Evolving into a Software Developer

The sparks of my interest in IT

Some people are naturally more drawn to technology than others.

I wouldn’t say I was one of those nerdy kids who liked to pick a machine, take it apart to see how it works, and then assemble all the pieces again in hopes it would still work 😬. But my brother (10 years older than me) is definitely that person! He was born an Engineer, always loving to tinker and understand how things work ⚙️.

I think the closest thing I had to that when I was little, was loving to play with Legos. But of course, I could only play with the DUPLO ones, because playing with any of the other ones was ABSOLUTELY OUT OF QUESTION (they were my brother’s, as you can imagine).

Anyhow…

Learning to Type

Despite our difference, I think that, ever since I was able to use a computer, my brother has been instigating me to be a more proficient user of technologies.

One of the first things I think he suggested I learn was Typing, i.e. writing with every finger and without looking at the keyboard. He gave me some websites where I could learn but he also took the time to explain to me some of the rules. He also taught me some keyboard shortcuts, to be able to more quickly Copy and Paste, among other common actions.
And although I just noticed I don’t write with EVERY finger, I can still write and execute actions pretty fast and without looking at the keyboard. This frees me up to focus exactly on what I want to do.

Learning to code? Not yet…

At a certain point, my brother did a programming course and got a few books regarding that subject. Not long after, he started suggesting I should also learn to program. He showed me the enormous books he had, all enthusiastic about the idea, but I wasn’t convinced. On one side, I thought “if programming is done on a computer and there are sites to learn everything, does it make sense to learn this from a book?” On the other side, the mere size of the books was scary, especially considering my interest wasn’t yet very strong.

Result: I nodded and accepted the books he was lending to me, and proceeded to ignore them for a long time until I returned them to him.

Rrrrr you ready now?

Eventually, I got to university (in 2011) to do a degree in… Biology! This field has nothing, apparently, to do with programming. In the first two years, I don’t think I did or learned anything related to IT. However, in the third year, I had a small course in R. It was my first contact with a programming language. It didn’t go terribly well but I also didn’t gain antibodies regarding the subject.

Then I started my work of collecting data at a national level regarding the Portuguese mammalian carnivores. In order to do something meaningful with this data, I actually had to use R. With lots of help from my supervisor Márcia Barbosa, I was able to feed data to the program, which digested it and spat out models of the distribution of the species I was studying. I found this ability to create a script to automatically generate information interesting.

Because of this experience and some software that we used during my Master’s, I discovered the existence of Bioinformatics. However, I also found, during my work, that I do not particularly enjoy working with statistics, so Bioinformatics wasn’t the ideal option to follow in my future.

Why use MS Word when you can use LaTeX?

This was another one of my brother’s suggestions to me. He would say that MS Word worked fine to do simple small documents but, to do something like writing my thesis, something more powerful and that gave more control would be best. He suggested, of course, I should use LaTeX. Besides being a more powerful tool to manage the automatic formatting, the positioning of images, indexing, bibliography, etc., it was a good way to exercise my programming muscles 💪.

This time I took the bait! I used LaTeX and I was pretty happy with it. The only trouble I found was trying to get feedback from my supervisors because they didn’t use LaTeX and so they had to review the file in PDF format, which wasn’t as easy as in Word.

An online course will probably be enough

After deciding to end my career in Biology (in 2017), I got the idea of starting to seriously learn something in the IT area.

Since someone informed me Python was a popular language and it might be one of the easiest to learn, I did some lessons focused on this language to start learning how to program. This was good to confirm I enjoyed this kind of thing.

During this process, I found lots of great learning resources, including the freeCodeCamp, W3Schools, CodeAcademy, Coursera, Udemy.

I was starting to think of working as a freelance programmer (through freelancing platforms like Upwork).

After investigating a little bit, I read that Web Development was an area with a lot of work and not too hard to start on. Since I liked to set my creative monster free (although I’m definitely not an artist) and this area allowed for that, I decided this was the way to go. I surfed the Web to find the best (and cheapest) course to prepare me for the Web Development job market and I found one that seemed compatible with my needs in Udemy. This course included basic design principles and tools, HTML, CSS, jQuery, PHP, MySQL, etc., and lots of practical exercises and projects. I spent about two months doing the first portion of this course (learned the design, HTML, and CSS parts).

By the beginning of the following year I actually needed a job and my father “needed” some help in our family’s company, and the course was put on hold.

Officially SWitCHing to IT

I ended up spending more than 6 months doing some odd jobs (window dressing, warehouse reorganization, payroll management, tour guide, etc.), again a little bit lost in my professional path.

But, in the summer of 2018, my father came to me with an idea. He had a friend who had a friend who had done this course in Software Development and it had changed their life!

The course was called SWitCH and it was a requalification program for graduates with a background in any field. He was convinced this was the solution for my professional life. He knew I (didn’t dis)like technology, it was not too expensive (he would lend me the necessary money), it was in Porto and it even included a guaranteed paid internship as part of the package deal!

