Why Did I Decide to Choose Software Engineering

I guess one could say my interest in software engineering is an a-typical one. I didn’t go to college for computer science and was never very interested in data or math. Subjects, in which I find many software engineers to be either very good in or at the very least interested in. I studied communications and have worked in the service, marketing industry, and as of recently early childhood education. My professional background has jumped from all kinds of different industries and they were all mostly non-technical roles. I moved back to the bay area sometime in 2018. Well, San Francisco specifically. The Meca, if you may, of all the next great applications, tech, and the home of many budding and senior software engineers. 



So it came as no surprise when I eventually landed a job in tech as a marketer. I worked in a co-working space and during this time I met so many amazing people building their own apps or working for small start-ups, who were either in the midst of building exciting and useful products or already had pretty established businesses based on software they created themselves. I gained some insight into what life as a software engineer might be like and had acquired some interest. This is when I decided to dip my toes in and see what all the fuss was about. I enrolled in a prep course at a local boot camp and was pleasantly surprised to find that I was able to grasp the material even though it was outside of my typical scope of interests. On top of that, I actually enjoyed it and it opened new pathways of what I could build with my newfound knowledge. 


Through my work as a marketer, I knew that automating tasks could lighten my workload and I did what any nontechnical person would do and downloaded tools and widgets that other people built to perform the tasks that I needed to get done. Through the use of software and tools that someone else had built I began to wonder if I could build my own tools. Although my software engineering knowledge and skills are not quite at the level to be able to build advanced tools I'm curious as to what I may be able to eventually build if I keep expanding my knowledge.


As a non-technical person, software engineering has historically struck me as some kind of impossible thing to understand. That just because I prefer art and writing over data and math I can’t understand it. But now, I realize that with the right mindset and willingness to invest time into studying it’s perfectly reasonable for anyone to be able to do. ☺

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