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Web5 is here. Goodbye Web3? TBD.

<a href="https://robots.thoughtbot.com/why-i-quit-my-job-for-another-apprenticeship">medium bookmark / Raindrop.io</a> | 
Accepting my first apprenticeship at a software consulting company was a 
no-brainer. I was fresh out of college with a degree in an unrelated field and 
have never written production software before. While my computer science peers 
were accepting offers from big name tech companies, I signed myself up to be a 
student once again.
Two years later, while first in line for a promotion to tech lead, I quit my 
job and signed myself up for a second <a href="https://robots.thoughtbot.com/(https://thoughtbot.com/playbook/our-company/apprenticeship)">apprenticeship at thoughtbot</a>. My 
mindset going into this one was a bit different.
<h3>
 Apprenticeships when you already have experience — why? 
</h3>
I was, without a doubt, thriving at my job — I had been there for almost two 
years and was on my way to a well-deserved promotion. So why did I give all of 
that up for a temporary pay cut of about 50% and a backwards title change to 
“apprentice” once again?
My first apprenticeship, right out of college, was an opportunity to:
Have a summer job — it was no Google Engineer’s salary, but I was making 
the most money I’ve ever made at that point in life: a little less than $20 per 
hour!
Learn an employable skill — apparently my knowledge of titrations and 
organic chemistry did not transfer well into the tech industry.
Make new friends — it was a bit of a rude awakening to walk out of a 
classroom for the final time, and realize that my friendships weren’t going to 
be preconditioned by assigned seats or the dorm room lottery.
When I accepted my second apprenticeship, I didn’t need one for the same 
reasons. Despite the circumstantial differences, accepting my second 
apprenticeship was still a no-brainer.
My second apprenticeship, with two years of work experience under my belt and 
pending a promotion, was an opportunity to: embrace new challenges, add to my 
stale skillset, and find a place to grow.
<h3>
 Don’t be the smartest person in the room 
</h3>
As one of the earlier mobile developers, I quickly became a top contributor in 
my previous role. When I left the company, I knew the codebase extremely well —  
so well, that the tasks became mundane.
I was white-labeling mobile apps. If you thought fixing multiple different bugs 
was tedious, imagine fixing the same bug, in multiple different apps. There 
were some interesting challenges with backwards compatibility and ease of 
customizability, but I felt like I had seen it all. I wasn’t the smartest 
person in the room, but I wanted to feel dumb again — I wanted the satisfaction 
of wrestling to grasp something new, and finally understanding it.
It was a very comfortable job, and it quickly became uncomfortable to be so 
comfortable. I was plateauing before I had been in the industry long enough to 
be considered a senior developer. I couldn’t ignore the urge to make a change.
<h3>
 Invest in your skillset 
</h3>
I had two notable goals when I made the switch — to be able to work with new 
technologies and to become a better consultant.
I had been programming in Objective-C since my first apprenticeship, and though 
there were small side projects here and there through which I got to work with 
different languages, nothing really solidified until I was doing it for eight 
hours a day. Technology was ever evolving, and I was not in an environment 
where I could keep up.
I was also getting tired of being the anonymous code monkey and I didn’t see 
many opportunities to grow beyond that. Having worked so intimately on a 
product — literally getting to know its every shape and form when developing 
customizable components for reuse in each white-label app — I definitely 
knew a thing or two about good and bad product decisions. Instead of being able 
to communicate this with clients, I was often left questioning the decision of 
a non-technical account executive approving impossible designs laced with bad 
user experience. I wanted to make my voice heard.
<h3>
 Take root in a place to grow 
</h3>
Having qualified for a promotion to tech lead, you would think that I was 
growing. However, what it really meant to me was that I was good at one thing — 
mobile development in this particular code base. I wanted to know: how would I 
fare at architecting an app from scratch? At learning a new programming 
language? At being dropped into a legacy codebase requiring a lot of 
refactoring?
I was good at one thing, and that was very isolating. The promotion would lock 
me into doing more of that one thing, but I was seeking advancement beyond a 
title change.
In an attempt to stay challenged at my last job, I tried to switch roles from 
front-end to back-end. It was understandably a hard ask — the company would be 
losing a profitable front-end developer, and gaining a junior back-end 
developer. I needed time to fill in the gaps of knowledge.
I found what I was looking for in thoughtbot’s 4-day work week and 
<a href="https://robots.thoughtbot.com/(https://thoughtbot.com/playbook/our-company/time)">investment Friday</a>. A whole day allotted to learning, coupled with the fast 
development velocity and constant rotation of projects, made a software 
consulting agency an ideal place to grow beyond the apprenticeship. 
<h3>
 One step backward, two steps forward 
</h3>
Promoted to a developer once again, I’m glad I made my decision. Since I became 
an apprentice, I have dabbled in Ruby on Rails, built a greenfield app with 
React Native, and picked up consulting experience through frequent client 
engagements. My once plateauing learning curve is once again on the rise as I 
delve into new ways to bring better software to market. I’m looking forward to 
doing even more.
In my short time in the tech industry, I have met two types of developers — 
those who have 10 years of experience, and those who have 10 years of one 
experience. Which will you choose to become?
<div><a href="https://robots.thoughtbot.com/why-i-quit-my-job-for-another-apprenticeship">https://robots.thoughtbot.com/why-i-quit-my-job-for-another-apprenticeship</a></div>

Why I Quit My Job for An(other) Apprenticeship

Why I Quit My Job for An(other) Apprenticeship

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