I became a new front-end developer in 2022.
Spring
I graduated from high school in March.
Soon afterward, I moved to Tokyo and lived there for three months.
I was so enthusiastic while I lived in Tokyo that many people came to rely on me.
However, I just couldn’t simply be happy about this because I didn’t have enough confidence in myself.
Specifically, it felt wrong to be entrusted with training new employees, even though I had just started working in society.
I had neither experience nor knowledge through experience. I had only conventional knowledge of what books say, and I had only my interpretation, which was born from delving a little bit further into books.
I have to stand on a podium despite half my knowledge. I enjoyed teaching, but maybe it’s not good for each other.
Of course, I always study. Nevertheless, I am still determining if my knowledge works in software development as a business.
Even if I speak plausibly about my knowledge that I am not sure yet, no one notices its imperfection.
I realized my ignorance, and I realized I could only keep a persuasiveness by how I speak.
Even more troubling, I knew that someone was always above me in the outside world.
That’s why I can’t be proud if someone thinks highly of me, “You are great even though I have little experience and am still young.”
Or rather, If I am satisfied with the praise, my progress ends.
”Even with my current abilities, I can still be accepted in the IT industry.”
I thought so, and I might lose ambition. Before it happened, I had come to want to work surrounded by outstanding engineers I can never reach now.
Furthermore, while teaching HTML, I needed to answer the question like this: “Why do we need to write correct HTML?”
As I searched for the answer, I naturally knew the concept of accessibility.
Until then, I have not found a field to focus my passion, and I have gone for a full-stack engineer.
However, by knowing the concept of accessibility, a new passion was born in me.
In today’s society, where the Internet is central to our lives, if the Web cannot absorb diversity, how much inconvenience will it cause?
The back end is built for moving a system, but the front end is made to help the user’s operation.
Then, I want to cherish to face rather the users directly through the front end than the back end.
Actually, I had been asked to work together as a React engineer by another company’s engineer in late April.
However, I missed the great opportunity because I needed more hands for the project in charge then.
Not to mention, I regret it, but the scout gave me hope that I might pave the new way for myself if I tried my best.
I was pushed in the back by the hope, and by the time it had become summerlike, I had already decided to go a new way as a front-end engineer.
Summer
I returned to my hometown temporarily.
I had already tracked down the company where I wanted to work, so I would take the first step toward its dream right away.
However, back in those days, my energy had been used up.
While in Tokyo, I worked from very early in the morning until late at night, like a workaholic. What’s more, I had been taking on and overthinking them.
Consequently, My battery may have worn out. I was inept at how to use my energy in those days.
Even if I try to write a program, It’s getting dark just by deciding the file name.
Such a frighteningly helpless summer began.
I realized that the resource of thinking ability is limited.
Well, then, I don’t want to waste my thoughts on unnecessary conflict of my mind.
I had become able to think like that, and I could reconstruct my train of thought to be more positive.
At any rate, because I had no energy then, I separated from any information sources that moved my heart or made my thoughts, such as SNS, comics, TV, movies, and music.
Whether input or output, I had only focused on programming.
It’s all I can do to write 1 line of a program. There were days like that.
I might have been sufficiently in the depths.
Nevertheless, I continued writing a program all summer long.
Before I knew it, I had created 2000 commits on GitHub and wrote a program with about 110,000 lines, even if I count it as TypeScript alone.
…Was I really in bad shape back then?
Besides, I read many books, such as about UX, Atomic Design, OOUI, WAI-ARIA, and Inclusive Design.
As for the output, I developed my original UI component library and VS Code extension, probed AST, and tried Monorepos. As a side note, I tried to create a new library for the styling technique called CSS in JS, but I gave up doing it…
I still felt short of breath, and I hadn’t regained my strength yet in those days.
I always had felt like that, but from the outside, I might seem active in the summer rather than the spring…
Autumn
When welcoming September, I was getting settled through a lot of turbulence.
I had been soon itching to spread my wings towards the next step.
As though the tailwind is in my favor, my friends in Tokyo just called me. He said, “I want you to come back early.”
I started to make an opportunity to contact people of IT company.
Be that as it may, it was too a big decision for me then to apply for the job at my first-choice company.
I had been strongly attracted to the company’s backbone as “Change the Web for the better.”
However, I had a reason why I had been hesitant to join it.
The company is full of expert who has gained renown in the Web industry. Some of them are the authors of my favorite book that I had read so much that it wears out.
It is simply out of my league to join it. The company is the final destination through a long career as a front-end engineer.
The more I researched about the company, the more I thought so, and My will was uncertain. I had begun to lean toward trying after I gained experience in the other company.
However, I should ask myself.
What have I left my previous company for?
In the first place, It’s not that I want to walk a gentle slope.
Nothing is better than placing myself in a high-level environment at an early stage.
If so, I should realize there is no time like the present.
After long consideration, I finally applied for the job at my first choice company.
”Here goes nothing.”
I had thought so, but its decision made me see the light at the end of the tunnel.
I never thought I would make it to the final interview.
In the final interview, I had to make a lightning talk.
What should I talk about in front of the experts…?
I had struggled with this challenge, but by reaching the day, I had no more hesitation.
The day had finally come.
I returned to Tokyo for a job interview. It was for the first time in about half a year.
I don’t know what to say… but I was sure in deep emotion.
There were hellish days in my Tokyo days. However, before anything else, I just can’t get the sights I saw there out of my mind. Even a cityscape looks beautiful, and I had been missing the ambiance of the street I had walked often in those nostalgic days.
Now, the job interview lasted for about 4 to 5 hours.
The time just flew. The office was full of a friendly atmosphere, so it was like being a dream.
After I left the office through the job interview, I had been hanging around the promenade of the station until the time I took on the bullet train.
Whatever the outcome, my heart had been fulfilled by the wonderful experience.
Nevertheless, I was getting overwhelmed with nervousness on the bullet train.
By listening to my favorite artist’s new song released that day loudly, I had been scattering my mind.
Before the train arrived at the station in my hometown, I received an e-mail.
It was to inform me of an official job offer.
There were no useless things in what I had done so far.
The starting point I dreamt about was right before my eyes.
Even if I live around outstanding engineers, it’s up to me that I can become like them.
I felt even more potent, bracing myself more than relieved.
Winter
I joined the company in November.
I still lacked a touch of real life back then, and I felt like I was studying abroad just a bit.
It was not that I had no clue altogether, but as if I had been able to communicate in a language I just learned in a world with a different language, I felt wonder.
I have been happy to be in the company.
…
This English version is unfinished. Please see the Japanese version for the full story.