This is a personal essay. If you are going through a similar career change, I hope it resonates.

I Thought I Could Only Compete on Volume

When you switch careers, you tend to focus on everything you lack.

I became a software engineer in my early 30s with a completely non-technical background. No computer science degree. No coding experience from school. I failed twice during my bootcamp and had sleepless nights wondering if I had made a terrible mistake.

I believed the only way to close the gap was to outwork everyone. Study 12 to 15 hours a day. Earn four AWS and IT certifications during a 1.5-hour commute. Take on multiple projects at once. I led a cloud storage migration and cut AWS costs by half, saving the company well into six figures annually. (At least the stamina paid off!)

But after two and a half years, I started to realize that raw effort was not the only thing carrying me.

I Did Not Call It “Design” Back Then

Before engineering, I was an elementary school teacher for eight years.

I never used words like “design” or “operations” at the time. But looking back, what I was doing was remarkably similar.

I designed lesson plans for over ten subjects. I built systems for how a classroom of 30 students would function as a group. I planned and ran school events. I coordinated across faculty to keep things running smoothly.

With 30 children sharing one room all day, conflicts were inevitable. I did not just resolve them in the moment — I redesigned the rules and relationships each year to prevent recurrence.

In Japanese schools, students handle their own cleaning and serve lunch together as part of daily routine. How you structure those routines directly shapes classroom culture.

If a routine caused friction, I tightened the rules so students could act without hesitation. If the rules no longer fit, I explained why and changed them with the students. (These daily routines mattered far more than they might sound.)

Looking back, all of it was a form of design and operations.

Multiple Roles in One Classroom

A teacher is simultaneously a manager, a coach, a designer, an implementer, and an operations lead.

I watched each student’s motivation and adjusted my approach. I handled parent communication — essentially client management. I supported individual growth while keeping the group moving in the right direction.

And I kept asking myself: “What do these children actually need for the future?” That question made me update my teaching philosophy year after year.

What Stays After You Change Careers

It was demanding work, but watching children grow made it deeply rewarding. I loved those kids, and that is what kept me going for eight years.

Recently, I realized that the skills I built during those years did not disappear when I changed careers. (That realization is why I am writing this.)

As an engineer, I have been learning new technical skills every day. But the instinct for designing systems that help others succeed — that was already there, built in the classroom.

Here is what that looks like in practice:

  • Mentoring junior engineers — Gradually increasing task difficulty to build confidence. Guiding them to find answers on their own. Thinking about what drives real growth.
  • Hosting internal workshops — I took a chance on sharing what I had learned from a book with colleagues. 14 people showed up. The goal was never just content — it was creating a space where knowledge sharing felt natural.
  • Building an SRE team from scratch — I separated SRE responsibilities from IT operations and formed a dedicated infrastructure team. What made it possible was prioritizing the team’s success over my own credit.

SRE and Platform Engineering follow the same principle. Building great infrastructure is not enough — the real value comes when development teams actually use it, ship better products, and create impact.

Maximizing the success of others, not yourself.

The engineer I want to become is, in many ways, an extension of the teacher I used to be.

I Forgot About the Insecurity

I used to worry constantly about being a late starter with a non-technical background.

Now I think how you see your work, how you try to improve it, and how seriously you take it matters far more than when you started.

What you build stays with you, more than you might expect. It shows up later in a different form. The care you put into your work lives on inside you — and for that, I am grateful.

None of this would have been possible without my family’s understanding and my colleagues’ support. I made plenty of mistakes along the way, but people around me kept saying “You will be fine.” That is what kept me moving forward.

I want to keep trusting what I have built, and keep doing my best with whatever is in front of me.