Reflections (2020)

2020 has without a doubt, been a year to remember. I went from watching my home country burn, to the beginning of a cultural revolution across the ocean and to top it off, a virus making waves around the world. On a personal level, it has really been a year to evaluate where I was and eventually deciding it was time to leave my job.

Rewinding back to 2018, I began looking for an internship having put less priority on my bachelor's research in favour of gaining some real-world development experience. It was in March that through my lab professor that I joined a small start-up called Repro. My first year took me right into the commotion of it all, working through an UI overhaul of our dashboard and then to building an SDK for the Web. I learnt an immense amount during this time and gained a lot of confidence in my own skills. By the time March came around again, I had already made significant contributions to the projects and felt like I was treated like a full-time engineer. In the following months, I found myself in more leadership positions, even checking up on my team members and suggesting to them what to do.

At this time, my graduation was coming up and it was time to cement my first position. Having seen the company grow from 50 or so people to over 150 and eventually surpassing 200, I joined having felt like I was in a very secure position where I wouldn't even be treated as a fresh graduate. In the few months after obtaining my work visa however, my mindset began to shift. I began to feel like my managers were really pushing me to more leadership positions and while it wouldn't be a bad experience in any way, I wanted to focus on developing on my technical skills. When I approached my managers about it, I was disappointed in the lack of any real solution or pivot in the direction. By the start of 2020, I was really questioning my future at the company and felt the breaking point drawing near.

I wasn't happy where I was. By April, I had voiced my concerns multiple times to no avail and even come across issues that were, in my opinion, very unprofessionally handled. I wanted to leave but the incredibly uncertain future as COVID-19 started to shut the world down was very daunting. It wasn't until a senior member told me that he doesn't believe that the company could provide the environment I was looking for, that I knew that I took the plunge.

Job hunting proved to be as difficult as I had imagined. Although I was confident in my own abilities, it's always hard to know how much of it was overinflated ego. Whilst I believe that I am a very capable engineer that exceeded the typical level of someone at my age which deterred me from looking at new graduate position, on paper, I lacked the years of experience that companies are drawn to for any other position. A whole month passed by with many applications not getting through the initial screening which was further delayed by the slowdown in hiring due to the pandemic. Eventually, I found myself looking at two promising companies that lead down very differing paths.

The first of the two was a software engineering position AI start-up in Tokyo that was similar to what I had already been working while the other, was an rather secretive yet established American company, with the catch that I would be stepping away from development and into a consulting role. Initially, I was very drawn to this second option as even though I wouldn't be able to be as hands on, the company offered a very high level environment working with complex systems and a path to working in the US. It almost felt like too good of an opportunity to pass up but I was hesitant, as I wasn't sure if consulting was the right path for me and to do it in a secondary language was certainly a very intimidating task.

Unfortunately, in the end, the decision was made for me as the pandemic prevented me to access the much-needed resources to start at my consulting position. Although I was disappointed, I felt somewhat relieved at the same time. The company hires elite engineers around the world and also new graduates from top American universities such as MIT. Despite not ending up there, I felt reassured having made it through the entire screening process, that I measured up to the same calibre as many of these graduates and I can move on in a position I am much more comfortable in.

Looking back now, I can now see have much I've grown a lot in the past few years. I am incredibly grateful to all the people that I worked with at Repro for giving me such a huge boost right at the start of my career. It may be a bit cliché to say but I have gained an immense amount of perspective in the work of a software engineer and I wouldn't be who I am without it. I do believe I have made decisions for the better and now that they have been made, I look forward to dive right back into development and to really propel myself to the next level.