My anniversary to being a "professional" software engineer: A 5-years check-in.

A couple weeks, 5 years ago I started my first job as programmer, developer, software engineer, etc. It was my first (paid) job and I was very very excited to finally making some money (we were struggling within my family to make ends meet).

With my first salary I bought pizza for my father and my brother. The value of the pizza was purely symbolic, but alas, I was really happy: finally I was going to be able to provide for them.  

My first salary was not that good even for mexican standards: 200 USD a month. But it came with some benefits: I didn't have to go to the office everyday as I had to still go to college.  I'm not even trying to justify that salary, it was a bad one but at the same time it taught me that I needed to work on my negotiation skills. Not too long after that I received a raise and was able to get a 500-USD-a-month salary.

It is obvious (for me lul) to say that after that first salary things have gotten better for me (and my salary), I now work remote for a US-based company which has allowed me to afford a better life. But I'm not here to try to slap you in the face with dollar bills. I'm writing this post to share with y'all very specific pieces of learning I've acquired throughout these 5 years.

Beware of the people that sell easy solutions.

I was just starting my first job, and I had so much to learn. Everyone was saying that you could be rich by talking such and such courses (who?, the guys selling the courses, of course!). I drank the kool-aid hard-time. "You are going to make 2x, 10x". "Change your life by taking this course".

Of course, generally speaking, a tech job is a nice way to climb up the income ladder and I'm the example of that. But something I learned along the way it's that we all must beware of the easy-solution seller. It's very hard to become rich just by taking certain number of courses, and it's generally very hard to become rich anyways. It generally doesn't happen from one day to another and most of the times it takes several generationes in a family.

Also, to optimize for obscenes amounts of money doesn't always mean to optimize for the things you want in life. I think I see a lot of this on this industry: a bunch of people with a lot of money but feeling empty inside. This is something I address a bit in the next section.

Going back to courses and learning, that learning should be a structural part of your life. I take pleasure by expanding knowledge in my mind and use it to understand better my surroundings. Building knowledge is about experience too, so there's such thing as the ultimate course you'll be taking in your lifetime.  Take it at your own pace, you're the sole owner of your life.

For me to dignify my life, I need to care about my work.  

As I hinted above, I had to still go to college while at my first job. So, as you would expect, my mind was kind of in a split situation. I was only in the job to do what I was told to do, basically. It's not that I wasn't putting the best of me into the job, but when your body and your mind are tired, it's very difficult to achieve your full potential.  I had yet to learn what to be focused is about. Besides, I actually was focused at doing my job because I wanted money. And money is fine. The point is, I wanted the money to survive; I didn't want the money to build a life. I wanted the money to be able to make it to next week. That's a different very different approach.

Times goes by, I didn't drop school but I was *almost* over with most of the courses I had to take. I had made my way into another team within the company and along with it my salary increased. I was in a comfortable position but then I felt the need to have an impact at my work.

An "impact" was the word I had heard from my surroundings, but nowadays I call it other way: My work should be a way to give meaning to my life, to dignify my humanity. Make no mistake, as I mentioned, this thought didn't bubble up until I was in a point of  life where I could care about giving meaning to it. If I'm supposed to spend a third of my life doing a job, I should be doing something I care about.

It is a bussiness the company your work for, the goal of the business may not be aligned with your own goals.

Looking for my "impact" I came to the realization of the this part's title. I realized that my job wasn't doing much in terms of optimizing for the life I wanted. It was nobody's fault but it was my responsibility to step up and do something. First I tried to be very broad in the work I did in order to find something meaningful and interesting for me, but at the end it wasn't about doing more work. It was a sad realization: it was about changing the work.

By this time, COVID hit and it was time for a change. And a change I did. I said goodbye to the friends I made and I accepted an offer to work for an bigger startup. I landed a position where I could have much more "impact" in my work given the size of this new company .

At this new adventure, I was not going to be broad but rather deep: my goal was to specialize myself into doing a better specific job. It gave a lot of knowledget but then, once again, I realized it wasn't what I wanted. I wanted to work on certain topics or areas in the company, but the company needed me to do an specific job different from what I mentioned.

Again, there was nobody to blame. It was just my goals weren't aligned with the goals of the company. This had me thinking: What is it that I can do in order to find a job that suits my economical needs and at the same time gave me the opportunity to dignify my life?

After one year, I decided to leave the company and find a new adventure. And an adventure I found. This was a new challenge in my life that implied going out of a lot of comfort zones. In this company I found something I didn't have in the past: the trust to control my work. Of course, I still need to respond to customer's needs, but let me tell you, it's a nice improvement!

Take care of your body.

The one and only one perk I thank the most I've earned over the past of the years is the ability to do my work from home. A remote position has allowed me to be able to spend more time with my familiy and to spend a lot less time chasing the bus, waiting long lines in the subway and to waste time in the bathroom instead of the traffic.

But since the lockdown started my health started to take a toll and that was reflected on many things in my body and mind. After having some blood tests being done I realized I was on time to make a change in my lifestile. Now I'm working towards that. I'm lucky and grateful to say that it's something I can fix if I can work hard, but also, it's one of those things I should have worried about earlier.

Conclusions.

Do these conclusions of mine have to resonate with your experience? I don't think so, you don't even have to agree with.  Again, these are conclusions I reached after failing and having given it some thought. Nevertheless, I do think there are, in these paragraphs, some truisms that I wasn't able to see at the beginning of my career. Sometimes different experiences set you at similar paths in life. Sometimes you don't need to live it to see it as an obvious/expected behavior.

What's it going to be like in the next 5 years? Stay tunned for what's next! I'll be very happy to share it once again with you'll.  

Thank you for reading.