It feels scary to admit out loud but sometimes you just have to be brave. For over ten years now I have been a software engineer, primarily focusing on backend engineering. Basically, I worked on the stuff that made the various sites I worked on work. It’s the data flows and data processing. It’s the functionality of the site, how it works and scales when a lot of people trying to access it at the same time, etc.

I’m not sure why I didn’t pursue frontend development (that’s the actual look of the site, how buttons work, etc) since that aligns a lot better with my interest in the visual arts. For the longest time I was intimidated or frustrated by the idea that I would just be writing code and fiddling with button. This did not appeal to me.

I’m tired of pursuing a career doing something I’m not happy doing.

I want to include more creativity into my day job and I don’t want to completely throw away all of my hard-fought-for experience. So in these months since I’ve been laid off I’ve been doing a lot of stuff.

• Co-founded a company with my partner
• Worked on my garden
• Worked on my art
• Read lots of books and continued to be a regular at my local library
• Lots of soul searching

Despite all that activity, I still need a full time job though. I’m no longer satisfied with the idea that I should pursue comfort from familiarity. I want more for my life.

The time has come for a career transition to UI/UX and product design. I think the term “Creative Technologist” also applies though I’m not sure how I feel about that terminology at the moment.

direction validation

I have been waffling on this transition for a long while. My anxiety is quite high at times (as one might imagine given that I have been unemployed for 5 months now). I know that I shouldn’t be thinking Big Life Thoughts™ after lunch but last night I had the realization that I should stick to backend software engineering because that is safe and I need to provide financial stability for my family right now.

enter the landscape designer

I had been all set on this thought at midnight but then I had a meeting with a local landscape designer this morning. The following series of events resulted in a confirmation that my career transition is actually the right choice for me. Validation!

After my meeting I was all fired up about taking on some part-time gardening work, but in order to find that work, I needed to create a website to advertise my services. Nothing too complicated, just a static webpage with some vanilla HTML/CSS that looks nice and allows people to get into contact with me about their garden.

I had previously started a bunch of other “simple” webpages using AI tools and often times reached a frustrating point where I have a clear vision of what I want it to look like, but no matter how I prompt an agent, the result always needs to be fine-tuned a million times before it begins to approximate the vision I had.

So today when I reached this exact same point of frustration it occurred to me that there has to be a better way.

and there is!

It’s literally the job that I have been thinking about pivoting into: Design Engineer.

The gist is that I would use design tools (Figma, etc.) to create the vision and then use AI tools to help build it using the design mockups. And voila!

It felt so validating to have this direction show up in a practical, real-world scenario. I love the internet and I think it too, like the real world, should look beautiful.

My exploration of beauty finds its way into all aspects of my life: art, home, garden. Why not work too?

I’m already not that far away from a Design Engineer so the pivot would not be so terribly difficult that it would make finding a job impossible. This feels right. I’m getting more excited than nervous for the first time in months, and that’s a nice place to be.