This year will mark my tenth year working as a professional software engineer. Lately, I have been contemplating on my experience and my next steps and goals that I would like to achieve as a programmer. I also want to be sure that I don't fall into the same traps as I did before.

#This post is intended as notes for my future-self.# Hopefully this will help me organize my thoughts on what to do in the next ten years.

• Had a mentor
• Exposed to low level programming
• Learned about GNU/Linux for ARM, custom SBCs
• R&D experience
• Fun coworkers

• Project stagnated
• Didn't write enough C or learn as much about hardware as I should have
• Long commute
• Left job early for Java money and short commute

• Recommended by a professor from university
• Interested in low-level programming and hardware

• Bored and felt like I couldn't learn more from the job
• Commute was annoying
• Others were thinking about leaving and one guy already left

• Became comfortable in large, legacy codebase
• Experienced full-stack for a while
• Lots of debugging and learned to hunt bugs
• Multiple salary increases
• Went full-remote (pre-C#vid, remote hipster)
• Fun coworkers
• Five minutes from home and personal freedom

• Got stuck in legacy code Java 8 hell
• Didn't focus on career growth enough
• Stayed way too long

• Bought into the mission
• Seemed like there was room for growth
• Close to home

• Corporate takeover consequences (relocate or take pay cut)
• Tired of Java 8, legacy code and product
• Felt like my programming skills were atrophying
• Agile is so annoying and never done well

!! Will update later !!

• Fully Rust codebase
• New project when I joined
• Great teammates

• Wanted to program Rust full-time
• Interested in the company's industry

N/A

After ten years, I hoped that I would be a bit more advanced with programming and not a general application developer. I regret not using my young buck energy and brain to learn a specific domain or pursue a master's degree to study a topic deeply. I've always been fascinated by advanced CS/programming topics like compilers and operating systems, but have had trouble self-learning them. This makes me wonder if I even have a strong enough passion for programming and computer science to go beyond application development.

I am extremely grateful to be a programmer during this time period, getting into the industry when jobs are aplenty, and earning more than enough to live a very comfortable life. Being able to work from anywhere, at any time of the day is a luxury that almost all professions lack.

I wish someone told me ten years ago that most of professional programming, and maybe software in general nowadays, kind of sucks and you will most likely be working on a product that you don't use or isn't yours and that will turn into a disgusting mess due to business people getting their hands involved in technology and prioritizing profits and timelines over anything else.

These are computer-related things that I pursued and will continue to pursue outside of work:

• Contributing to and writing open source software
• Daily driving Unix-like operating systems and configuring them for fun
• Learned Rust, Haskell, Idris, and tinkered with other various languages
• Participating in IRC to learn and help others
• Refining my development environment and workflow
• Tinkering, writing simple programs, tools, and games
• Trying to brush up on and learn other CS topics

The following are goals that I would like to achieve in the next ten years.