Career Change!
People are scared of change in general and career change in particular. They feel like it’s an unnecessary risk, spending a lifetime building a career to then simply drop all that behind, just to start a new adventure; who does that?! Well, a few fearless souls do :D
I studied engineering (computer and electronic systems engineering), and when I was at college I had a bunch of different courses on electrics, programming, electronics, control and networking. I always hated programming, to me programming languages were like an alien language and I have never truly understood them. Despite that, I naturally fell in love with automation control (PLC precisely); even though it involved a little programming (ladder logic diagram) it actually made sense to me unlike the (Pascal and C ) I had been taught. And yes, we were taught Pascal and C in the twenty first century (in particularly 2008)!
Through the college years I was very interested in automation control; so I aimed all my study and training courses at getting better at it. I graduated with one career objective in mind; to be an automation engineer.
A few months after graduating I got a job of marketing officer at Eptikar IT Solutions and for the two months during this period I got to knew a little about web based applications programming and the languages my colleague developers use which were completely new to me. When the company was looking for a junior developer, I thought to my self: hmmm, why not? And that's was when I discovered the beauty of Ruby.
Ruby is a programming language(not a girl apparently) which we use a lot at Eptikar. I couldn't believe that programming could be this fun (no thanks to the Pascal and C from college). There were just nothing in common, in either simplicity or clarity.
A few weeks later I had a chance to work as an automation engineer at one of the top private companies in Sudan which is concerned with the food industry but I was irresolute about it, “Dude, are you out of your mind? there is nothing to be irresolute about !” that was everyone who I asked for advice's opinion, specially my father, but you have to know he is an electric engineer and was certainly biased towards engineering. He believes that programming is not actually a job, that any one can use the internet to learn a programming language and become a programmer. To be honest I actually don't blame him, that was my opinion too until I got my hands dirty with programming and realized that anyone can learn a programming language and make a software but a very few will make a good software.
So I had to make a decision about being a developer or an automation engineer, automation is kind of boring but its semi guaranteed job because not a lot of people do it, unlike programming which is fun but many people do that?! I told myself you are young fresh graduate if you want to make a gamble it’s now or never.
Yes I chose to gamble and now am a developer, but the bet isn't being a programmer, but to be one of the few good ones ;)
On the next blog post i would like to share my experiment of becoming a developer and the learning process I've been through, so to be continued .....