Why I want to be a fullstack developer

Hello, nice to meet you!

Are you thinking about changing your career?

Are you dreaming to become a web developer?

Then I will be glad to connect with you, because we are in the same path.

In this post, my first at Dev.to, I am going to share my reasons to make a change in my career. In the next ones I will be reporting all about my journey. Let me know what do you think: comments, suggestions and feedback are welcome.

Here are the topics I will cover in the following words:

• What is my background and why I want to be a fullstack web developer.
• The event that broke my heart as a professional and the event that brought me back my faith.

This is what to expect for my next post:

• My strategic plan to make the transition from my current role to a developer role .
• Insights about how to stay committed.

Let’s start the journey...

What is my background and why I want to be a fullstack web developer.

I have been a power user of technology all my life. I remember playing games with my father’s spectrum 48k and learning Basic when I was a child. That was my first toe in the water with computers.

In high school I choose all the computer science related subjects. Then I learned DOS, basic hardware architecture, etc. I was also very interested in the stock market at this time.

When I finished high school, my heart was divided between finance and computer science.

But because my best friend was determined to do an economic degree and the cut off mark of CS was very high at this time due to a lack of university places, I chose the finance way. I did pass the mark, but he didn’t. So I began my first college day without any friend there.

After a time, the web came into my life, I played with html and built some prehistoric webs when I was in my university years. This was in the wild dotcom years. I was hooked, but life evolved by other ways.

The bank employee years...

I finished my degree in economics in 1999 and was hired for the second bigger bank of my country. After seven years in the craft I was offered a manager position in a smaller bank, and I took the chance. At these years I was totally focused in the finance world. Absorbing all the learning I could and getting promotion after promotion.

I had been leading a team for five years, having some fun and making lots of money. Life was good apparently but I was getting bored and I discovered a very unpleasant truth about the money system that got me very depressed and heartbroken. The honey moon had finished.

I discovered a very unpleasant truth about the money system.

For twelve years I had been working hard and ascending without pause the corporate stair, always learning about finances, investments, et al. and suddenly without warning I discovered that the current money system is designed to enslave us. That we pay with our lives what should be free. That our efforts are robbed in ways we could hardly imagine... every single day.

The whole thing was explained in the book written by the economist Murray N. Rothbard - What has done the government to our money?
And reinforced in my reading of the ‘Modern Money Mechanics’ paper published by the FED.

I saw it crystal clear. It was all fake! I was devastated...

I couldn’t believe it. Money were not being deposited at the banks. Fiat money were being (and is being) made in the banks like magic, out of nothing. Banks are not money deposit entities, but money makers. All these have very profound implications in the life of people around the globe, but this is not the place to elaborate on it. If you are interested, study the two references of the previous paragraph.

Then the big crisis exploded, the bank I was working for go broke and I lost my job. I felt blessed, because I was making so good money that leaving that job on my own, would never have been an option, especially in the eyes of my family. Although I had lost all interest on it.

For the first time in my life I was unemployed. I started a retail store of ecological food with our savings and after a year I went broke. So, I begun making some financial consulting work for businesses to bring peanuts at home but continued to felt lost. I was unhappy, angry, depressed and felt unsuccessful.

The startup weekend awake...

At some time I became interested in startups. I went at a startup weekend event and presented an idea as a business person.

I got a team there: two developers, an engineer and a sales person. With the help of the mentors, the initial idea evolved to a killer idea.

At some point we realized that we would not be able to construct an MVP in a weekend. So I made all the interface design with Inkscape. The frontend developer instead of coding, built a non working demo on Wix, just for visual presentation. The backend developer contributed at idea design and begun designing the database structure and relations. The engineer added some machine learning ideas to the project. The sales person was researching economic information in order to get a feeling of the potential market. I felt incredible.

After an awesome and intense weekend... we won the contest! .

The sponsors perks for the winner were six months of office space for free and a first cut off passed in a startup accelerator, among other technicals perks. Some investors that were present on demo day offered us some money to back the idea if we were able to construct an MVP and get some early adopters. I felt on fire, full of energy and capable to eat the world.

This was the day I discover what I really want to do. Building digital things! Wow!

The day after the challenge, all the conversations in the team geared toward the pact of partners, equity distribution...Unfortunately, the key developers members of the team were there only for fun and looking for a job.

Nobody seemed to be able to work free for a couple of months to build a working MVP. Some members wanted to work remotely, other didn't feel good about this option especially in early stage...

I began doing meetings with the members one by one, trying to be "the glue" of the team. Once I knew the 'inner'reasons of everyone and his personal circumstances, I knew that we have little room to be succesful as a team. But I didn't want to give up.

So I began negotiating with investors on my own, with the hope that with money on the table, things will be different.

But the investors offered a ridiculous quantity of money for 10% of the company, with the condition that I could not pay salaries with this money. Not much help.

After a bit of time the team was broke.

I was running out of savings, so I continued with my consulting practice and thinking how to construct the prototype on myself, so I began to learn how to code. I felt great doing this stuff!

After a while I was offered a CFO position by a big company. I accepted for income reasons. And my focus shifted to the company needs. For two years I have been working ten to twelve hours a day, six days a week, and with a family I had no time to learn how to code. My dream was frozen. However I began learning to query the ERP database with SQL to improve the company reporting. So I have practiced some kind of “code” at job. Also continued learning things without any discipline on weekends mornings.

My family began complaining about my continuous absence and things began going tight at home. So three months ago I changed employer for a better personal/job balance. Now I have a little more time to learn, and here I am…thinking every day that I feel better when I am coding and learning new things than when I am locked in a job position that I have mastered along the years and could deliver and excels at, but that is going increasingly boring by the day.

So... why not to plan a change in my career?

I am afraid of risking my family well being, so why not pursue a crazy dream on the side?

I have always been learning and the thing about coding that attracts me more, is the non stop learning attitude that is needed. So .. why not give that a chance?

I really committed to this idea the day I joined Dev.to and this post is my first ‘public’ step towards that goal.

In my next post I will be writing about my strategic plan to become a fullstack developer. Follow me if you want to be noticed!