my career so far ~ from computer science grad to software developer to ux designer

[Music] this august 1st marks the three-year anniversary of me getting out of university and moving into the real professional adult world basically it's been three years since i started my first job as a software engineer so i want to take the time today and i guess it's like a fortunate but also kind of an unfortunate thing that i'm a very nostalgic person and i want to tell you guys about my career journey i love calling it a journey it's very bacheloresque my name is charlie i am 27 years old and i am currently a ux designer as kids teachers would ask us a lot of the times about what we wanted to be when we grew up and every year my answer seemed to change sometimes i said i wanted to be a teacher sometimes it was a doctor sometimes it was a vet and i was always really jealous of the classmates that i had that could actually keep a consistent answer every single year i thought to myself like why don't i know what i want to do and maybe i should be able to stick to something you know maybe it's about time where i actually figure out who i want to be when i grew up and i was like 13 at the time so i was completely stupid back then so i think going into computer science made a lot of sense for me at the time i love computers as a kid i spent way too much time playing runescape and i absolutely loved the internet i was and still am just a really quiet person and i love doing detail-oriented tasks for hours and hours on end there was one time where i went to korea with a couple of my best friends and i told them you know you guys if you ever needed to go and visit your family then you can just leave me in a museum with an audio tour guide for like five hours and i'll be completely happy and i think it was also because i was so undecided during my final year of high school that i just thought i like computers people like computers i like to make things and i like figuring things out and everyone needs computers and i'll just figure out my career later actually my first choice was a bachelor of arts in history because history is also one of my greatest loves and something that i try to learn about as much as i can just on my free time but i was highly advised against it from my high school math teacher and it also honestly made my parents a little worried about what kind of job i was going to get once i finished school so in hindsight maybe a gap year would have been really helpful in just getting me to like grow up a bit more and it was always expected for me to go to university like not going and not going right away was never an option that i really considered but since then my parents have actually told me that they feel really regretful about pushing my brother and i into going to university right away or to going into like science or like math business engineering kind of degrees and they thought that a gap year would have actually been really helpful but these are all things that we learn after we experience it and i think they kind of realized that you never know what's going to happen in life anyway so you might as well just do what you want to do i'm just really glad that i have such reflective parents so when i first got into university i really did enjoy my classes and i really did enjoy my computer science degree we didn't have any coding classes in high school so the learning curve was actually really intense and as much as i liked it the first couple years were just very very difficult for me and i thought about changing my major so many times so in the beginning of the video i told you guys that i was 27 and i've been working in a professional field for about three years meaning i graduated when i was 24. and honestly it's just because it took extra time for me to complete my degree i can't say that i was working too much either like i had part-time jobs teaching martial arts and i worked part-time at the mall but none of those jobs were like things that i had to do and i lived with enough privilege where i didn't actually have to work in order to survive or to make ends meet and all of the money that i actually made from my part-time jobs went into things like leisure shopping travel food and those kind of things honestly it was just a really big struggle for me and my mental health was not in a very good place at the time because i was severely bullied by the people at my old martial arts school at the time so it just took me a little bit more time to kind of put myself in a good place mentally honestly the feeling of not being able to pick up something like coding right away was a blow to my ego as someone who kind of just like grazed through all of my previous schooling without really trying too much it was a really big change for me to try to learn how to study and learn how to learn and all together it just made things really difficult for me sometimes i think about what it would have been like if i had graduated on time and gotten my experience sooner like what if i was just mentally stronger and i was able to compartmentalize the way that those people were and how it's totally different from everything that i was doing in school and i was just stronger really in being able to get through school and prioritize what i need to get done like where would my career be now but i think just being able to meet my fiance in the degree i was in given the time and place of everything i i have to think that like everything was completely worth it and all of the experiences leading up to the point of meeting him made me meet him and i would not change that for anything in the world anyways so after a couple of very difficult years in computer science learning theory and also like the basic fundamentals of programming you finally get to move into the courses that are around your concentration that you chose so i wasn't really too sure about what ux and what user experience was at this point but i always did very well when it came to deciding on the interaction or also like customizing