5 min read
Flashback to April 6th, 2019 I'm a project engineer working at one of the largest general contractors in Seattle. Our clients are tech but our work definitely was not. This was the construction industry where the days are long, your clothes can get dirty, and the work is on site. You go where your project is and you keep working there til its done. For me it was cool building developments in downtown Seattle for high end tech clients because I lived downtown. That project ended in February though, so now its a one-hour bus ride each way to Redmond to work on some one of a kind construction project for yet another high end tech client.
On those hour long bus rides there were people working on computers, sleeping, or playing videogames. I'd typically be thinking of what my weekend plans are, what crisis I'm about to fix on site, or what I just heard Payroll say on this song I'm bumpin'. Most of the ride was on highway and before we'd get to my job site we'd drop off the majority of the bus at Microsoft. When I got to the job site people from Facebook, Microsoft, Amazon, Uber, and more would exit the bus with me. They'd go to get technical and I'd go to get building. After a week of this the weekend would come and I'd socialize.
Here's the thing about socializing as a mid-20's person in downtown Seattle. If you meet someone there your age... they're probably in tech. Even if not directly interested, you can become influenced by tech simply from osmosis. By this point I had already decided construction wasn't for me, but I didn't know what was next. I wanted to venture out on my own and do my own thing.
My entreprenurial spirit led me to learning Photoshop. I figured making flyers would be a cool hobby that could free me of the stresses that construction brought while also giving me a chance to gain capital. To elaborate, construction by nature is a stress industry. General contracting is about having the lowest price and the fastest speed. 2 principle bringers of stress. Mistakes could delay progress or coordination and sabatage the budget of a project so everyday was high stakes to some degree. The project engineer's job was to manage time, coordination, and pricing for multiple disciplines on the job site such as structural steel, paint, drywall, and electrical. Its essentially a smaller scoped project manager. Being in the project management world is being asked to be a generalist and that is where the disconnect began for me.
I noticed my interest was more into the details and methods. I loved getting to understand how mechanical systems worked or why waste pipes always are installed at an angle. Once I'd get into a subject and started enjoying it I'd have to shift attention to the painters who didn't show up to the site today or the electrical guys finding something in the preexisting building we didn't know about. The challenge was fun, engaging, and dynamic but... I wanted to do something more technical.
>By September 2019, I walked away from construction to do graphic design for myself. I saved up and ventured out to discover my own path, not determined by my civil engineering degree, but determined by my efforts.
For the better part of the next year I managed to get dozens of clients for logos, cover arts, flyers, and merchandise designs. It was a cool gig with its own set of pros and cons. Eventually people would ask for stuff outside of my wheelhouse and I'd accept the jobs because I was confident I could learn the skills.
Enter, web development. In 2020, I wanted to make an app but didn't have the expertise. Me and some others grouped together and created a game at called "What You Know", and I was in charge of the UI of it. Throughout that process when we experienced any challenges in handoff from design to engineering I wanted to make a direct impact and couldn't. So I decided to learn how to code.
By March 2021 I was in coding bootcamp and by October 2021 I had my first job as an associate software engineer. I love the experience of web development. Its similar to construction because I get to build usable things for society, but its unique because I can get as technical or specified as I'd like. There are still tradeoffs but if I want to specialize in a certain language or framework I can. My favorite part about this coding journey is that it is *still in progress.* I remember back when I wouldn't have been able to build this blog with Next.js ... shoot back then I didn't even know that javascript and JAVA were different lol. So cheers to this new part of my life and everything it brings with it.