Career Switch from Procurement to Tech. Part 1

This is a recollection of my journey. It serves as a journal entry for me, but maybe it can inspire you if you are considering this path.

2019-2022

My first career - Procurement

After graduating with a Business Degree, I did not have a particular career or goal in mind, so I started my working life in the supply chain industry doing procurement.

The various workplaces I joined were mostly pleasant, but sometimes it was challenging. I had to interact with a diverse range of people - logistics officers, warehouse managers, vendor account managers, legal teams, technical teams, end users, etc.

I also realised that I was much more interested in the works/products/services being procured, rather than the procurement process. Specifically, I would always get excited reading through the technical specifications and details of the products to be procured. I would dive into how the products were priced or manufactured.

Learning to Code

It was also around this time where there was a huge spike in the news of people transiting to tech. Since I had always been interested in the creation side of tech, I also started harboring the idea of learning how to code, probably as a means to distract myself too.

I found out that Python was beginner friendly, so I started learning it casually after work and during the weekends. I learnt it from learnpython.org. Unfortunately, I soon got distracted and did not continue with it.

Takeaways

  • Setting up python environments and using IDEs.
  • Basic python statements like if-else, for, while, etc.

2022-2023

Web Development

After some time had passed and some unsavoury events at work, I again restarted the journey of learning how to code. This time, I searched online for web development guides and I found a highly recommended website for learning web development - The Odin Project. It is an open sourced project that guides beginners to learn web development.

This time, I was much more motivated than before and I managed to complete a decent chunk of the tutorials for learning how to design, style, and create basic web pages using HTML and CSS.

Alvin's Odin Recipes HTML project My first ever website, hosted on Github via Github Pages!

Although it was relatively simple, it definitely encouraged me towards the possibility of continuing my coding journey. Again, I then got distracted before I could continue with the lessons - this time on JavaScript.

Takeaways

  • HTML syntax
  • Styling via CSS, especially Flexbox for dynamically styling elements (making them spread across the page, shrinking, growing, etc.).
  • Using Git and GitHub for version control, a must-know for all hobbyists and developers.

Thank you for reading! To be continued in Part 2!

Regards, Alvin