Preparing for the Next Career
I've been preparing myself for the next step of my dream career for three weeks now. I have been experiencing a lot of axiaity about the job that I am doing at the moment. There was an accident that occurred at the office where I work, which causes me to think about this.
I can't go into any detail about that incident. However, I never felt I was safe from getting fired after that incident.
Anxiety
I've been working here at my current company for two years, and I've learned a lot. The first time I worked here, I didn't even know how to make a pull request, even though I used github for two years before I started working here. That two years is just pushing my code to github. I have never submitted a pull request or worked with the team.
In this company, I made awesome friends, but most of those friends who helped me when I first worked here are no longer working here. I really miss them, but that's how this life goes, with people coming and going. Even so, we continue to communicate via personal messages.
One month ago, I felt burnt out from my work. It's because I always have anxiety, I'm afraid of losing my job. My co-workers who were fired are my seniors. In terms of skill, they are better than me. They are mostly people who mentor me.
Because of this feeling, I have a hard time at work, I'm not sure how to describe it but the point is that I'm not happy.
Reflection
However, the situation I face teaches me something. It dawned on me that I needed to grow up. I should not depend on other people, I should learn to solve my own problems.
I have stopped my dream after working in this office. Yes, I intend to learn as much as I can here. As a result, I did learn something now, such as being able to speak English better now than when I first worked here.
Although I learn here, most of my time is not spent on learning. I spend most of my time working. It feels different when we're learning and working. We should always make sure things are correct when we work. I think it's okay that it's called professional.
Furthermore, I should remember that I have a dream, I think that having board knowledge can help us to achieve our dream. However, the topic we learn should correspond to our dreams. For example, if we want to be a chef, we should learn how to cook, right? Not learning how to play a football.
Yes, exactly. That's how I feel right now.
The plan
After that reflection, I came up with a few action items that I would like to share with you. Here is the list.
- Improve my english skills
- Leaning Algorithm
- Personal Branding
Let's talk about the plan and why I chose it.
1. Improve my english skills
I wanted to work with international companies. I have a dream company that I would like to apply to, but I can't reveal it right now. After some bad experiences with a local company, I decided not to join another one.
It's hard for some of my friends and family to understand why I'm doing this. But hey, this is my dream, not theirs, and I shouldn't follow what they want.
Back to my English skills, for now I can speak English at work. I feel fluent enough to do that. But what I'm doing at work with that English is just that. I mean, when I'm in a meeting with my coworkers or conversing, I just use the same words every day; I don't learn many new words.
Despite attending a lot of meetings, I did not speak much. I feel that when I talk, the words I say are just the same as yesterday. I need more than that to improve my English.
For that reason, I will do this.
- Consume more content in English: I want to enrich my vocabulary.
- Make content for my social media using English: not only should I learn the English vocabulary, but also I should start using it since it is a tool for communication, and I should use it to communicate with my followers.
- Practice speaking English: I am not located in an environment that is conducive to learning English, so for this particular action item, I created a podcast. As of now, the podcast is private, only I can listen to it. However, I plan to announce it publicly once I feel confident enough to speak English.
To accomplish that, my daily routine is as follows:
- Update any random status on Facebook that my friends or family can enjoy, since my Facebook friends are mostly my family and friends.
- I would record a five minute podcast daily. It's just talking for five minutes, so it should be easy. I will speak to myself since I don't have a friend to talk to in English.
- As my twitter followers are mostly not my friends and family, I intend to post some useful information and tips related to my field of work.
2. Learning Algorithm
In my next job, I hope to work for a large company. To pass an interview, most of those big companies require a deep understanding of algorithms. Why work at a big company? I would like to learn more, to work for large companies and make friends with them.
Even though I didn't like this interview process, I had to follow the rules.
After graduating from high school, this was also my dream. I was too afraid to pursue my dream at that time. By now, I realize that everyone has the same opportunity no matter what their level of education is or where they come from.
Learning algorithm also taught me how to solve problems. Although the algorithm is most of the time not used in the actual application we create, the way we think about solving problems is the same. Therefore, I believe that this will be very useful to me in my current job, as I can implement the concept of the algorithm I study.
I have never attended college and always studied independently, but I heard that at college you learn algorithms, so I've never been exposed to them before. Just last year, I started watching YouTube videos about competitive programming.
I find this very difficult. However, I am also curious. I have already done some research about it, and I have found that competitive programming is a good way to learn about algorithms. In that regard, I've already begun to learn more about it.
You can see my progress here.
3. Personal Branding
As I mentioned before, I did not attend college and do not have any connections to big companies. Therefore, I must do something to get people to know me.
In fact, I have done personal branding before, but people that know me are mostly Indonesians, so I am okay with that, but for my next career I want to work with an international company, so I need to develop a personal branding strategy focused on international audiences.
I did personal branding only on Facebook before, but that led to many job opportunities. My strategy this time is a bit different. I will take it a step further.
I am going to use the following strategy for building my personal brand.
Github
Github is the most used platform for software developer in fact all of my work for now is hosted in github.
But github can be used for more than just hosting code repositories. It can also be used as a platform for sharing other kinds of content in addition to code.
Therefore, I will begin producing content referencing the information I have learned. Therefore, if you wish to receive my github content, you can follow me on github by clicking here Github.
Youtube
YouTube is one of the social media sites I use the most, I learn a lot from it. I am not just learning coding, but also productivity, video editing, and some other things that I can apply to my daily life.
I plan to use my YouTube channel to share my story, and that makes it easier to share technical stuff related to coding.
Currently, I'm working on finding content that fits my Youtube channel, if you're interested and want to join me, subscribe to my channel here.
Twitter is another good tool for me to market myself, and I am still learning how to write the best content for it.
For now though, twitter is not my primary platform for building a personal brand. Nonetheless, what I plan to do on twitter is post some curated information regarding the topic that I learn.
One of the tricks I have found to work is to comment on the tweets that appear on my Twitter homepage. This will increase my impressions and profile visits. You can follow me in twitter here.
Writing a Blog
I find that writing about a concept helps me to gain a better understanding of it.
If you can't exaplain it, then you don't understand enough.
I don't remember where I read or heard that statement, but I believe it to be true. Yes, sometimes people just don't have the skills to speak or explain things well.
However, I think explaining something is a good skill this time, because we used to work with others all the time. Regardless of whether you build your company on your own, you still need to communicate with your audience, don't you think?
These are the platforms that I am interested in contributing to write an article for; they have a good community and it is a perfect way for me to introduce myself through my writing by sharing some useful information.
I think that's all I can tell you about my plan for now; I do not know whether I received it or not. One thing is for sure, I believe I will learn a lot on the journey and maybe I will become a different person in the future.
All this is just my journey to become a happier person, to do what I like to do in life. The most important thing for me is that I want to become a better person for myself.
