Why this mechanical engineer decide to teach himself code and pursue a career in tech

Watch the full interview here : 

In this article of Stories of Hackers, We talked to Po, one of our active THC community members that always contributes and engages with us. Po is a full-time mechanical engineer in the consultancy field but he wasn't really enjoying his job, he was always interested in learning programming and now he’s looking to break into the tech industry by starting to teach himself how to code. We hope that you guys can gain some new insights through his experience, enjoy!

Can you share about yourself, your background and what’s your story? 

Hi my name is Po, I am working as a full-time mechanical engineer in the consultancy field but I am not really interested in my job right now. I realised I wanted to make a change and I have always been interested in programming since my first degree year. Around mid of March this year, I started to get serious about the idea of learning programming again and that's because of an ad from The Hacker Collective. That’s how I got to know more about you guys (THC) and also Pathforge.

You used to be an engineer but now you want to move to the software field, can you tell us from your experience, what is like working in the engineering field? 

In my opinion, it really depends on what kind of profession of engineering you’re in. Let’s take myself for an example. In the consultancy field, i would say it's a mix of business and engineering, we do engineering design also but mostly it's a lot of paperwork involving contracts and also the bidding process to get bidders to quote for the projects. We also evaluate their technical but then when we talk about evaluation, we just evaluate whether they comply to the things they have written instead of knowing really in-depth about it because in the end the person who actually knows more on the technical side is always the bidders because they do the on-site job. For us at the consultancy,  we will only know the fundamentals, we wouldn't know the hands-on thing and what the construction process looks like actually.

For your consultancy work, what sort of engineering projects mainly you guys work on?

Let's say we talk about mechanical services, the major common services that we will design are like the air conditioning system and the fire protection systems such as the sprinkle posterior, hydrant, even fire alarm system. When it comes to semiconductor factory, some of us will actually learn to design clean rooms, where it's a control environment that helps them helps to produce a better quality of products 

I would say that’s an important work, but you find that software is more interesting for you I guess?

Yeah indeed, because when it comes to designing, there's a lot of consideration that you have to think of like let's say fire protection, that one is really important because it talks about saving lives but in the process when we want to design something, we have to read the standards and we have to comply the design standards also because it's an engineering practice and some of it are not just standards but the law or the rules of regulation also if i'm not mistaken so you'll feel that sometimes your design will be actually constrained by a lot of things.

What’s your dream or maybe what’s your ambition for yourself five years from now?

I can’t speak about five years from now because I am not so sure about that either, I can only answer for the near future for now. I am actually trying to strive to land a job in front-end development that's my current, i would say consider short-term goal. For a long-term goal, I think it would be more progressively, more in depth. The first step is getting to know the front-end after taking experience to work, the next one will be going for the back-end and maybe go for full stack later. 

I actually find it quite interesting because I feel that you're not restrained by the things around you. It's not like we design the mechanical system you know, you don't have to purposely like the rule. You don't have to purposely follow the design. It's like you have slightly more freedom and it's not as boring as paperwork i would say. 

Can you also share with us your self-learning journey? As a full-time worker, it is a difficult one?

From my perspective as a full-time worker, i would say it's rather challenging because we don't have the luxury of doing it full time and sometimes there's a lot like workload  in your full time so there are times that you can't really get to continue your learning and practice but i would say the motivation is comes from what you really want, for me that’s to land a front-end job as a front-end developer because i really really want it so i will like just plan everything ahead and take any free time that i have and i'll just use it to learn and practice.

Learning front-end development, what’s a day look like to you and how do you go about it?

Let’s take Pathforge for an example. I usually start with articles and then the videos. If the video had hands-on coding project then I will follow through it and after that I will read the supporting articles to understand more on the fundamentals it actually helps a lot when it comes to understanding because i think that the understanding of the fundamental part is quite important.

I feel that if let's say if it's a person really want to land a job i think he has to he has to build a project for his portfolio. For right now, i'm still learning because i really don't have the basics yet but if let's say if i want to go to the upper stage, i think the next step will be actually like maybe look at open source projects or maybe by approaching the community like we are having right now for any open projects.

Does your engineering knowledge help you learn programming in any way?

Back then like during my degree they actually taught us the basic C language so that somehow built a bit of foundation for me to understand the basics. My engineering knowledge also helps me better to think more logically in a way which might help me in better understanding programming. 

For somewhere with engineering and software skill, what do you think is the unique thing that they can do?

From what I heard, usually people who have these two are those who actually program those machine movements if I'm not mistaken. I wouldn't say i really know but  let's say 3d printing or like drilling to tuning something to a specific shape it actually requires a certain level of coding but i'm not sure what languages to use, even for those robotic arms actually it requires the coding but then the coding is basically on like a series of movements basically the coding is just a series of movements so that they will follow the movement and the timing and also the position to create,drill holes or create products. These are mostly on the automation part.

Do you ever see yourself going down that field? Or would you prefer more on web development?

I would actually prefer something like web development because I wouldn't want to imagine myself working in a factory like looking at machines all the time.

Is there something or any message you would like to share with our community?

For those who are actually like myself who like taking a full-time job and also learning coding at night or during your free time. Try not to give up and the best way to actually keep the motivation going is remembering why why you initially started it

Thanks for the awesome interview!

Hope you enjoyed this series!

If you are interested in learning to code, whether it's web development, front/ back-end development, join us - the #1 online live coding bootcamp in Malaysia. 

Want to learn to find out more about what we do?

Learn more here: https://sigmaschool.co

Let’s get social! Find us on:

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/joinsigma/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/joinsigma/

Linkedin: https://linkedin.com/company/79085028/