Happy New Year everyone! I can’t believe it’s already 2020 now. I hope that you all have a great 2019 and will have awesome 2020 experience.

As usual I like to reflect a bit during New Year’s Eve. I think reflecting is one way to be thankful and remind ourselves what has been given to us. Also to remind ourselves that we never know what our actions would take us, just like the famous saying from Steve Jobs “…we can only connect the dots looking backward…”. Also I wanted to share my experiences for those having some doubts going into unknown paths (mostly career related).

The Beginning

When I was in junior to high school I used to like playing computer games and I’m thankful that my parents let me have the best gears they can afford at that time. Yes, the 286 and 486 DX were expensive machines at the time. Interestingly, playing games led me into learning software development in those early years. Also thankfully playing games were acceptable in my family back then.

Computer gaming was much more annoying than console gaming back then. So much configurations needed to be setup before I could even play anything. Think memmaker and qemm for those who knew them. All those hours debugging DOS and Autoexec scripts to get the games going, somehow paid off. It gave me early taste of logical problem solving thinking and some exposure to scripting language.

First Career

Fast forward to my first job years later. It which was building PHP online shops, I remembered taking it purely to give it a shot and gain experience. I didn’t really like building websites, I wanted to build native Windows application. Back then, web application were just taking off, javascript was really flaky and browsers were not that sophisticated. Mobile browsing was…. err… basic that the time.

Little did I know that that first job really paid off! These days almost all applications are web based and devices connected to the internet all the time. Of course during the duration of the job I came to really like web development.

Moving off to Wagering/Gambling

Nothing last forever though, I had to move on to the next opportunity. I had a few choices but ultimately I ended up in the wagering industry, which was one of the largest industry in Australia. At the time when I took the job, there were many people who weren’t sure that I made the right choice. Coming from an Asian background where gambling is prohibited and viewed as a negative thing, naturally I did have my doubts too.

However, I pushed on with the job (and the next jobs) in that industry. Lo and behold, that industry was probably one of the few in the world that requires extreme server scaling, cloud infrastructure, tough security and lots of IT budget. It was the years in the  wagering industry that taught me advance cloud infrastructure, an experience that was hard to get (even in today’s standard).

The Agile Ways

The other crossroad that I came across was changing my professional focus from Software Development into Agile Coaching and Delivery Lead. Which means resetting my career from ground up in some ways. Again, there was doubt, I had to leave my comfort zone! The one thinking that helped me was that I knew what my career looks like now but I didn’t know what my career would look like as an Agile Delivery Lead. I thought, better to try the unknown then regretting, so I switched discipline back then.

I think it was the best decision that I took though as it opened up so much more opportunities and learnings. I got to learn leadership, coaching, EQ, Agile management techniques, NLP (Neurolinguistic Programming) and many more. It was definitely a better career path for me. Again, choosing the unknown has paid off and only now I can connect the dots.

Agile Technica

Fast forwards a few years until beginning of 2019, I finally decided to leave Australia for a bit to set up a new business in Indonesia with my business partner Hans. The business is called Agile Technica (www.agiletechnica.com), focusing on ERP Customisation and implementation, custom web development and Agile Methodology training.

It was the the most difficult and gut wrenching decision that I had to make to date. There were many reasons: I just had my first baby that year, I was hospitalised for a while and I would have to leave Australia for a bit which have been my home more than Indonesia for so many years. As always, I thought about it deeply and came to the conclusion, better give the unknown a go. Of course while I said that, this is still a calculated decision on so many levels, I have a family to take care after all.

So far, I think this is still a great decision. Can’t be thankful enough, Agile Technica is running great with a lot more clients than I anticipated and much bigger team than I thought in the beginning. In just less than 12 months we scaled up 5 times the original team members!

I’m sure that in 2020 the company will grow even bigger and even more successful. In the mean time I’ll keep posting my articles here as usual too!

I hope that this article give some of you some inspiration about what good can come out if we get out from our comfort zone.