Six Months
Hello friend. It’s been a while hasn’t it? The last couple of months have been interesting with everything that’s going on in the world. I remember starting this journey at the very beginning of the pandemic. I left my first job out of college to pursue a career that fits me a little better. After getting some advice from my friends in the tech space, I was motivated to pursue my software engineering journey.
It’s been a solid year for me. I started off as technical associate for Infosys to get some kind of experience. Soon after, I landed a job with some of the most driven people I’ve ever had the pleasure of working with. As you know, I was a mechanical engineering student with an affinity for different art mediums, specifically photography. I’m also an avid gym goer so I was incredibly excited when the opportunity arose for me to work for Somble. They allow me to practice my engineering side while also taking some creative liberties from time to time. I just realized I never formally introduced the company I work for on this platform. Somble is an online health and wellness application that provides a home for instructors to host their businesses and grow their platform/audience.
I gotta say, this team is relentless. I’m remote and yet I still see how hard they grind. Even though I’m not directly part of growing the business, I’ve been exposed to their growth strategies. Shoutout to Dom and Ian because doing what they do is incredibly hard in my eyes… especially as someone that makes an effort to dodge the spotlight.
So far I’ve been doing frontend development for the team and as much as I’d like to say things have gotten easier, they haven’t. I’m still very much junior in code but senior in spirit lol. Our CTO, Matt, absolutely crushes it when it comes to debugging and pumping out new features. It’s actually super rewarding to see him do all of it since I’ve never really worked under a developer before. He is quite literally a huge source of my motivation and I often ask him how the hell he knows what’s going on with so many moving components.
Nonetheless, it’s these kinds of people that really help me stick to my career path. I’ve expressed interested in doing more fullstack stuff and they seem more than happy to ease me into that kind of responsibility. All of that with the hopes of taking some more load off of Matt. Although I don’t think we’ll be equals anytime soon (because he’s actually a beast with it), I’m doing my very best to hone my skills.
I’m six months into this role and some days I still get imposter syndrome, but you know what ? The one thing that gets me out of it 100% of the time is when I finally complete a feature or a new design. With each feature comes rounds of feedback that only help me become a better developer. So if you’re feeling imposter syndrome, I get it. We’re not all geniuses at this stuff and I don’t think anyone expects you to be. If you’re willing to learn and ask questions, you’ll grow and that’s probably the most important take away. Am I the best at what I do? No, BUT I’ve built out some sick features with my team. It’s rewarding to see the things that I’ve done and even more rewarding to be part of this team. I’m not very expressive on the job (I think) but if the team is reading this, thanks for taking a chance on me. Thanks for reading and I’ll catch you next time!
