From Intern to Full-time: My Unexpected Journey into Software Engineering

The Unexpected Path

"How did an accounting graduate end up as a software engineer?" It's a question I get asked often, and I love answering it. Hi, I'm Boom, and my career journey wasn't exactly linear—but that's what makes it interesting.

While studying Commerce and Accounting, I discovered a passion that textbooks couldn't satisfy. During late nights between financial reports, I found myself diving into YouTube tutorials on programming and system design. My love for solving math problems, combined with a strong aversion to tedious work, turned out to be the perfect foundation for software engineering. After all, it’s the best way to automate the boring stuff!

From YouTube to a Life-Changing Opportunity

One day, I received a random LinkedIn message from Omise asking if I wanted to apply for a Software Engineer internship. I honestly had no idea how they found me. When they actually responded to my application, I said yes faster than a compiler can throw an error. I knew chances like this don't come around often.

The Real Challenge

My first two months were brutal. Until then, my experience was limited to self-study; I had never used GitHub, Postman, AWS, or any CI/CD tools. All I knew was Python and Java. My thoughts were a constant stream of, "OMG, what even are these?!"

I felt overwhelmed, doubted myself, and even questioned if I was cut out for this job. But here's what I learned: it's completely okay not to know everything. Everyone starts somewhere. The tech world is vast, and nobody masters it overnight. What truly matters is giving yourself time to absorb new information and celebrating even the smallest progress.

Learning by Doing

I’ve always been a hands-on learner. For me, the best way to grow is by doing—making mistakes, learning from them, and improving. As an intern, your team doesn’t expect you to be an expert. The assignments are designed to be challenging but achievable. I took each task, asked questions when I needed to, and gradually built my confidence. So, my advice is to take your time and enjoy the process.

Beyond the Code: The Power of Relationships

Perhaps the most valuable lesson wasn't technical at all. I learned the immense importance of building good relationships. Connecting with colleagues across different teams didn't just make work more enjoyable—it created a support network of people willing to answer questions, provide guidance, and celebrate wins together.

From Intern to QAOps Engineer

So, how did I make the leap from intern to full-time? It all came down to a single, challenging project: integrating Jira with Buildkite to display our pipeline deployment statuses directly in Jira tickets. This task forced me to learn about programming, system design, and CI/CD—all on the fly.

Little did I know that project was a perfect introduction to my future career in QAOps. If you've heard of DevOps, which automates the path for code to get to production, QAOps (Quality Assurance Operations) applies the same mindset to quality. My role is to ensure that testing isn't just a final step, but a seamless, automated part of the entire development process. The goal is to catch issues earlier, test more efficiently, and ultimately, build more reliable software. It's another form of "automating the boring stuff," but for an entire engineering team!

By the time my internship ended, the practical skills I had developed made me a strong candidate for the full-time QAOps role. Now, as a QAOps Engineer, my responsibilities have expanded significantly. On any given day, you might find me:

• Managing CI/CD Pipelines: I oversee and improve the automated workflows in Buildkite that build, test, and deploy our code, making sure everything runs smoothly.
• Developing Testing Frameworks: I create the underlying structure that our automated tests are built upon, making it easier for the team to write new tests.
• Creating Stable Test Environments: I provision and maintain the server environments where we run our tests, ensuring our QA team has a reliable place to check for bugs.
• Building Tools for the Team: I often write small scripts and applications to solve problems for our QA and development teams, helping them become more productive.

The work never gets easier because technology never stops advancing, and the challenges keep evolving. But that’s precisely what keeps it exciting.

The Takeaway

My journey wasn’t traditional, but it was exciting, challenging, and deeply rewarding. If you're starting out, remember this: You don’t have to know everything—you just have to be willing to learn. Growth happens when you step out of your comfort zone, embrace challenges, and trust the process.

So, if an opportunity comes your way, say yes, jump in, and figure it out as you go. Who knows? It might just change your life.

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