"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.
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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.