If I Started Software Engineering Again What Would I Change?

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Hey folks, we are going to YouTube comments for a question for today and the viewer was asking if I could go back and do it all again, what would I do or what would I do differently? And this is with respect to uh getting into the software engineering space. And uh I have made videos on this before. There's at this point in time around 300 videos on the channel. So, some of this content ends up getting um you know, regurgitated a little bit, but that's fine. I'm happy to to kind of talk through it. I realize that trying to sift through 300 vlogs is not going to be easy. So, my take on this is that I actually would not change much. and I'll I'll kind of explain my journey uh the parts that I think worked really well and you can kind of see how that might fit for you.

Uh and I just want to remind people that there is no oneizefits-all. Um you might hear what I have to say and you're like absolutely not. I would never do that. Totally cool. Uh does not mean you can't be successful. There are so many paths to success um in any career here. So, uh, the reason I'm saying this and I'm truly passionate about conveying this message. If you go to my main channel, Dev Leader, there is a podcast. And every single guest that I bring on the podcast, I tell them before we record, I say the first thing that I'm going to have you do is walk through your career journey because I want you to show to the audience and be part of this, you know, the uh the people that I interview to share that every journey is going to look different. There's career switchers, there's people that took a traditional path, there's people that you name it, there's everything.

And I just want to keep sharing that message. So this is my journey and this is going to be the things that I would do again and why. So um first of all when I started programming you know it wasn't like I was in elementary school or like you know I was born with a keyboard in my hand or something but I started when I was around 14 in high school. I had a programming class. Um but I I fell in love with it. Right. So for me it was something that I did really really enjoy and I once I learned how to do it. I was like I like to do it. I'm going to do it in my spare time. That's not already you can tell that's not going to be the case for everyone. So in high school for 4 years in high school before university I spent a lot of time programming but I wasn't building anything like serious.

I wasn't building trying to build the next Facebook. I was making like textbased role- playinging games uh that were completely unplayable, right? Like I wasn't into web development. I was just basically making things. I was making stuff that already existed, trying to make my own versions of them, but I just liked writing code and spent a lot of time doing it. So, I wouldn't change that part. I think that that's a really helpful thing. Uh I am fortunate that I do really enjoy programming. Again, some people just won't. Sorry. Um, but it was something that I enjoy and I think that I gained a lot just from spending time trying to build things. Uh, for me, I started in VB6, so Visual Basic 6, then to VisualBasic.NET, and then into C. But C didn't start until university. So, I had four years of programming in VB6 and VB.NET before C and um in university.

So I decided to go for computer engineering. This might be something I change a little bit. Um I went for computer engineering because I thought that I was going to get into hardware. Um I didn't I definitely got into software. So maybe I would go for a software engineering program. But the thing that I picked in university was um a co-op program. So that means that we had forced internships between our academic semesters. Uh so my point here is that I would 100% recommend to everyone find internships if you can. If you can get into a program in school that offers internships, absolutely do that. Internships are incredible. Internships are real work experience. Um, my experience in school made me realize that I don't love school. I would still do it again because what I didn't realize is that school taught me how I learn.

And because it was an engineering program at the University of Wateroo, it basically reinforced uh doing analysis which in engineering I feel like is one of the most important things. While I was going through the classes, I did not like doing math. I didn't like doing physics. I didn't like basically everything. But every time I had an internship, I had a reminder. And I had six internships. So I had two full years of work experience by the time I graduated. Every internship, I reminded myself, this is exactly why I'm doing this because I love it. Don't like school, love my internships. So, if you can get into something that offers internships, please do that. Like I said, for me, um, what that looked like was school for like 4 months, then internship for 4 months. Every other semester for 5 years straight, except at the end there was two school semesters back toback.

So, I didn't have a break for 5 years. This is not this is not a 4-week boot camp. Um, by the way, I'm saying university. I realize that there's a lot of US viewers. Uh, people in the US use college and university synonymously. Um, in Canada at least, college and university are both post-secary institutions. But, uh, they are slightly different. You get degrees at um, sorry. Yeah, you get a degree at university and a diploma. How does that work? in college, they're different. Um, and for me, and I've made videos on this, some people won't care. That's totally fine. But I went specifically to university in an accredited engineering program because if I wanted to become a professional engineer in Canada, you must go to university in an accredited program. You cannot become a professional engineer without doing that. These people need to move over. Jeez, the transport truck was blocking too much.

That was close. Um, I didn't end up becoming a professional engineer. You have to take an ethics test. You have to get work experience under have another professional engineer sign off on it. So, to this day, it's like what? Um, so it almost been like 15 years. Almost 15 years since I graduated. Um, no, 13 years. Sorry, my math is terrible. Um, and like I'm still not a professional engineer as it would be dictated by standards in Canada, but you don't really need that in software engineering. It's just something that I wanted to do. Um, and no, I don't regret it. I would do the same thing. I would go to an accredited degree program because now I have the option. If I ever wanted to, I still have the option. Um, if that's changed and the standards have changed and all of that, I would just adjust based on that.

