Hard lessons from 4 years in various software companies

I have been in various types of companies from early start-up, mid-start-up, and big company. And doing some freelance jobs. with front-end,back-end and also a little bit touching the tech cloud. It is a very exciting journey and yet challenging and also painful.

How I felt to be Software Developer in the industry

My honest opinion when becoming a Software Developer is I don’t have a life like my friends do who are pursuing different careers like Lawyer, Accountant, Doctor, Teacher.

Why you asked ? The thing is I really like to learn something new everyday, and by spending 2 hours or more to create something or reinvent the wheel to be good at new language and understand it better. And yes I did that after my working hours. and usually my work everyday includes Refactoring, reading other people’s code, writing tests, getting stuck by stupid commas or semicolons, or by exported and unexported fields.

If you really like those kinds of things, spending most of your time in front of the computer screen and no other life than eating, sleeping, playing games, working out, then go for it. But many people pursue this career because many of us are paid relatively high compared to the average worker. That is also cool, and I believe they also realized what prized to be paid when becoming someone like me.

`Don't code if you don't like it.`

I have heard this word and this is also happening to me when knowing a lot of stack of technologies.

So please try to create something with your hands and then summarize it by yourself. Do you like it ? Ya I like it, that’s why I wrote this article :).

The pain for stuck too long

Many of us always find a way to solve the problem and also many of us are stuck for too long to solve some silly syntax problem.

If you got stuck and finding that your code doesn’t work like you expected. What are you going to do? Ask yourself.

If you can’t find an answer then I believe it’s time for you to stop it. Not giving up then go for it. This also happens to me sometimes and it is killing me. There was a time when I stuck for about 3 hours looking at the code that doesn’t work. I debug it one one line and to another line which is going to be repetitive jobs. it turns out that the code is not the problem here, it was the folder path that I’m putting it. That sucksss.

That kind of problem that you can’t avoid it. It will happen sometimes whether like it or not and of course with different kinds of stuck stories.

Saying yes all the time for keeping the job

There was a time when I worked at some organization that you needed to do what they told you to do, and just do it and give them the result. They don’t care about the process, they don’t care about the tradeoff. What they want is a result.

That is good because I was an inexperienced developer so I say yes all the time even though I feel like I don’t know what to do to deliver what they want. I was googling and hoping that somebody out there had a similar problem like me and solved it. Sometimes I find what I was looking for and sometimes I don’t.

The real pain is what I’m going to do to keep my job and solve this problem. The simple thing I did is study like hell trying something again and again until I found the answer and yes that will cost you 12 - 14 hours of work a day. from 06:00 am to 10:00 pm. ya of course with some delay short break I’m not a robot.

Afraid to lose the job is something that we are scared of. It is a normal thing, especially when you have debt :) or responsibility or having your self imagined with no food and water and shelter. But you should also say no when the time is correct.

My experience I said yes when I really know what I’m doing, I said no and asked for more time to finish the job. A simple thing but hard to implement.

The feeling when you have successfully create or solve something

Oh yess,, this feeling is the best feeling when you successfully create or solve a problem. You can’t buy this one, because this feeling will come to you when you have been really troubled before accomplishing the job. I couldn’t describe it but I felt really great and alive.

If you love solving problem then try to help others in the community like (stack-overflow)[https://stackoverflow.com] and see if you can help somebody with your expertise and see if you got that feeling when somebody approve your answer for and got upvoted for the first time :).

Share your code !!!. This is what I enjoyed the most. Sharing the code and giving your own work to others, Yes I didn’t get paid for this But I enjoy it so I did it. NOTE : not my company or organization work by your own idea and work in my spare time.

The power of creator

• I feel like I hold some super power. You can create anything solve any kind of problem wit my hands.
• I love my creation is viewed and used by someone else
• I love that my creation is useful for others
• I love that what I did is giving an impact directly to the organization that I’m working with.
• I love that my code that I wrote by my hands easy to modify or change and also readable by my fellow programmers

until this time I’m really happy for what I’ve become and what I created. And I wanted to learn more and more and something drives me to do that and I really like it.