I started grad school in 2017, pursuing a master’s degree in cybersecurity. Graduating in December 2018 was a significant milestone, marking the beginning of my professional career. Shortly after graduation, in March 2019, I secured an internship. I’ll be honest, this internship paid the least compared to my previous experiences, but it was invaluable in terms of the knowledge and skills I gained. I have no regrets and am incredibly thankful for that period.
After completing the internship, I landed my first full-time job in September 2019. I worked there until March 2021. One of the highlights of this job was laying the foundation for the company’s entire observability and monitoring platform. I also identified and shut down redundant services, saving countless hours of work by streamlining processes and creating internal tools. Although it might not seem like much, I was the sole person handling all these tasks. Transforming a company from having no observability and monitoring systems to having state-of-the-art solutions was no easy feat. I had the support of the lead engineer, to whom I still give a lot of credit.
Then, I moved to my current job, which I stumbled upon by accident. It turned out to be one of the best decisions I’ve made. In my first year, I saved the company around $1.2 million by moving to spot instances and containerizing applications, significantly reducing costs. I introduced ARM-based processors to our workloads and designed advanced application performance monitoring (APM) solutions. One of my proudest achievements was setting up a completely new security system that stops over a billion malicious attacks yearly. Additionally, I introduced HTTP/3 for our sites, ensuring they are faster and more efficient (WIP).
Looking back, these experiences have shaped my career and helped me grow both professionally and personally. Each role and responsibility taught me something new and valuable. From my beginnings as an intern to saving millions and enhancing security, my journey has been both challenging and rewarding.
But it’s an irony because I’ve been doing this since I was 9 years old. But sadly, the world does not count that as experience. I guess that’s just the way the cookie crumbles.