Four and a half years ago, my life was at a crossroads. After almost 10 years of investing in a career that insisted on bearing lasting fruit, life confronted me with the inevitability of change. Or adapt and perhaps prosper, or persist on a path that condemned me to the doldrums of a postponed future.
I found the ad on a social network and upon accessing the bootcamp website that promised access to a promising career, I hurriedly filled out the application form. The math was too simple to think twice: three months of sweat and tears for a 96% job guarantee in a future field. After years of analyzing job opportunities, I had never found one like it, at least not serious.
Today the result is remarkable, four years as a software developer, several projects in clients and different areas, several different technologies (from C and C++ to OutSystems) and a professional satisfaction that I never imagined reaching the day I applied for the bootcamp at < Code Academy_>. And of course, being part of this incredible project that is team.it is the highest point of this short journey so far.
It's not that there was anything inherently wrong with me or with psychology. It has always been a very stimulating area for me and even today, I consider much of what I learned academically and professionally to be of incalculable value. I really believe that I work better as a team and that I'm a better programmer as a result of what I learned in my old years in psychology.
I remember the amazement of my bootcamp colleagues at how quickly I learned complex OOP (Object Oriented Programming) concepts. My answer was usually something like: “It is difficult to understand a human being, machines are simple”. Maybe I did it just to provoke them, but the truth is that studying Psychology made me a better student in the sense that I now understand better how my brain learns. But there is still a deeper aspect, as I am strongly convinced that the quality of the code/software that a programmer makes is closely linked to the quality of his thought process (analysis, organization and systematization of ideas). But I don't have statistical data to prove it, it's just a perception.
In the end, in this whole process, my biggest realization was that the more flexible you are in the way you pursue personal and professional satisfaction, the greater the probability of success. Because we are extremely adaptable, because not everything works for everyone, and because the force of circumstances is capable of rendering even the proudest of entrepreneurs, being humble and recognizing when the time for change comes can be a powerful weapon for thriving in this world that changes at breakneck speed. It's true, I've also found that software bugs are infinitely simpler to fix than people's bugs.