or really like the visual kind of stuff about building any of the projects that i had done in all of my courses so it kind of just made sense for me to go into a concentration of human computer interaction and it was around that time that i can slowly start seeing a path towards a career that i was actually really interested in and also really passionate about but back then i still called it web design i still really didn't have a good idea about what ux was but even though i was in a human computer interaction program you have to remember that in university we're all just kind of like students hacking things together and i never really did anything like learn the prototyping tools that we use now in the industry like honestly for all of your projects that you do in computer science like no one really knows how to use git at this point so we're all kind of just like sharing our code through dropbox google drive and emails so i was about to graduate and i remember telling one of my very good friends that i was interested in trying to get into web design and i still remember this and like without any hesitation he was like oh my cousin did a web design certificate in our local technical school and it's really hard to find a job and you know when you confide to someone about something that took a lot of bravery for you to actually say out loud and they kind of just like shoot it down or dismiss it and then you never tell anyone anything you ever care about like ever again you know when that happens i know and i knew back then that what he said was done in a very rational and also like just honest way but it's kind of funny how these little things or these little jabs can always stay in the back of your mind and that's probably why i'm bringing it up now anyways so i graduated barely my gpa didn't even start with a three and i remember sitting in convocation when and whenever you like do this in university they always call up some people in the degree and i was just really surprised when they called my name actually i'm just kidding that never happened but they did call up some other people you know like the kind of people that did an internship at google facebook and apple all at the same time they volunteered at 100 different places they have a 4.0 gpa and they probably like built a robot that rescued kittens or something i just remember sitting in the audience like who the hell would ever hire me and i remember talking to this with my parents like a year ago or something and even they admitted that like you know charlie when we were sitting in your convocation and you were walking across the stage we were just kind of like wow she actually did it and like that's totally fair like same so i barely graduated i have a gpa that started with a two i did absolutely zero internships in my entire six-year-long degree and i didn't have a job lined up i hadn't even taken an interview at that point at all so i think like at that point it's not really called imposter syndrome like i was really actually like an imposter so in the summer of 2017 i started applying for jobs and like i would barely get anything back and i was starting to worry about my degree becoming useless so i actually got a full-time job teaching taekwondo to children and at the same time applying for a software dev job and over that summer i got three callbacks and the first one was for a front-end developer position that i really liked and i got to the final round but i didn't end up getting the job the second one was for a fast food chain and i would be a web designer slash developer it would only be me working on the entire team i would have to drive across the city on the absolute worst road possible and have to get into the office every day at 8 30 in the morning and i would need to dress in business casual attire i was also expected to solve all of the i.t issues like fixing the printer figuring out what's wrong with the wi-fi teaching people how to use excel like that kind of thing also during the interview for this job i remember that i interviewed with the guy in the position that i was supposed to take over and i was super nervous because we came from the same school and from the same program so he started asking me questions and there was this one question that he asked me about how much experience i had with the raspberry pi so if you guys don't know the raspberry pi is like basically a really tiny computer and we had to use this in one of our second year computer science courses where we built something with assembly language so you can basically think of it as like states or like ones and zeros that kind of very low level programming so even though i was super nervous because this was like the closest thing to a technical interview i had ever taken part of for now but like even i knew that what does a raspberry pi have to do with web design and web development in wordpress anyways when they sent me the offer for the job the salary was like unjustifiably low like even for a new grad like the amount of gas that it would take me to get there and come back and taxes i probably wouldn't make enough money to save anything and pay back my student loans when i had like 70k i need to pay back but i was so tempted to take it i was just like who was i miss c's get degrees no internship no experience to feel like i deserved any better and i remember i was really considering signing in and i tried to justify it to myself by saying things like oh i'll just get this job and work at it and get some experience and then i'll move on to something else eventually and it was around that time that my dad gave me really good advice i'm not exactly sure how to word it but it was like if you only look at the horses that you have in the stable then you're gonna think it's the most beautiful horse but if you look out into the fields and into the planes then you're gonna find a stallion i don't know it sounds a lot better in cantonese or i'm just saying it wrong i'm gonna ask him after this and if i find out what he actually