kulat.co

Hello.

Sun, 10 Nov 2024 00:00:00 +0000

We’re so back?

I stopped even thinking about this site in last May. Truthfully, I was approached for an awesome job at a great company around early June, and am still working there today.

Something that my employer has really emphasized is leaning into our professional development, which is something I oft neglected after getting hired. Turns out, it’s extremely easy to get complacent once you’ve achieved one of your goals.

What I’m looking to do is twofold:

Updating the site, maybe weekly with something I’ve learned or a thought I’ve had about things ranging from engineering to a random tangent. Doing something is better than nothing, I suppose
Working on a project to help track goals. Currently, I have 3 requirements in mind, in order of :

Functions to set a goal, set an end date, make posts/updates to the goal with progress
Add login functionality and incorporate the ability to save updates
Add a GUI

This will be good practice for writing an API, manipulating HTTP calls, authentication and design. And I’ll be the only user on it B)

Thanks for reading!

Where do I go from here?

Thu, 08 Jun 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Getting hired is hard.

I’ve been applying to software jobs (at least 5 good ones per day) for about a month now, having graduated with a bachelor’s in comp sci. So far, it’s been less than stellar.

The answer is simply to keep applying, but being faced with this reality is certainly disappointing - after all, starting what I view as my long-term career and securing financial stability is a dream that I share with millions of other new college grads.

I think, ultimately, this is a good thing (at least for me).

I’ve self-reflected enough to understand a few things about what I’m missing, and what I’d like to accomplish in the near future that has increased my motivation tenfold. Thinking back on my time in college, there are a few things that I didn’t do that would help me out now.

Being active - joining clubs, participating in on-campus activities, keeping contact with other students
Being proactive - more time studying outside of my educational obligations, and spending way more time building projects
Being excited - wanting to build things and to work harder at my long-term goals

I think all three of the above points boil down to one thing: motivation. And I can say with 100% certainty that I am definitely not the only student of computer science / software development that didn’t take proper advantage of the opportunities I was given. I worked full time through the last 3 years of school, experienced a pandemic, moved out of my parent’s house, got a dog, begun planning my wedding and then moved a second time! Those things made it so simple to rationalize not putting the time into writing code that I should have.

I realize now that those things, while true and a part of life, were not what was holding me back.

I hate the idea of “hustle culture” that gets perpetuated online, that any time not spent working towards advancing yourself, your career or your bank account is time wasted. Unfortunately, the AI startup CEOs making 10,000 word posts on LinkedIn about firing people for showing up to work 10 minutes late once a month occasionally have a point.

Maybe not a healthy work-life balance, but a point.

So what’s this post’s conclusion? Where do I go from here?

In essence, there are three things I have to keep doing to better myself in my career path:

Leverage my resources online to network and connect. Discord in particular is amazing for this sort of thing.
Keep applying while building out my resume. After all, one good opportunity is all it really takes.
Start building more things, researching more tools and practicing more development!

Real simple stuff right? After all, the motivation has always been what I have struggled with.

For now, I’m going to write one of these once a week (they will usually not be weird diary entries like this) and keep thinking of projects to build.

In six months, I want my GitHub to look CRAZY, and I want there to be a lot more content here to look at.

Thanks for reading!

Welcome!

Tue, 30 May 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Here’s my first post!

Felt like refactoring my website to make it easier to write blog posts and record my experiences at this point in my career. Now, the blog posts can have simple tags and are all written in full markdown, so the styling is customizable and real easy.

Currently, I plan on updating this site with tidbits on what I’ve learned, and the projects I’ve completed as a part of my portfolio. I plan on writing each project in a blog post and apply the “project” tag to them.

Thanks for checking this site out! If you have any questions or want to contact me, all the information you need is on the Contact page!