the next stage

After I graduated from my polytechnic education, I lazed around at home, jobless for 6 months until deciding to find a job.

My first job interview didn’t go well. It was too technical for me to handle at that time. Needless to say, I didn’t get it.

But I wasn’t concerned, that place was too troublesome to commute to anyway.

Some time later, my math teacher from my polytechnic called me up and told me her friend was looking for a web developer. I went for the interview, showed the forum I coded during my polytechnic days in ASP, with a notepad, and got the job

I worked there for 8 years. (Since October 2003)

There were ups and downs, a very long period of stagnation because of my addiction to online-gaming and things happening that left me in a feeling of despair.

Thankfully, I pulled through.

The last 2 years have been very fulfilling. I revamped the way we churn out websites in my company. I designed a centralized CMS system so that we don’t have to install it for every website. A front-end system that simplifies and reduces the repetitive tasks that needs to be done each time we work on a website.

It was until recently, I felt the need for more money and my day job wasn’t giving me enough. A friend from my polytechnic days just so happened to approach me with some freelance work and I took it up.

Everyday after work, I would spend 2-4 hours at MacDonald’s, on my laptop, coding away on a CRM and invoicing web application. I could feel myself learning something new during each coding session.

I accomplished a lot each day and night to the point cheap SG$1.60 beer tasted satisfying.

Although things didn’t go well with the client requesting many changes and additional requests that required me to change a lot of my code, I told myself it’s just for the learning experience and just hang on there.

Word of me working on my freelance CRM project actually helped me land a job opportunity at a new startup company with flexible working hours and dress code. Overall, the pay would be slightly lower but the founding team will be given stock options.

I could now live the kind of life developers and programmers in Silicon Valley get to live.

I’ve officially tendered my resignation yesterday. In about 26 days, I should be able to start working at my new company. Can’t wait to move on.

“I’m a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work the more I have of it.”
 – Thomas Jefferson