Today, I want to talk a little about my personal journey in software development and why I chose it. I hope that my experience can give others some inspiration.
Let’s start with my brief background. My first bachelor’s degree is in Human Resource Management and I worked in a global engineering consultancy company for five years. In China, we had over 400 employees. There was no system to manage employee data. We instead used Excel which was very labor-intensive and error-prone. Things were changed when the company was acquired by another corporation that uses a universe HR system to manage the global employee data. However, the global system did not conform to Chinese Employment laws. We had to build another system to manage payroll, employee benefits, labor costs, etc. After working months together with engineers and HR teams from other offices, we had two systems online with all employee data. The success of this initiative led to a personal promotion to me and eliminated the huge amount of manual work we had before. However, keeping data in sync between two systems was a big headache and still required care manual operations and global-wide communications. This example made me believe that the industry needs better HR systems and building such systems require both in-depth knowledge of HR and information technology.
It was a hard decision for me to pause my career years ago and move to the US with my husband. However, the dream of getting into the tech field has never been paused.
After sending my two young children to preschools, I restarted my dream by taking online python programming and data analysis courses. However, my husband, as an experienced software engineering manager at Apple, suggested that it will benefit my career most to learn computer science through an academic program. For example, it can help me build a core understanding of how the operating system is executing my python program. This inspired me to go back to school and pursue a degree in computer science. After a few applications, I was glad that OSU accepted me.
In general, I want to say, don’t let anything block your dream. Your previous education background, your last job, some life changes, even your age, those things don’t matter. If you found a motivation to do something, just do it!
