Why did I make this blog?
I recently started writing in a private Google doc to track my thoughts and progress as I continue to grow as a software engineer. I figured most of what I have been writing might be useful to someone else who is going through a similar growth experience. I decided I would just make a blog to publish all my thinking and writings for anyone that manages to find this. This specific blog post wont be focused on my current software engineering growth. This will just cover my background and serve as my virtual introduction to the world of blogging (which I have never done, so there’s that).
Who am I?
I am Cody Spate. In recent years I have been a professional software engineer. Before that I was in the US Army as a combat medic. Active duty for 7 years, then 3 years in the national guard. When I’m not working, I try go hunting or fishing. I have a wife and two kids that keep me busy. We like to go camping, rent a cabin at the beach, or mostly just find interesting places around town. Oh, Speaking of town, I’m currently living in Sacramento, CA. Well, not Sacramento proper, but a small suburb to the southeast called Rancho Cordova. Its a nice little town with the convenience of being close to Sacramento.
Software background
I knew that when I got out of the military, I wouldn’t want to go further into medicine or more specifically, the civilian medical field. I won’t get into the details of why, but feel free to ask 10 nurses how their day was and you can build your own conclusions. Instead, I wanted to get into mechanical engineering, and more specifically, something to do with aerospace, or aviation. I have always been a huge fan of all things aviation and space. I thought it might be a good idea to learn some programming to get a head start on beginning to “think like an engineer.” One thing led to another, and after about a year, I found myself building a website for a gaming community in python/django. This was the first decent sized project I built. Yes, the code is terrible, but it was a great learning experience.
In 2016, I had been self-taught for about 2 years, and I got into this coding training program for veterans. Once you finished this online Java course, you were guaranteed an interview with the company that sponsored the program. I had finished the course and got my interview scheduled, then the US Army national guard commitments started knocking at the door. At my first drill weekend, I got told that I would need to leave in one week to go for some training down south for two weeks. As, luck would have it, this was right when my interview was scheduled, so I had to cancel the interview and I never had another chance to interview for that company.
A month or so went by and I started looking for a job (there’s a whole story about learning how to look for a job after spending my entire adult life in the military, but maybe another time). I kept see the same thing on every job posting ”<#> years experience required.” I even saw this for entry level positions. (?!?! <— my thoughts exactly) I eventually found a posting for a junior developer with no experience needed … “unpaid”. As a new civilian, I was stressed while not having a job, and I did not want to start working somewhere that would cause me to put this goal of becoming an engineer on hold, so I went and interviewed for the unpaid position. I didn’t know at the time, but this would end up as one of the best decision I ever made.
Free experience
I started working the new job and taking college courses with the intent of sticking with mechanical engineering, but day after day I would go to this new job, and I found myself becoming much more interested in the software I was building that anything else that I would need to learn to become mechanical engineer. I was building a mobile app, initially I was building it as a native Android app, but then this thing happened. React Native came out and with it this hope that mobile development teams could build one version of their app in react native and ship it to both iOS and Android. I told the founders of the company about it and they jumped at the opportunity. Besides we were currently only building an Android app (because I had Java experience and we didn’t have a mac). We shifted gears and I lead all the learning and pivots to change gears and go full in on React Native. I still wasn’t getting paid and I wouldn’t until we started seeing revenue from this app (that never happened), but I didn’t really care that much anymore. In fact, by this time I had gotten a paid software developer position with at the state of California, but this was so much more interesting and I had the autonomy to make decisions and use the right tools for the job. I kept going to this office, unpaid, and after my paying job and classes. Some nights I would work until 1 or 2 in the morning. I was over stimulated by everything I was learning and building, and I leaned and built SO MUCH! Then I found out what this “burnout” thing was all about.
Discovering burnout
I was working 2 jobs and going to college full-time. I had to plan my days with how many minutes I could spend eating breakfast, or what meals I would have to skip that day. Working at the state was mind numbing. I spent most of my days there just continuing to learn other tools and technologies. The work I was assigned for the day would take me about 30 minutes to complete, and I wasn’t allowed to do more. I spent the rest of that time just learning. The lack of direction at the state job left me in a weird place. I felt like I needed to learn as much as I could so I could find something we could do there to add value. Most people on my team just browsed the internet or took a long lunch most days. Being so new to the tech world and this team, I felt like I had to do something. My mind raced while I was working there. Then in my college classes, my mind was racing to keep up there as well. I needed to not just get the information so I could study later, I needed to learn and know that information. While we were learning data structure and algorithms, I was testing myself on what we had already learned, between taking notes on what I was learning. I will say, that method was incredibly effective at learning the material, but at the cost of over working your mind, so I would recommend it.
I eventually found myself uninterested in any of my work, or classes, which was very unlike me. Realizing this, I went to the founder of the unpaid startup and I told him I had to stop. It was the only thing I could give up if I wanted to stay in the tech industry. I hated the state job, but it paid (poorly, but better than nothing). I’m glad that the startup founder and I remain close friends.
Needing to shake this burnout, I thought a change of focus for work would help, so I went to the state job, told my manager that I was looking for another job, and I wanted to do something meaningful there before I left. We stayed late a few days and planned some new features we could add to this state website hosting platform we managed. I implemented those over the next couple weeks then I found my next job.
Know your worth
When I started my now technically 3rd job in the tech world, I had only worked one unpaid position and at the state for $11.50/hr. When they offered me $18/hour, I was “jazzed”. To me this was a whole other level, this team was all people that were relatively new in their tech careers as well. All with more experience than I, but not by much. Although they had limited experience, their drive was on par with my eagerness to learn, grow, build, and learn some. We were an awesome team, building a learning management system with the newest tech, leveraging the new “serverless” craze and learning about its limits. Finding broken code in open source software, and contributing fixes to them. We started attending conferences and learning from leaders in the space, and befriending all who would have and mentor us. The platforms we built are still in use today and that company is thriving. This was my style, but all good things must end. Eventually, the team started breaking off, getting pulled into the FAANG companies of the day and other high growth startups. I worked there for about a year making my $18/hour before one of my best mentors left. When he left he told me how incredibly underpaid I was. We had a whole slough of conversations about knowing your worth, something I hadn’t thought too much about. You see, coming from the military, you know your worth, and everyone with the same rank on their chest is making the same as you. I hadn’t considered how companies would want to pay me as little as they could get away with. I just figured, $18 was the going rate for people with my experience (about 3 years professionally at this point). Furthermore, I wasn’t drawn to this industry by exorbitant salaries or company perks. I was just having fun. All that said, I spent some time, and I learned what I am worth.
This is long enough for one post. I’ll share more on this story in the next one.