I am switching my career from being a teacher to a software engineer.
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I am switching my career from being a teacher to a software engineer. The journey started in 2013 when I was a teacher in a private school in Poris Indah , Tangerang. I taught Computer Science to elementary school students. I think being a software engineer is exciting and challenging, a software engineer able to make an instruction to a computer to do something and I think the computer skills will be useful in the future.
During 2013 - 2015, I learned basic programming languages like C. I watched some tutorials on YouTube, but I failed to understand even basic concepts such as variables and functions. In 2016, I decided to came in University of Indraprasta PGRI Jakarta Selatan to study Computer Science. In 2020, I graduated but it was pandemic so I was not able to find a job as a software engineer.
During 2020 - 2022, while I was actively looking for a job, I was active improving my programming skills by creating some Android projects and others. Till in May 2022, Alhamdulillah I was able to find a job as a software engineer in Koinworks with help from om Yohanes (my story about om Yohanes, I wrote here).
In the first three months at Koinworks, I joined the Koinworks Engineer Development Program with Go. Here, I learned about Golang and many best practices in software engineering that I had never learned at university, such as avoiding storing passwords in plaintext in the database — they must be hashed with salt.
Since there is a lot of backend engineering at Koinworks and only a little Automation Engineering, I transitioned into an Automation Engineer role. As a result, I have continued working at Koinworks until now. In this role, I have gained experience in automation testing, CI/CD, and various other aspects of software testing. My initial learning focused on Selenium, Appium, RestAssured, and TestNG, which are the main technologies I use in my daily work at Koinworks.
Since September 2024, I have moved to Hijra , where I continue to work as an Automation Engineer. Here, I have learned about automation testing technologies such as TypeScript, Playwright, Cypress, and WebdriverIO.
I really enjoy my role as an automation engineer, and I’ve learned a lot here. I’m excited to continue learning and growing in this field. That’s my journey to becoming a software engineer. I hope this inspires anyone who wants to switch careers to software engineering, even after turning 30.
Remember, it’s never too late as long as you’re willing to put in the effort and give it a try. It’s better to try than to regret it later.
South Tangerang, 4 Februari 2025