A Topsy-Turvy Year in Tech and Life
One of the main reasons I enjoy being in tech is the ability to build things. There are literally bajillions of things to learn, creating a never-ending sea of knowledge. I love living like a student and experiencing the joy of learning something interesting every day.
Around the end of April last year, I quit my job. The reasons for my departure aren't something we'll discuss today. By May, I was curious about building something—whether it be a business, a product, or something of my own. So, I started learning JavaScript. One of the great things about web development tools is that you can get something up and running very quickly.
Within a week of learning, I created a fun website where you enter your name, and it writes a fun summer quote with your name, like “Hi Summer, blah blah blah.” It was simple. I created a JSON file with 50 quotes generated via ChatGPT and replaced the variable with the user’s name. It might sound simple or even super lame to you, but it was what I wanted. Then I built Pixifie. It’s still my baby, using the Python knowledge I acquired back in college. It might sound lame to you, but at that time, and even now, I feel proud of it. It actually did something pretty fun. I made a few more things just for fun. Somehow, I won a hackathon and got Rs 4000, which I used to buy an electric toothbrush (it’s the best purchase, to be honest).
I wasn’t happy at my job. I was mostly writing documents or doing things that weren’t building my knowledge. The tasks felt pretty useless to me due to some management changes. I won’t say I didn’t learn at my job—I did. But I would have learned more if I had spent those precious months coding and building stuff. I don’t blame anyone. Maybe I could have done things differently, been more proactive, or changed teams. Things might have gone differently, but I wouldn’t have been able to focus on my family’s health issues. Anyways, I was thirsty for building, for pure coding, and not doing tasks that felt like manual labor.
Looking back, I realize I learned a lot of things because of my job, so it wasn’t as bad as I think it was. Still, it wasn’t a good career move for me. I felt like I needed to restart everything, re-start being a software engineer, a fresh new start. But I didn’t feel this way until September, I guess. Okay, no more job talk.
In June, my brother’s health kept declining, so we had to make a decision. I had to do something; it was chronic. We ended up going to Delhi for optimal care. I spent most of the months flying between Delhi and Hyderabad. Fast forward to January this year, I came to the realization that I didn’t have a job or a business. Although I got better at building with React and TypeScript and could build much faster than before, it still wasn’t enough to get a job.
Then in February, I got a call from a recruiter—the first one I had to interview with in a few days. The role required me to move to a different city (Bangalore), but it was a good company, and the pay was awesome as well. I studied as much as I could, and the interview went pretty well. I messed up a few things, but it went pretty well.
In March, I finally went to my hometown after a year. Since we had all been in Delhi since last year, it was fun. It was Holi. During that time, I got a call for a screening test from Google. I thought I shouldn’t mess this up as it was an amazing opportunity. I took about three weeks, came back to Hyderabad, and started doing LeetCode regularly, pausing my Tailwind library project completely. Finally, the day for the screening round came. It went well; the interviewer was super nice, but I haven’t heard back from them.
Anyways, it’s finally June now, and I am really excited. I have gotten into LeetCode and system design. I have been studying design patterns, and whatever things I did back at my job make so much more sense. I have a controversial opinion that Kotlin/Java/C++ are object-oriented languages that make you a better developer. Now that I think about it, I realize I should have delved into them instead of going the MERN route(or maybe not, i was obsessed during that phase). I have been enjoying system design a lot; it sparks curiosity about how systems are built and scaled in the real world. It’s like all the pieces are finally coming together from everything I learned in the past.
Long story short, this month I am fully focusing on interviews and going all-in on my basics in system design. I will definitely miss building with React/TypeScript(especially tailwind), but I have paused it for now as it can be addicting. My priority is to get hired in June while exploring system design. The books I am reading are Designing Data-Intensive Applications and Head First Design Patterns—both are awesome.
My journey in tech has been topsy-turvy. My last achievement was getting into my dream company, but I feel a new arc of my life is beginning, and things will only go up from now. I have learned quite a few lessons during this time, and I hope to be like that grandma who makes videos on Linux even though she’s 70/80 years old.