said then i will put in this video but it made sense to me at that point the message was very clear i shouldn't settle and i should look for something else so i declined the offer and at this point i had no more interviews lined up and i was basically starting again from zero but my confidence was growing i had one interview and one company where i made it to the very end of the interview process and another where i had actually gotten an offer so i thought maybe there's some hope for me yet maybe i suck just slightly less than i think i actually do so there was this one company that i had applied to and it was at that point where i had just basically like dumped out my resume and prayed but they did get back to me and they scheduled a in-person interview with them later on in the week so i did what i usually did whenever it was getting an interview for a company i was unfamiliar with and i looked up their website on google and when i opened the page i just thought like wow gg like no way is this for real this has to be a mistake the people on this website are just so smart and they're the ones that would be my tas in my courses or in my computer science program like there's no way they must have they must have gotten my name mixed up and put it on another resume of someone who was really smart and they accidentally contacted me and i remember the night before the interview i had a dream where we were doing a whiteboard challenge and they actually laughed me out of the challenge and like i i just had no faith in myself that i would be able to get it that i actually didn't even shower that morning because i was like well i'm just gonna waste their time anyways and yeah this isn't gonna happen for me so i remember everything i remember getting there way too early and sitting in the scorching hot car in this really uncomfortable dress and just waiting in the parking lot until like socially acceptable time to actually be early for an interview i remember going up to the third floor which is where the secretary sits at and i remember the interviewer who is the project manager coming to get me and take me to the room we were doing the interview in and as soon as i walked into the room there was a whiteboard and i was like oh gd that's it it's just like my dream it was actually the whiteboard that i had in my dream for some reason that i knew about it yeah and i just really didn't have any hope at that point either but they liked me and what was supposed to be a half hour interview with the project manager and with the software architect turned into like an hour and a half conversation so i actually still talked to them today and i want to say it was like a year and a half ago or something but i was talking to the software architect and they said you know what charlie you were the only person out of all the people that we had interviewed that actually asked questions about why and also about their process and you were the only person who seemed like you were actually interested in the work that we were doing so i left and i felt pretty good and then i got a call back from them to do a coding challenge and then whenever i finished it i would be sending it back to them as soon as i read the word coding challenge on the email that they sent me i was like no way are they going to take me after looking at the piece of crap code that i would be able to come up with and i think it was at that point that something actually clicked for me all of that negative self-talk and self-deprecation it just kind of stopped and i realized that this stupid little coding challenge was the one thing that was keeping me from this job and i can feel that they like they liked me and they wanted to hire me and i'm not going to let this coding challenge stop me and get in my way i actually think this is one of my like only talents that i actually have where if i really want something i'm able to just like focus horse racing like blinders and just get through it and be able to accomplish it it's basically how i got through all of my exams in university just like i'm going to pass because i won't accept not passing so i completed it and it kind of sucked but i sent what i did and it actually did what was asked so i kind of just sent it off and they asked for a final interview with the people that i would be on a team with and at this point like i had a feeling that you know what they liked me from the first interview they thought my code was good enough for a final interview i'm probably someone that they're really looking to hire so i definitely walked in with a lot more confidence than i had the first time which was knocked down a few pigs because that interview that final interview was actually quite tough and i left it feeling a little bit uneasy but later in the week they did eventually get back to me and on august 1st 2017 i started my first job as a software developer i have so many wonderful memories working there and i learned so much because i had all these like big brothers where i can just learn from and it was honestly really great when i first started there were only eight of us and that was including the cto and the ceo and we all worked in this little back office that was just like this tiny little thing where we actually had to walk through the office space of another like larger startup company in order to finally get to like we were basically renting out a meeting room in their office for our entire company i have a lot of stories from working on the software dev but i think i'll share them later basically the company grew really rapidly and i was learning a lot creating data visualizations and i was well on my way on becoming a full stack developer after like eight months or so we had to move to another office space downtown that was actually going to be our own real office and a few months after that we actually had to book another office space so that we can have enough room for everyone i think we went from like eight people to 30 or something and i really just loved going to