My Journey - Becoming A Developer, a Cloud Engineer
My Tech Story to becoming a developer and to where I am right now.
My name is Jonah, a Filipina-Swedish Software Developer based in Sweden. I am passionate in learning new things related to programming and computers. I find learning and developing building apps or software systems with new technologies interesting and challenging.
The History of How my Passion and Love for Learning Tech and Software Engineering
My passion and interest in technology and programming started when I was in high school. Honestly, I never thought that I would be working as a female programmer in my life. My childhood dream was to be an architect or an engineer who designs and builds beautiful and practical houses or commercial buildings, but that dream did not happen. Getting a higher education in the university or college is not free in the Philippines unless you could afford it. My family were not rich, but we were contented and happy. My parents had normal middle-class jobs and were great responsible parents to send me and my siblings to school. When it was time for me to study for college, they could not afford to pay for the expensive tuition fees at the university. It was at the peak and end of the 90’s when the trends of Internet and technology were all so new to everyone.
So, I got interested into understanding and learning more about computers and how technology works.
Transision from the Tropical Philippines to Sweden in the northern hemisphere
Destiny, circumstances, and my own initiative made it possible for me to get a scholarship. I studied Computer Science at a university in the Philippines. My scholarship was the first step and a good start of my long journey – to the path where I am right now.
I remember back then that the technology of Internet was new and popular. My first idea of thesis was about interviewing the people locally in the society and did a tech survey about what they thought about the Internet. My ComSci college days in the Philippines reminds me about the beginning of the tech era – the 14-inch tube computers, the low-memory 3 1⁄2-inch micro floppy disks, programming logic gates, creating websites using HTML on notepad from scratch, converting binary codes into readable characters and coding in my first programming language Microsoft Visual Basic. I recall all the great old memorable days as a scholar student and different types of people I met. I always had to do my best to excel with good grades in all my subjects so that I could continue my studies as a scholar. In October 2004, I graduated my Computer Science (Major in Computer Programming) studies at Asian College of Science & Technology in Dumaguete City, Philippines.
I am a woman of faith and I have been through a lot in life. That part of my life story is not something I am ashamed of. I’ve had my pretty great share of the ups and downs in life, but I am very grateful and blessed to what I have achieved and what I have become – a stronger and better woman.
When I moved to Sweden, I took a new life journey full of new challenges but those I surpassed after years of adaptation, faith, hope, hard work and patience. I moved from my tropical homeland the Philippines to the north European hemisphere yet my passion and interest in working in tech didn’t vanished away.
I went to school again and studied more programming. I studied Agile System Development for 2 years and Java Development for a year until I started working as a Software Developer in Sweden. I learned a lot, experienced new things, developed and adapted well in my new European life and career.
I love programming, what I do, and I value true great leaders!
I love what I do. I like my job as a programmer because I have the chance and opportunity to continually learn and improve more not just my technical skills but also growing my social networks. The career path I chose is dynamic and continually growing with the advancement in the technology. If you are a programmer, you need to follow the trends in tech.
I have several years of career experience in the fields of IT, System Development, Travel, Customer Service. I have worked flexible during the past several years of my career both in the Philippines and in Sweden. I worked remotely, in the office, night shift and normal day shifts. I am diverse and worked Internationally in different roles. I worked as a secretary, bookkeeper, English teacher, writer, tech support in all levels, Travel Consultant, SEO Consultant, IT consultant, and more. Without my experiences in the past several years, I would not be where I am now. I strive to continually learn more by being a better self-taught programmer and by learning from others.
I take great responsibility in what I do and want to work effectively. I am a driven person who likes to work with interesting IT or programming projects. I can work flexible -remotely, independently or with an agile team.
Great leaders and inspiring mentors are some of the people I look up to and admire. I believe that our world would be a better place if we had more great selfless empathetic leaders.
I also value offline activities that makes me grow!
On my free time I enjoy connecting to people by being a tech mentor in few women in tech community groups. I like being role model to others by sharing my experience and technical skills through mentoring. I love spending time with my family, play chess, code my own programming projects to learn more, read non-fiction books that interests me and yes, I also enjoy gardening.
Connect with me, let's sync and collaborate
So, that was a summarized version of my journey. I may be not doing my childhood dream job of being a lady architect/engineer but being a Software Developer/Engineer kind of imitates that dream, only that is far way better! In a more creative, complex, modern, and dynamic ways.
I built this website because I want to share and connect with the right people.
I will be blogging more about my journey and looking forward you will be with me.
If you want to learn more about me, want to connect or collaborate please contact me via my social channels like LinkedIn: Jonah Andersson