After thinking about this for a short while, I ended up accepting the idea. I applied and I got in! The classes started in October 2018 and ended in June 2019. It was a super practical course (just the way I like it)! When I finished it, I felt that maybe with just a little mentoring, I wasn’t going to have too much trouble when starting a job in the area.

Of course, during this time, my brother made some more suggestions for my professional future, like studying Machine Learning and such because THAT was truly the future in the IT world and it would probably be more valued than areas like Web Development (the main focus of the course I was doing). Again, my distaste for the Statistical realm prevented me from exploring that area for the time being xD.

Little sister, want to join the dark side?!

After finishing the intense academic phase of SWitCH I found I was going to be “on vacation” for around 2 months (until the beginning of the internship)! What to do with all this time?! I should rest, right? Do nothing maybe? Nope! Of course not! 😅

My brother had this project going on to create the prototype for the Bubble Taxi, an “electrical hydrofoil craft to carry passengers across different water environments”. In this project, they needed someone to create the prototype of the UI for the Taxi’s dashboard. Of course, my dear brother remembered his dear sister, who had just (barely) learned how to create a UI in her course. It was a great opportunity for both parties! For me to gain some “real world” practical experience (and monies) and for the project to get someone not too expensive to do the work 🤑.

It was an intense summer but I ended up really learning a lot! I am super grateful to my brother for the opportunity and to my boyfriend for the support he gave me on many levels! 🥰

My internship and (spoiler!) first official job in the IT world

Came September and I started my 9-month internship. It was at a start-up called Weezie, whose focus was the creation and management of a platform for planning fiber-optic networks. I chose this internship because:

• I liked the position: front-end developer,
• the focus of the company was in a field that, for me, was ethically neutral,
• it was SUPER close to home. 🏘

It was a great experience! As it is common in start-ups, I was able to do lots of different things and have a real impact and influence on how things were done. The management also recognized my efforts and it made me feel valued within the company.

Things were even going well enough that, when I finished my internship period, I got hired and evolved into a full-stack position, giving me the opportunity to learn and grasp even more of the project.

Of course, it wasn’t all roses. I think few (or any) companies have just good things. But I wouldn’t trade that experience for anything. It gave me a breadth of knowledge and power I was probably never going to get in a “big, very evolved” company.

However, it came to a point where I felt I wasn’t able to evolve more. I needed to get that knowledge of how things are done in the “big, very evolved” companies where every process is well-defined and follows the industry’s highest standards (supposedly).

Finding the next job

Before I left Weezie I started exploring the job market. I went through many first interviews (especially for consulting companies) and a few recruitment processes from start to finish. I was super happy I got a proposal in most of them but then I had to choose…

The first one I chose was super interesting (one of the next Portuguese unicorns) and things evolved to a point where I even delivered the non-renewal letter at Weezie, in May 2021.

In mid-June, I found myself in kind of a pickle 😳. I had done the rookie mistake of not asking for the minute of the contract before saying yes. I was jobless and looking at a contract that had some clauses I was definitely not comfortable with (and the company was not willing to adjust). I struggled a lot trying to decide what to do. I ended deciding I was not going to accept it, because, thankfully, this job market was brimming with opportunities.

So there I went to do a few more recruitment processes 😞. I ended up learning a lot (technically and otherwise) going through these processes and then I got an opportunity that was far greater than what I was looking at before.

My super amazing current job

Since August 2021, I’ve been working as a Front-end developer at Kununu (part of the New Work group), a platform for workplace insights and information about corporate culture and salary in the DACH (german-speaking) job market.

First of all, I have to say I love the concept: giving power to the employees, applicants, and trainees in the job market.

Second of all, I loooove the benefits 😍:

• great pay (my salary is way higher than any of the proposals I had received previously),
• extra vacations,
• health ensurance, obviously,
• lots of respect and flexibility for a super work-life balance (including remote work, of course),
• very nice equipments and office,
• great connection between all hierarchical levels of the company (from the newbie to the CEO of the company group),
• discounts in many places,
• health, legal and other consulting services,
• lots of parties, food, drinks and goodies,
• etc…

And super important: I love the people I’m working with! I had a great onboarding! Everybody is super welcoming and things are very well-structured, so you can get in the groove as soon as possible.

I also have time to learn and do things thoughtfully and according to the industry and the company’s standards.

Who knows what the future holds

For now, I hope the future holds a long time at New Work because, as you can see, I love a lot of things about the company and it has mountains of opportunities to learn things both in my current position as well as in other areas (several possibilities of vertical and/or horizontal evolution).

I hope you enjoyed or at least, that I didn’t bore you to death with this trip down memory lane 🥱, and I will soon(ish) be posting more about the details of some of these experiences 😉.