work and i loved learning everything i was learning and i was so excited about programming like more excited than i had been for my entire six-year degree so during that time i also did a lot of volunteering and i was just really busy like every week i would have a networking event a couple volunteer events and then also working a part-time job as a martial arts instructor and doing my full-time work too so when you start working after like the first six months to about a year you start settling into a routine i became very comfortable in the role that i was in and the initial excitement that i had wore off and the idea that i had originally of becoming a web designer was something that started to get louder and louder in the back of my mind and there were a few reasons why i felt like i had to do something the first and honestly most important was that because i i could see myself becoming a good developer but i never really saw myself becoming a great developer i felt a lot of stress in my job just trying to get everything done in my sprint week to week and eventually that stress started turning from like a good kind of working like normal level of stress to actual like a little bit of anxiety another reason is because i saw other people be ux designers and at this point i actually knew that it was called ux and i started to change my terminology into that it always seemed so out of reach for me and i think that's where what my friend said keeps coming back to my mind like every time i thought about i would love to be a ux designer immediately after i would follow it up with everything that he said that i would not have any experience i would have to like start over again it's really hard to get a job and like just all of these really negative thoughts and honestly i really love the company that i worked for and i was happy there and i didn't want to leave but i knew that if i had kept putting it off i will eventually reach a point where the salary drop in going into a ux position would be just too much for me to ever consider because one of the main reasons for me actually deciding to go into software development was because of the job security my dream has always been to let my parents retire and for them to just be able to take it easy and when we're young we're always told that any kind of artistic career is just something that's too risky and that we shouldn't really go for for me it just felt really selfish that i would give up something that i had worked so hard to get into for something that might not be guaranteed but i also knew i couldn't live regretting not trying for it so i put on my horse racing blinders back on and i decided to really go for it i created my own portfolio website i created my own case studies i learned prototyping tools and i went back to the basics that i learned in my human computer interaction program from university and eventually i got an offer at the company that i currently work for i remember handing in my resignation to my project manager and i remember crying because he just did so much for me like he gave me a chance and he believed in me which is honestly like the greatest gift that i had ever gotten from anyone i thanked him for believing in me i told him how this one chance that he gave me shaped who i am today and i'm only able to do something that i always thought was out of reach because he was the one person who decided to give me a chance i guess the way i can put it is that this job was my stallion i think there are some people that mark a catalyst for change in your life and really help to define an era i think for me he's probably one of them i just really hope that he knows how much what he did really means to me and i still talk to him sometimes like online and stuff and i actually just sent a message to him to say thank you it's been three years and i still wish i can repay him in some kind of way and i also sent a message to my parents just saying thank you for making me stay in computer science i get to be a ux designer which i absolutely love doing and i met my fiance which is honestly one of the best things that ever happened to me and also i had to ask my dad about that metaphor with a stallion and whether or not i got it correct or not if you have anyone in your life that you really want to thank just make sure that you tell them and just let them know how much you appreciate them so on my last day everyone in my company went out for bubble tea and i had it in my mac and i gave everyone hugs and then a week later i moved into my very first ux position role in my current company and it was march 4th 2019. so the commute wasn't like a drastic change or anything like i work in the downtown core so my old work and my new work were basically like one building apart and i was still able to meet with my old co-workers for lunches and for coffee breaks pretty pandemic as a ux designer and i think it's because the way that my company is i have been able to grow a lot and to learn a lot about ux and also to learn a lot about business like i definitely feel like i'm much more of a well-rounded person and it's good because i have gone into a routine at this company but i'm always like still constantly learning and everything's like different and exciting and fast-paced and i absolutely love it so since starting this ux position i have left all of my previous volunteering roles just so i can like get a deeper understanding about user experience and also to work on freelancing and honestly to just to spend more time with my loved ones and i am happy to say that both of my parents have retired which i am really proud to be a part of and i've also paid back all of my student loans i guess it's kind of hard for me to talk about my career as a ux designer because i feel like i'm still living in that era i have since moved into a position where i am able to lead any of the projects that i am a part of or i get assigned to and honestly that's been the goal all along like i really don't care about position titles or anything