The Start(up?) of Something New
After graduating from my university back in 2017 with the world’s best GPA of 2.93, I did what every new graduate in the tech industry hoped of doing since they started down the path of debt and uncertainty: get a job.
Being a native to Washington (yes, the state — and no, I’m not saying Washington State…), I envisioned working for all of the big boys — Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Netflix, Apple. Having only wrote my first line of code back in 2015 (it is a long story), I was quite blind to what my interests were in the field. All I knew was I got a shiny degree with several months of internship under my belt and countless hours of “learning” by making throwaway applications and dabbling in as many technologies as I can just because I loved doing so — hence the super awesome GPA.
Alas, I was not destined for Washington. Instead, the winds of change carried me East and dumped me in the middle of the country in a magical place named Kansas City, Missouri (I was freaked out by the fact that Kansas City was in Missouri!) with the illustrious Cerner Corporation picking me up — they were definitely not acquired by Oracle at this time.
I went through the motions — onboarding, doing an initial project, and getting selected by a team. And now, I was ready to hit the ground running.
I went through the motions over the next year feeling accomplished and that my life was complete. I honestly felt like I conquered the whole damn world and I was on track for greatness. But something was brewing, something that I did not even bother with until that time: I did not feel challenged.
For reference, the technology that I was using was AngularJS (yes, that one), Java, and Oracle DB, as well as some proprietary technologies used by Cerner. Up until that time, I had the grand illusion of, “This company will listen to reason and use the newest, coolest things because, why not?!”. Of course, this did not work out as planned.
I got the opportunity to do some roundtable demonstrations and preach about using some technologies that would have *obviously* made things better. But, alas, things happened the way they did and I moved on from the company.
Hiatus
From the time I left Cerner in September 2019 to April 2020, I was in a weird world. I went back to Washington because it was the only place I knew — that, and I did not have enough money to live on my own because taxes, pay, and a whole pile of excuses that I an think of.
During that time, I applied for jobs, but was not sure of what I necessarily wanted. I wanted to work in a corporation because why not? However, there was a new part of me that was forming. With the experiences I learned at Cerner, I had this *thing* against corporations. The structure, procedures, ceremony, the BS, all of it just started irking at me as time marched onward. The biggest issue that I had was not that the work was boring, but I could not be creative. I wanted to have the ability to let my mind run and take an abstract problem and figure it all out through fire, pain, and constant depression — the latter has always existed, so don’t worry.
The pandemic hit and things ran its course. Just before it struck, I had the opportunity to work at a corporation, but the offer was pending a government contract approval. Things happened and the offer never happened. I then got fed up and just started targeting small businesses because why not.
Start(ing) Up
In April of 2020 — to all of you who have gone through a long period of unemployment and uncertainty, I truly feel you — I finally got picked up by a company out of New Mexico named Silent Falcon. A subsidiary of Bye Aerospace, the company was initially in the business of drone manufacturing.
When I got hired, things were a little *exciting* — employees were getting cut due to them not being needed, employees were resigning for new opportunities, and other things.
Regardless of the situation, drones, only the third developer, and an idea that was born out of an inefficient industry, a PDF file, and dreams? AWESOME!!! And then, I got to do something that I never dreamed of doing ever: making a new product from the ground up.
The road has not been easy. The struggle to figure out all of the things about an industry that I never bothered about, figuring out the technologies that we needed to use, what was our workflows and processes? Regardless, the challenge was there, and I wanted to go down it headfirst — the brain was going to follow anyways, so that is fine.
It was a whirlwind, to be sure. Got a lot of knowledge under my belt with various different technologies. I got to collaborate with some interesting people and work in an industry that could surely use some efficiency improvements — seriously, though, it is broken as h*&@. Got to learn about airports, pavement, engineering firms, do demonstrations to customers, and many other things.
As expected, the abstractness of the problem and the ability to just run away with things and figure it out one painful day at a time — ok, not all of them were painful — was more than enough to not only keep me interested, it changed how I viewed software. I went from “I just want a job” to “I want to improve all of the things.” The world is honestly in need of a lot of fixing. There are so many things today that are inefficient and technology, as a tool rather than the means, is the best way to do so.
Where Things Stand
Things did not end well at Silent Falcon for me. Regardless, my contributions are more than enough to ensure that the company is able to move forward without me, and I am proud of where I helped bring things.
Right now, I am just chilling in the mountains and keeping my eye out for the next opportunity. If there is one thing that I worry about, it is that I will not be able to advance as fast as others because I never had a mentor helping me through things and pointing me in the right direction; however, the silver lining is that I am able to go where the wind blows. I am more than confident in my abilities at this point. Yeah, I sometimes apply to corporations just to see what would happen, but I would not trade the creative freedom and excitement of being in startup or small company for the safety, surety, and structure of a corporation. Are startups perfect? Nope. Was my time at Silent Falcon all roses and daisies? Far from it. Regardless, I found my niche — and I am more than happy to pursue my own interests personally and professionally with technology.