But the thing that I would not change is going to postsecary education with uh internships. Would not change a thing about that. Um, and to put that into perspective, okay, I just want you to to see this. I 100% understand that the job market is tough right now without no disagreement, right? I know this because I haven't like I've been at Microsoft and I haven't had headcount to be able to hire and grow my teams for 5 years. Okay, I know I do a lot of content on social media. I talk with a lot of people. I know it's challenging, but I want you to hear what I have to say about this as well from my side. It wasn't trivial to go get a job. If you hear what I just said, I had like the only reason I had my first in like programming job was because I was an intern.

I was at a school that had an internship program that like set you up with companies. You had to interview with them, but they like put you into a system like a matchmaking system. Okay? I had already been programming for 4 years. This wasn't something where I decided I want to get into it. I'm going to go to a 4-week boot camp. I'm not trying to pick on boot camps, by the way. It's just a lot of people have this mindset where it's like I'm just going to switch. Um, this is already four years. Then I had five years of school. During that time, six internships took place. This is nine years of software development and two full years of work experience by the time I entered, you know, air quotes the real world for working. And I just want you to to hear that because that's not that's not a boot camp.

That's not um I'm switching careers and it's going to take me a month to do it. And fortunately, I've talked with a lot of it seems like a lot of the career switchers seem to realize like it's going to take them some time to transition and they need to have patience. Everyone I've talked to at least on podcast has been like, you know, I'm setting myself up for like a year to two year transition over to this and I'm like, okay, like good. I do really appreciate that. Um, but yeah, this for me was 9 years of experience before getting employed. Now, this next part especially is going to be very, very different for everyone, but I would not change a thing about this. I ended up working for a startup outside of school. And I think that like I got very very lucky with where I landed at a startup.

But if I didn't if I landed at a startup that was going to I don't know that was going to fold within a year or two years or something or I got there and like it was not growing and like it was you know like wasn't learning or anything I would absolutely spend I don't know at least the first at least the first 5 to 10 years of my career at startups for me and the reason is that it taught me so much that uh that I don't think I would have learned from like working at Microsoft. Nothing against Microsoft, but the pace, this is why, like I said, I got very fortunate because I was at a company that was extremely fast-paced for eight years and um and I could just work and I loved it. So having that point in my or that period of my career meant that there were all sorts of challenges in the software space.

I got to see challenges from growing a business. You get to see like the sales and marketing and product side of things. Um I got to go to conferences. I you know basically was put into an engineering manager role within like months of being employed at this place. like the the growth and sort of like forced growth was just ridiculous and the thing that you end up lacking not always there are plenty of startups that where this won't be lacking but I think I lacked like you know having brilliant engineers that had been in big tech for 30 years like passing on their wisdom but even one of my internships like I worked for um you know people that were in leadership at Nvidia at at one point. So, it's not that they don't exist. So, if that's something that you really want, I would say go look for startups that are founded by people like this.

It's not I didn't need that. Um, would that have been cool? Sure. But there was there was so much to learn just because everything was so fast-paced. When you're around other people that are sort of in the same mindset where it's like we're on a mission and we got to get figured out. Um, everyone kind of learns together. Come on, buddy. You got to go. The lights out here. So, it's first come, first serve, and he was first and didn't know how to serve. So, I ended up switching into big tech later, like eight years in. So, that's eight years in my sort of full-time work, uh, 10 years if you include my my two years of internships. I would not change almost anything about what I did there. And again, I'm not saying that's because it's the best and whatever that for me that worked really well.

Now, probably people are asking this because AI and things like that, I would just sprinkle AI into everything that I was doing along the way. like again it doesn't change what I would have done. So I hope that's helpful and I will remind you like your your journey probably will not look like mine and that doesn't mean that it's worse. In fact, it's probably going to look different because it's better for you. This is like it's your entire life, right? So you don't if you're like, "Oh, I messed up." Like, how old are you? You got you got so many years left. There's no You don't just mess up and then like it's all done. It's not like a playing a role playing game in hardcore mode with your career, right? I mean, I guess life is kind of like a role playing game in hardcore mode, but not your career.

Definitely not. So, you know, you have you do the wrong thing, you didn't like school, whatever, you didn't take advantage of it, go back, do some like you have your whole life. So, I hope that was helpful. Uh, friendly reminder, if you want questions answered, leave them below in the comments. Otherwise, you can go to codeccommute.com. You can submit your questions anonymously or you can reach out to devleader on any social media platform. Send me a message. I'll keep you anonymous that way. And if you thought this was helpful, please share it with your friends. I appreciate it. Thanks. Take care.