How a mid-career upskilling landed this Singaporean a tech role

AsiaOne

"The main ingredient to have a successful mid-career switch is to have very strong family support," quips Timothy as he reflects on transitioning his career and upskilling, that eventually landed him a role in software engineering.  Watch more: https://www.asiaone.com/video

Transcript

00:00These games are some of my favourite games.

00:05I played them with my wife, friends and also my kids.

00:11So Agricola is like, you're a farmer and then you're trying to grow a farm.

00:16But each person's ability to grow a farm is different because of a set of cards that you're

00:21holding.

00:22There's a lot of things to do but not enough time to do it.

00:23It's a bit like life.

00:24My name is Timothy and I'm a software engineer at Rafferra Kennedy.

00:31I started out as a pharmaceutical sales rep and then after that I went to manage an events

00:37company for about three years.

00:39But then after that I wanted to do something more technical and started to learn about

00:43coding and technology in particular.

00:46There's just something magical about software and how it controls every part of your life.

00:53Like phones, things on the screen or cameras even.

00:56In humans there's the DNA that controls us but in computers, the code is the one that's

01:02controlling the computers.

01:03So yeah, I was interested in knowing how that works.

01:06I would say I was around 33 when I went for my first bootcamp.

01:09I was learning about recommended systems initially and that required me to learn some Python

01:15and then I decided to join a bootcamp for data science.

01:20Then after that I realised I enjoy coding quite a bit and I decided to enrol in another

01:24bootcamp.

01:25This one is on app development.

01:27So in that course I learnt about JavaScript.

01:30I was already married with two kids.

01:32Before I did the switch, I had to ensure that my wife had a stable job.

01:35We were in single income for one to two years.

01:38So naturally everything had to be scaled down in terms of expenses but luckily we had emergency

01:44money.

01:46I think when I first started in Raffle Candy, there were other engineers that were younger

01:52than me but they had much more experience than me.

01:55But one thing good that I had also was that I brought in some of the experience that I

01:59had from my other past roles.

02:02I was comfortable talking to customers from my past experience as a salesperson.

02:05So there were some calls that I would take with customers.

02:09The most rewarding part would be one of the merchants commenting that Raffle Candy is

02:14a world-class product.

02:15So maybe really proud to be in the team that actually created this product.

02:18I don't think my kids have verbally said that they know that I switched careers halfway.

02:24My eldest probably felt it because he was with me throughout at least the three career

02:28changes.

02:29So maybe he sees his dad at home more often than not.

02:32He knows somehow that there's a change in what I've done.

02:37The main ingredient to have a successful mid-career switch is to have a very strong family support.

02:44I mean if you're married, your wife needs to be there to be encouraging and maybe hold

02:50the fort for a while.

02:51If you're not married, then your parents hopefully can be supportive and help you with it.

02:56Yes, family will be the most significant factor for where I am right now.

03:04The main lesson I learned from R-Skilling is learn more about myself actually.

03:08Like what I really enjoy, what kind of work environment I would thrive in.

03:16Actually the end goal is to one day develop an app of my own.

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