I’m a Data Engineer

(Bản Tiếng Việt)

Q. said I got many lucks in my career path. That’s sound like it! I’m clearly just a hardworking-honest-naive guy, so no surprise if luck has been playing a vital role in my life. Even though with all that, I just finally realized what I really want to do in this giant technology industry.

I always thought I was a Full-stack Software Engineer, i.e I can play any role when building apps for web or mobile, doesn’t matter if it’s from front-end or back-end. I’m telling you the truth. I have all experiences with building products, outsourcing, freelancing, from Vietnam to worldwide (bad experiences too, to be fair). I thought I was cool, until I saw US market.

Vietnamese said: birds land on good soil. Birds come to US are countless. Birds from everywhere, various color, various size. Numerous is not a big deal here, turns out many of them are really good developers, that raises the industry standard into a pretty high level. One common from the majority of them is they tend to concentrate on a very few specific topics. They then become the experts on their subjects (Subject Master Expert – SME) instead of expanding and racing with technology changes.

Hm, I probably went off topic a little…

I guess life was hard on me, from a proudly Software Engineer, I had to work as a SQL Engineer for my bread and butter, i.e only deal with SQL. Though, I’m lucky when having my managers who guided me and enlightened me, I started to learn Statistics and Machine Learning, then I joined Data Mining practices without noticing. Turns out data is very cool. Put it simple, if I can collect enough your data (both quantity and variety), I basically can tell something about your characteristics as well as your hobbits.

Few weeks ago, my direct manager had left me and Data Science team with unfinished projects. I thought I was crash. I stressed and couldn’t sleep for a while, thought hard about my career path and my future. Q. once again helped me out, wake me up from chaotic, that’s when I realized I finally know what to do next: a Big Data Engineer with Distributed Computing, and a Spark expert. The path is long and big enough for my career, and the path that I really enjoyed at every single achievement.

Life is full of blessings of disguise, all the things that we experience happen for a reason. And you Q., thank you! I know I’m truly lucky having you in my life.