In this technological age, Stratpoint helps companies go digital; being the means to transform once manual tasks into virtual tasks with the simplest clicks.
Being with Stratpoint as a fresh graduate from 2013, I started out as a Ruby on Rails developer supporting a large-scale web application from development to production deployments. It wasn’t an easy task. It took months to familiarize with the whole ecosystem of the project. From mere college knowledge of algorithms and theories, to learning new frameworks, integrations, versioning and many more software tools. As it is a support project, it came with investigating production issues - plus resolving them - and communicating with clients. All these became my foundation as a developer.
Years passed and I went from project to project, learning other software skill sets such as .Net and AngularJS. Now, I am a lead software engineer and technical manager here in Stratpoint handling yet another skill set that I am now most comfortable with, Outsystems. Still developing applications as before, but now mentoring and providing guidance to budding developers and assisting Outsystems project teams in the company.
Born in the Middle East(Oman) I spent most of my childhood with the close-knit Filipino community there.
Spent most of the time with the same group playing and joining different competitions. This helped a lot with being able to show sportsmanship while enjoying actual competitions. I get to chat normally with my competitors as I would outside the competitions.
Midway through my grade school in Oman, my family had to go back to the Philippines. I was scared. I will be transferring not only to a new school but also to a new environment. The competitions were real and serious for most and I had to learn to adapt while also getting the feel of how it is to be tough and stand your ground.
I got through grade school, then high school that came with lifelong friends plus experience with computer programming electives. And finally, I got through college - choosing Computer Science thanks to my high school electives - graduating from the most esteemed university in
the country. College where I almost stopped due to the family's financial problems at
the time when Typhoon Ketsana(Ondoy) hit and we were badly affected. We were able to recover after two years though my father and sister had to work abroad for it. Now, we are all together again and am thankful for it.
Applying for jobs was easier thanks to my university's competence and Stratpoint had a lot of employees from the same university. Combine those and here I am at Stratpoint.
Yes. Being a software developer, the most critical skill someone should have is the want and capability to analyze and solve problems that will help different people in the long run. This could be as simple as wanting a way to make an event like reminding possible or as large as wanting to connect people across the world. I’ve met people who came from being an operations employee, or previously part of sales and marketing, that became developers and are doing well in the software industry field.
Delivering committed features on time and making it all the way to production release to be used by the public is one of the best feelings out there as an engineer. Then, as someone who is years in the industry, the next coolest thing is having the chance to teach new engineers and see them become successful engineers.
As lead developer and technical manager, I shoulder a great deal of accountability for the success of my own development team, plus the success of teams that I provide guidance to. That massive sense of responsibility and the mental exercise with developing apps is sure to take a great deal of mental energy each day.
Another is that you don’t always get to develop what you want, you have to meet halfway with the client’s needs and the technological recommendations.
First, never give up. Times will be hard especially during college but keep walking forward.
Second, have confidence in yourself. It slips past your own eyes but you have done a lot that are great achievements and people regard you for that.
Third and last, keep being kind, but learn to guard yourself and be street smart.