My journey from First IT Entry Position to Software Engineer
Anyone can become a software engineer all you need is the desire. The desire is not just “to be able to code”, but the desire to make your head think and resist the natural desire of all living beings to stay in their comfort zone.
In today’s article, I’ll start with my favorite energetic song which motivates me.
It’s just amazing.
Let the negative energy lead us into the positive which everyone needs to achieve their daily goals.
Information technology is a broad field. It’s also a very exciting career path, brimming with opportunities for growth. You get to play with the latest advancements in one of the fastest-growing fields out there. The IT industry offers quick employment, opportunities in every sector, multiple career paths, high salaries, and it’s easy to enter this industry without a college degree.
Although a career in IT is exciting, it often requires considerable time and effort to get into. You want to be very clear on why you want to pursue an IT career or else your motivation will burn quickly and you’ll give up.
In my previous article, I had discussed various kinds of stuff about Information technology and also shared my journey in this field.
For more read here,
Today in this article I'll discuss why I want to switch my Network Engineer to Software Engineer and also share with you some facts about developments as well. Before starting to discuss the journey from Network Engineer to Software Engineer, First I’ll investigate why people change their professional careers and later discusses differences between these two different technologies Network Engineering and software engineering.
Reasons Change Professional Careers in Working Life:
Some people stay in the same job or field of work for their entire lives. Many people, however, may decide to change careers and do something different. Changing a career is done based on personal and social requirements.
When it comes to changing careers, there are some reasons behind it which motivator to change career. Most people want a better work-life balance.
The changing nature of work means that a career change often involves transferring your skills and experiences to a completely different career or workplace.
Research studies statistics show that the average worker holds upwards of 10 different jobs before the age of 50, and this number is set to rise even further in upcoming decades.
There are a couple of different ways people commonly define a career change. In this article, I examine those definitions and also reasons as per my knowledge. There are a few different ways for different people based on their philosophies.
To some people, a career change is a change from working for one employer to working for another. This may be especially true if you have been working for a particular company for several years. Switching to a different company, even within the same type of business, can be thought of as a career change.
To some people, a career change is to move to a different or more advanced position within the same line of work. And other people a career change as a move from one type of work to another.
A career change may bring some change in society if followed and accepted the need of time. People get inspired by the new developments and they change their path to avail the opportunities, improper homework and improper knowledge usually cause them great loss and it brings a negative impact in a society in terms of less or no output by that person.
Change in career and social impact are two diverse and different subject matters, change in career is a personal passion and you can have many passionate thoughts together or as you grow in your life.
While in the past skills and professions were learned for life, education and training are now becoming an ongoing part of a more dynamic working style. This is made possible with the help of new learning opportunities, such as online courses.
There are many reasons why people want to change careers. But there are some reasons why people change careers;
- Seeking higher pay
- Better benefits and perks
- Relocation to a different geographic area
- Career advancement
- Choosing a less stressful job
- Escaping an incompetent or negative boss
- Changing career focus
- Better work-life balance
- Reorganization at their company
- Layoff due to duplication of their job resulting from a merger or acquisition
- More interesting work
- Better work schedule
- Skills and abilities didn’t fit the job
- Lack of recognition for accomplishments
- Outsourcing of job function
- The company moved to a new location
- Better alignment between personal values and organizational priorities
Relative Article;
My Philosophy to Switch Network to Software Engineer:
For the last ten years, I’ve been working as a “ Network Engineer ” in various different co-operate environments. Now, I am working to switch network engineering to web development engineering. I’ve some of my reasons behind it.
- It is important to choose the right professional career, that makes me happy, satisfied, and fulfills my needs, and also better balance work-life where I’ll have time for everyone and everything.
- IT Help Support is the first IT entry professional career. Unlike most areas of IT, which call for extremely specialized knowledge, the help desk requires professionals to be familiar, at least in a broad sense, with a large number of technologies. The first steps you take as you launch your career in the technology field play a role in establishing the professional path you ultimately take. It’s also necessary to build a solid foundation of skills and experience early on so you can prepare yourself for additional responsibilities and advancement opportunities down the road.
- I thought Frontend development is wicked cool and interesting and coding is challenging and I’ll get to work on a variety of different interesting things. Frond is a great way to start a career in software development before expanding into multiple different technology roles.
Whatever your reasons for changing careers, one of the best ways to achieve your goals is to create a career change action plan to help keep you accountable and on track toward career change success.Changing career always need much wisdom to avoid hardship or total failure.
“When we change our career, we are choosing short-term discomfort over long-term regret.”
Lastly, remember that switching careers is a process and is hard work.
“It takes intention,” said Durand. “It takes effort.
Network Engineer V/S Software Engineer:
Network and software engineering are two different fields and even both fields' roles are varied differently from each other. As up my experiences and knowledge, Both fields are a very vast branch with an immense amount of opportunities available to grow.
Network engineer: A network engineer plans designs and deploys networks and network infrastructure, in addition to managing and monitoring those networks and network data. Network engineers also handle network maintenance and troubleshoot day-to-day problems. In addition, networking positions can require skills in different categories, including cybersecurity, operations, automation, and unified communications.
Software engineer: A software engineer designs, tests and deploys software systems, as opposed to individual applications, and is often in charge of overseeing the overall project. The goal of software engineering is to improve efficiency in software development. Similar to network engineers, software engineering roles can encompass different concentration areas, such as development, maintenance, and management.
