In my first two posts I focused on myself then on the capstone. In this post I want to talk about my career and the inevitable career pivot coming. But this won’t be my first pivot. In my first bachelors I studied marine engineering and shipyard management and then spent 5 years working on ships in engine rooms around the world. After 5 years on ships, spending 90+ days straight on a ship at a time, I decided it was time to find a shoreside job. My degree was loosely related to a mechanical engineering degree so I was looking for mechanical engineering jobs. While the courses were the same I learned that nobody knows what marine engineering is or what it qualifies one to do. Fortunately for me that pivot came in 2018 when everyone was hiring and I still struggled to find a job despite watching the news at night hearing about how great the economy was and how it was a great time to find a new job. After some time and some luck I landed a job as a payloads design engineer at Boeing. I have enjoyed it for the most part but now having spent over 2 years on this degree and really liking it I want to pivot away from payloads engineering and move into software engineering or maybe something in cybersecurity. I would ideally like to stay at Boeing but sometimes that is easier said than done. Additionally the timing of this pivot does not seem to be as friendly as the last pivot back in 2018. It feels really lopsided though as some areas are hiring like crazy and others seem to be on the edge of layoffs. So time to think about a job…. I guess that is misleading in that I have thought about a job but I have not really acted on finding a new job outside of applying to some things internally only to be told to reach back out after graduation. Hearing that in combination with some of the things I don’t currently love about my job has got me to the point where I’m thinking an external move and that’s why the time to think about a job is there. It is now time to think about moving on from Boeing but with that comes the normal feelings of change. Pivoting careers is difficult and it always feels like starting over which can be hard after working hard in a spot for 5 years or 10 years. It can be challenging to be thinking of going back to entry level and starting over and feeling like the last 10 years aren’t valued to a new employer, but I knew all this when I signed up. That said I am very excited and optimistic about what future job is out there. I don’t know if it will be at Boeing or a tech company or somewhere else but I do know I’m excited for the challenge and excited to use what I’ve been learning for the last 2 years in a day to day working capacity.

A brief note on the capstone though, as this blog is ultimately for my capstone. It has been over a year since I’ve worked with react in CS290 and ooof, that ‘if you don’t use it you lose it’ seems to have some weight to it. I will say I’m picking it back up again much faster than I did the first time through so that’s good but definitely have to refer back to some old lectures and online material for some things that a year ago would have been fresh in my mind. That said it is enjoyable to refresh in the subject and then learn new things. From what I’ve heard from some of my friends who are software engineers it is a job for people who always want to learn and who like learning. Its starting to come together and it feels like there is now a light somewhere at the end of the tunnel, maybe not close but it is there and it is approaching. I look forward to the next blog with more of an update on the project.