cdCon+GitOpsCon 2023

I believed I was ready to be a software engineer when I started working full-time in 2019. As an undergrad, I thought the biggest hurdle to being a software engineer was the technical interview, and since I had passed that, I figured I’ll work out the rest as I went along. To my surprise, the transition from school to the industry wasn’t as straightforward as I had imagined it, and there’s a lot more to being a software engineer than the technical basics we’re taught as undergrads. There’s an equally crucial non-technical aspect to your day-to-day work as a software engineer, which I hope to shed some light on. In this talk, I will share my personal experiences to help attendees bridge the gap between what we learn in school and what we need to succeed in the industry. These skills range from embracing ambiguity within your role to learning how to do project planning, deciding to introduce technical debt, and coming to terms with context switching, among others. Sharing these experiences help paint a much clearer picture of what it means to work as a software engineer.