A good network engineer must know nearly everything there is in IT, including programming with the introduction of the latest trends like automation, etc. A good software engineer doesn’t need to know everything there is to know in IT. This translates to thousands of pages more to study and updates for a network engineer.
The best network gurus are also programmers. From my personal experience, I always enjoyed fixing and found networking to take some of that same skill set to troubleshoot network-related issues. At the end of the day, networking is usually troubleshooting and designing around problems.
You should pursue what you really “like” and are comfortable doing it. If it is networking or software engineering then go for it. The only drawback is that once you get into software development from networking, your networking profile is of no use, you are a fresher in the development domain.
Further, learn the necessary languages and work around with the software required for the profile you’re targeting.
Software Development Types:
After learning the fundamentals of programming, There are two particular areas of web development. Frontend and backend are two of the most used terms in software development.
If you’re interested in a web development career, it’s important to differentiate between these two subspecialties. This article will help you make an informed decision about your future career track and job search.
Front End Development:
Front-end development is a fantastic career path in software development technology because it is the first entry career in software engineer career. This career has a massive opportunity ahead as the world becomes more technology-driven.
Last few years, front-end developers are in high demand. It is indeed the talk of the town and one of the most rewarding career options since its inception.
My journey :
Frontend development is a wicked cool career and can be just as hard to learn. The most important part is to have a plan. Layout everything you want to do and why. From there you can break that plan down into smaller parts.
This may not sound like a lot of experience, but I’ll start off with my journey, including what went wrong along the way. Anyway! after deciding that I wanted to get into front-end development, The most common first question that came to mind was “ What do I learn?”.
After doing some research and asking from some of my developer friends who already working, I ended up making my learning path based on what most entry-level front end developer positions:
There are a lot of great roadmaps for Frontend Development, but I like following this roadmap which I shared here below. This roadmap is good for newbie developers.
The second most important thing is to do is find quality resources. There are plenty of great books and online video tutorials on YouTube and Udemy that will get you skilled up.
Lastly, work on promoting your skills through personal projects and personal branding. Projects give recruiters and companies something to gauge your skill level with.
Sometimes, the best way to learn new skills is to work under more knowledgeable people, and that’s what a junior front-end developer or an intern does. Of course, the pay is less, but you need fewer qualifications. Besides, you’ll be learning from more experienced people, and that’s always beneficial.
Self-Taught Programmer:
The best approach to learning is doing so in a systematic way; that means structuring the learning process and using techniques proven to be effective in retaining information. Self-taught is one best effective techniques that most people like to applied to learn anything.
Self-taught means to educate yourself or to learn something without the help of a teacher. You mentioned that if we are using videos, books then how is self-teaching. You are right but the point is that you need some resources to learn something and it can be a book, the internet, video tutorials as you mentioned. Even the teacher that teaches you uses some of these resources. You are provided with books in schools and colleges right.
So self-taught means you are using the available resources to expand your knowledge without the help of any coach or teacher. You face problems, you find the solutions yourself. You have the self-motivation to learn something. You wish to expand your knowledge.
I think self-teaching or self-study is the best choice when you really want to learn something. You understand your weaknesses and you try to solve them yourself. So, next time a problem comes, you have the required knowledge and experience of how to solve it. I think everyone should do self-learning as it is also very important!
I am a self-taught programmer and I believe anyone who has a passion for programming can also sacrifice their time to it. There are many programming websites you could start with, learn the basics then go all the way up and start building small applications you will find yourself eventually becoming a guru.
Final Thoughts:
I strongly feel that the IT industry is a good field for many people and shall keep growing at the expected rate and shall bring change in the way you do things in your day-to-day life. Consider what changes IT & technology have brought to your life.
From the very first moment, technology offered me the chance to learn something new every day, to strengthen skills I already had, and to find peace of mind in a consistent workflow. Working in IT also offered a sense of community stronger than any I’d seen before. Everyone in tech has a story, most are willing to share it, and many are interested in yours as well.
At the end of the day, it’s always about what you love to do rather than what is easy to do. Every IT different expert and engineer has his/her own journey and learning curve. You can only learn from others’ journeys.
Learn as much as you can. Keep learning No matter how tangential your primary duties are, the more you understand who and what you support makes you better.
I hope these lines are OK for you to understand. I’d just like to say I really enjoyed writing this, and it makes me really happy to have been finally able to give something back to the incredibly supportive IT Tech experts community everywhere.
I know that there are a lot of articles like this, But I hope you will enjoy it and this post helps you to find the right way to achieve your dreams.
verily good deeds do away with evil deeds.
Always start your day by renewing your intention that everything you do for yourself and your community, whether it be your acts of worship or daily chores. It all has to be merely for the sake of Allah (SWT) and Also, I ask Allah (SWT) to make my work dedicated only to him and forgiveness from Allah ( SWT), if I have got anything wrong. It is He who is the Hearing, the knowing.
Finally, İ pray Allah to benefit those who read this article and others, grant me truthfulness in what I say and do, preserve my thoughts and my pen from deviation and guide me in all my affairs.
And all praise and thanks are due to Allah, without Whose help and guidance nothing can be accomplished. May Allah bless and protect you and your faith Ameen.
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