10th-year developer, starts to Medium
Hello, I work as a server developer at Samsung Electronics. 2021 New Year has come, and a few days ago, an executive in charge of my group sent me an email.
“Happy birthday, Ethan! Have a nice day with your family.”
Actually, that day wasn’t my birthday. It’s been 10 years since I joined the company, and it was a happening that the company’s personnel system marked the day as my birthday. Well, whether it was my birthday or the 10th anniversary of joining the company, it was actually a good day to hear the warm words from the executive who cared for me.
But at the same time, I’ve been working here for 10 years. It’s been 10 years since I worked on the development of the s/w field since this is actually my first job except for the former company that I worked as an intern during my university life. That’s how I came to look back on the path I had taken from Samsung.
Starting with a month of training with my first colleagues, I spent my first month in training at a training center, and I filled my new employee’s days with a clean brain that had no knowledge and mixed knowledge to complete tasks that came in from day to day. As my years are getting older, I think I’ve improved from a junior developer to a senior developer by guiding some of my juniors as a leader, taking the initiative in one part of the project, and making my voice heard in front of my senior colleagues.
I was actually lucky to join the company. When I joined the company, it was the beginning of a smartphone era that was a hit all over the world with the Galaxy S and the Note series. With the creation of a number of services based on the completely different Android ecosystem, our company has absorbed a lot of people to develop media and services, which seems to have helped me get a job.
I think I also had good luck with the project. We joined so-called hot services (Media Content, Cloud Service, Health, LBS, Big Data) and I was able to access a variety of technologies. And I was selected by C-Lab, an in-house startup support program, and I had experience of completing AI-based digital health service from the first planning to development for a year. I poured everything into it, and it was really thrilling. Recently, while working in Blockchain development department, I have experienced developing my own technology related to Privacy. Some of my colleagues have been in charge of invisible management for 10 years, and I think I was very lucky.
However, there were many things that I was disappointed with as much as the good ones. Our company is a manufacturer. The main profit source is the profit margin from selling the h/w device called smartphones, so the business model is also focused on handset sales. The life-cycle of IT services start with the launch, but the life-cycle of manufacturing are different from those of IT. The service under development was merely a supporting role for the new handset, and the life cycle of the service was also absolutely affected by the device’s development cycle. In this situation, the technology is perfect for fast acquisition and application of trendy technology, but it’s hard to deep dive the technology domain for a long time.
In addition, the in-house culture, which requires strict industrial security, has not been very active in sharing something or interacting with developers or communities in other companies. I often attended conferences and seminars, but I don’t think I was very active. I was used to listening to other people’s experiences, but it wasn’t enough to share my experiences. It’s a reality where I don’t have a single piece of data on a lot of slide-shares and YouTube.
I’ve seen a senior for the longest time in this company, and he I respect the most often says this.
“If you don’t disclose the technology you’ve worked hard on, it’s not yours. Also, if the technology was not used, it would be nothing.”
That’s why I started Medium. I don’t know that much, but I wanted to make sure that what I knew was really what I knew, and if so, I really wanted to make it mine. The best way for it was to share it through Medium. The process of sharing naturally makes it well-organized, and I think the process of organizing it will probably make my knowledge stronger. In addition, I think I can get valuable feedback from the readers.
And lastly next week, I’m going on paternity leave soon. Due to personal reasons, I decided to take care of two kids myself, and I’m looking forward to spending time with them completely, and I’m also worried about whether I can do well. Also, taking a certain period of leave in the development field is a big risk factor.
So I decided to organize my development experience, study, and start a small personal project. I haven’t decided on a specific project topic, but the direction is…
1. Try to implement the technology I’ve tried again.
2. Try to implement the technology I’ve never tried before but wanted to do it myself.
3. Try to make services that are helpful in real life.
That’s about it.
Whether I’am willing or not, it can be three days. But when I think about it, when I start writing right after joining Medium, as always, I think it’s a good start. With excitement, I’m going to put down my keyboard now.
