At the age of 17, after becoming familiar with web development, my dream career was to become a web developer. I specifically wanted to work for Nike, but I also wanted to start out at an agency. Yet, as time passed by, I slowly started to forget that dream and focused on academia. In college, there was a spike of interest to software development and working in a FAANG company. Eventually, I followed the crowd, too, wanting to become a software engineer. The truth is, Computer Science is exhausting. It’s not that I regret studying it, but given the courses were theory-heavy, they did not interest me whatsoever.
The Journey
I entered UC Santa Cruz at the age of 21 in 2021, and I sought out new opportunities to be involved with web development, but didn’t find any in the first year. I helped out an organization make a website for their event, but I didn’t feel accomplished. I then joined a larger non-profit organization called Tech4Good @ UCSC, and that changed my life. I led small teams of undergraduate students to build an Angular web app for the research team. Surely these projects took a while to build because everyone, including the leads, are quite new to this. Personally, I was a very shy and reserved co-lead at the first year, but the co-lead who was truly leading was phenomenal. He was bright, smart, and incredibly extrovert. He ran the show, but I learned a thing or two from him.
After he graduated in 2023, I gained the confidence to lead the team, and help out any other teams, if needed. It did feel as if I was micro-managing, which I know is annoying and wished I never did that, but I began to enjoy the process of building an app with a team. I enjoyed it very much because it’s technology and concepts I am in love with: web.
Around this time, a new club was forming called Blueprint, and I needed to be part of that. Thankfully I knew the person who formed the club, and I was able to assist their club. For the first quarter, me and few other people ran an event every week to help students learn technologies like Restful APIs, HTML, React, etc. But, this did not do so well given how new we were. So, that idea had to rest. The next few quarters, I was helping out a development team if any problems rose. I asked Crystal at one point: “So, what am I?”. To our surprise, we didn’t even know because I was simply helping out with anything that required attention. The title of “Vice President of Technology” was open, so Crystal simply bestowed that title to me. I will admit I did not do as much as I wish I could have done, but it was an amazing experience that Crystal and the team gave to me.
This Moment
Once again, the dream of working as a web developer with a team came back. At my current job, I am a web developer, but I do not have a small team such as the ones in Blueprint or Tech4Good. I love my job, though. It’s a very small company where everyone gets to know each other, and my coworkers are very close to me. My boss is the best, and I am in debt to their kindness for allowing me to work there while I was in school when I needed to. If it wasn’t for them, I would have been financially in trouble.
WordCampUS
At my time in WordCamp, I saw the amount of developers, bloggers, and people who are in the web development industry, and many of them have a passion of what they are doing. That is what I want in life. Sadly, living a fruitful life requires money hence the reason I tried to follow a software engineering life. I can’t admit that I am good enough for software engineering, but for web, even if I don’t know something, I would gladly dig deeper into it. So seeing all these people, listening to the speakers, just makes me want to follow this dream that I never followed.
On the night of the second day of the conference, I began to mass apply to web agencies in the hope that one out of hundreds would give me a shot. I focus on the Bay Area, but I’ll go anywhere in California who accepts me. Honestly, I don’t know how much money these agencies pay their employees.
True Roadblocks
As I was speaking to the company sponsors during the Sponsor Hall at the conference, I was asking if any of them were hiring. To be fair, it is a little awkward to ask that question when they are there to sell their services. Plus, I was representing my company, so it made it even more awkward. Also, I love the company that I work for that I will find solutions for their company. I am being sponsored by them, after all, so I was just doing my job, but I am also looking to branch out to new opportunities. Most of them said no. Some gave me their contact information to talk to, but none were hiring. I wasn’t really expecting for any of the companies to be interested in hiring, so that’s fine.
What really makes me sad are the people that want to brush you away with the assumption that you are not worthy to work there. Of course, it’s an assumption, but their facial expressions, body language, and tone says it all. I suppose a reason be due to not giving an extensive introduction myself. Still, most of the people that I spoke to were quit relaxing about the question, and if they didn’t know, they would help and be encouraging. Ah, these are observations post-caffeine rush.
One other roadblock is connecting! I myself am an introvert, and as crazy as it sounds, I have a social battery that gets drained quickly. I managed to connect to a couple of people at the conference, but when seeking for job opportunities, finding the right person to talk to and using the right words are crucial. That I lack into, unless I am nerding out about JavaScript or Web Dev!
Final Thoughts
There are a lot of things that I want to do in life, but there is that lack of motivation that I hold. Nonetheless, meeting certain people who are on the same situation as me, and seeing how enthusiastic they are for development truly motivates me. I tend to overthink situations or only want the finishing product but never the events that occur in the middle. This is why I have and continue to fail. All goes one step at a time, there is no rush to it. After all, if I can’t enjoy what I do, then what’s the point? One day at a time.
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