titles are just a social construct it's basically like saying eggs are only breakfast food but now i'm a person who can jump into any team and ramp up on a project and be able to feel actually like helpful whenever i join a project no matter where in the process that we are in and my ux manager and all of my project team feel like i can be responsible and they feel like they can trust me and honestly that has been the goal all along and doing something where i feel fulfilled in and also i'm like kinda sorta adequate at is just a really great feeling and everything up to this point has definitely been worth it [Music] so it's this year that i started to feel like i needed another kind of like shift in focus in my career and i used to be like i want to be a ux's na i wanna i wanna i wanna now that i'm in this position i'm kinda thinking about well that can't be it you know like there has to be something more ux manager ux practice lead cdo eventually i don't know i wonder where my career will take me or maybe i find something else that i really love to do maybe my true calling is something that i still haven't discovered yet when i look back on it now it makes sense that i changed my dream job so much as a kid and in a weird way i have been able to incorporate all of these like careers that i wanted into some kind of part of my life now i might not be a vet but i have two bundles of fur that i absolutely love to take care of i might not be a teacher but i have taught children and taught adults in martial arts and i don't know i started this youtube channel so maybe i'm helping some of you guys out too and yeah i'm not a doctor but honestly that would have never happened anyway i'm terrified of blood like one time my dad was trying to cut off a piece of toblerone and then he started bleeding a little bit and then i just start sweating like there's no way i can handle blood and be a doctor but i like to think that the things that i'm designing now are helping people in a way and i've heard this from other ux designers that i've talked to before that until we learn what ux is we really don't know what we want to do and honestly hearing that for the first time was one of the most comforting things that i've ever heard to be honest i don't feel like my career path was any like revolutionary or anything like going from computer science and human computer interaction to software development to ux design i feel like my journey wasn't that dramatic of a change compared to many others who had probably went into the tech industry from something completely different and personally i didn't feel like i needed to get any further education or any continuing education before jumping into ux honestly because my university does not deserve any more money like i'm not giving them any more of my money if you were to take away anything that i said from this video i hope it's these two things i think when you are feeling your lowest the place that you go to in order to find comfort is where you actually belong i remember this one trip to china that i had to go to over the summer and it was right after my first year of university and i was just so lonely and in such a terrible place mentally because i had to deal with these like constant attacks and microaggressions from these people that would just constantly harass me and bully me but i couldn't separate myself from them because i was in a place that i was unfamiliar with and i didn't speak the language and having to rely on people that you know have acted just so vile towards you in such an obvious way because they know that there are no consequences or no punishment that awaits them it makes you feel so completely worthless as a person and during this trip unless we were training in martial arts or i had to spend the time with those people i would just hold myself up in the hotel room and i would design things i would make things i would make graphics i would make landing pages websites anything like that and when i was doing that that was the only period of time that i actually felt any bit of comfort and i don't think i would have been able to deal with it and get up every day to deal with that unless i had done that work and finally how you did in school does not define you it's a whole new ballgame out there when you get into the professional world especially if you find something that you actually really love to do like if someone like me who had barely attained her degree who had like a 2.8 gpa is you know like pretty happy and really loving her life and just feeling like she's surrounded by people who love her and she's doing a job that she really loves like if i'm okay i think you guys are gonna be okay too i mean if you're keen enough to watch these kind of videos on youtube you're already miles ahead of me these past three years have brought about a lot of changes but i guess i'm just not afraid of change anymore and i'm getting to that point where i can finally see or i'm finally getting to a place where i can see who i want to become 13 year old me is probably like finally i hope you guys enjoyed this video i know it was a long one but i'm really happy that i made it anyway that's the end of this video and where my career is so far i think i'm going to spend the day with my fiance and with our dog so i hope you guys have a really good day too i will see you guys in the next video [Music] bye [Music] you

Channel: Charli Cheung

Views: 13,543

Keywords: ux, user experience, user experience designer, uxdesigner, uxdesign, career advice, career, ux design, user experience design, how i became a ux designer, how to become a ux designer, do i need a degree to become a ux designer, my ux story, how i became a user experience designer, how to come a user experience designer, computer science, compsci, software developer, software dev, computer science grad, computer science major, computer sciecne degree, ux career, product designer

Id: DjLmZtTqAjg

Length: 29min 8sec (1748 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 30 2020