How did I move from test engineer to data engineer?
First of all, that's not the real start of my career, my bachelor's degree is in Electronics Engineering, I really love lab work, but I realized after my degree ceremony that more than electrons, I enjoyed working with information, so my first job after college was as a firmware engineer, which is right in the middle between physical experiments and collection of information. After a year of working in this field, I got an offer to start my master's studies in the same field, however, that didn't go well, so I went back to the industry and started my journey in the software world. The job I could get with my experience at that time was as a QA engineer, I spent less than three years on that path but I didn't fully enjoy it, I found it too dependent on others' work, and always left last even it's one of the crucial steps in product delivery.
So, after a year, I was really sad, I felt by that time like I wasn't doing anything good with my life, I didn't get diagnosed but I had the gut feeling that depression was knocking on the door. Also, to get everything worse, I had a hard breakup and my dad had an accident that almost killed him. Two months after the accident, the pandemic showed up. I cried and cried a lot during the pandemic times. Thank the universe I had two friends that hold it up, and helped me to see outside my little box.
One of the things I enjoy the most in life is learning, so I tried to use that in my favor. As soon as pandemic restrictions started to loosen up, I signed myself to a swimming class, trust me, I felt fear against water, I couldn't even float... The first two classes were terrible, in the third one I almost drown, but the instructor helped me out and teach me how to handle those drowning situations in the future: keep calm, move your head upside, raise your arms, and breathe through the mouth. It worked!!! I was so amazed that some little steps put together could solve this situation. I would lie if I say this is how I ended up moving to a different career, no, but now in the future, I see how that emotion of feeling in danger stuck in my head and made me learn even more than I was supposed to learn in the first place, which was swimming.
After this first swimming course, I started my journey to do a career move. I didn’t know that the position I was looking for was a data engineer, I just knew I like to study information. My company at that time was a great support to guide my progress, I had a tutor, and we structured the plan to do the move possible. I studied for almost one year to cover a reasonable amount of gaps I had in the data engineering world. This was a lucky coincidence, but during that study time, I got the opportunity to reside in another team of the same company I was working for, and that team was a data team. I entered as a QA, but there I was seeing how data processes were built out, and more importantly, I needed to understand the whole process because I was the tester. Despite I kept my QA position, I was embedded in something I really liked, so... I kept digging/asking, having meetings with data engineers to ask for explanations, and starting to do actual code contributions.
At the end of my studying year, and after six months of having joined the data team, I scheduled myself to take the interview test with a gatekeeper in the company, and guess what, I failed it, so I kept my QA engineer position. I was ready to fail it because I knew that still needed to learn a lot, I was seeing the reality in the data team I was part of, so I just kept studying, again I really enjoy learning!
After 6 months, I was ready to try again, but I chose a different way, I apply for a position in a new company, and I passed the interview process. I was so happy, all my effort paid off, but... I didn't want to leave my current job, so I reached out to my team manager and talked about my situation, at that time I was a contractor for theirs. In the end, they decided to hire me directly and give me the position of Data Engineer 2. Also, not less important, I got a salary increase.
If you got here, thank you, as you saw this is not a story of immediate success, I struggled to get out of my painful situation for years, however, I was stuck in none of the steps, I walked them all, and at the end, I became a data engineer, but I didn't start this journey knowing where I could go, I started knowing that I like information as a field of study and I enjoy learning, those two mandates guided me, and now I'm really happy at my work :)
In case you're wondering, I still swim, four times a week, believe it or not, now I'm a competent swimmer, after almost two years of practice
Thank you for reading!