Man, 2017. What a year that was for my career, for real. I remember kicking it off feeling a bit antsy, you know? Just kinda stuck in a routine at my old gig. I was doing backend stuff, mostly keeping older systems chugging along. It wasn’t bad, paid the bills, but it wasn’t lighting any fires under me either. I was craving something new, something that actually felt like I was building instead of just patching.
The first big moment hit around February. A buddy of mine, who worked at a smaller startup across town, pinged me out of nowhere. He said they were looking for someone who could really dig into their infrastructure, help them scale up. They were growing fast, and their current setup was buckling under the pressure. Now, I hadn’t really considered jumping ship. My current company was stable, good benefits, all that jazz. But the idea of tackling something fresh, with more direct impact, really started to chew at me.
I ended up going for an interview, just to see what was up. And let me tell you, it was different. Less corporate jargon, more about getting hands-on. They talked about moving a bunch of their services to the cloud, setting up proper CI/CD pipelines, things I’d only dabbled with before. It sounded exciting, a real challenge. The decision weighed on me for weeks. On one hand, comfort and certainty. On the other, a chance to really grow and push myself. I talked it over with my partner, scribbled pros and cons lists that went on forever. Eventually, I just had to take the leap. I gave notice at my old job in early April. It felt both terrifying and exhilarating.
Jumping into the new role in May was a whirlwind. My first big project? Re-architecting their entire API gateway. It was a mess, honestly. Every new feature meant patching another bit into this tangled spaghetti code. I spent the first few weeks just mapping out the existing system, understanding all its quirks and hidden dependencies. It was like untangling a giant ball of yarn, but every strand was critical. I remember a few late nights, fueled by way too much coffee, just staring at diagrams on the whiteboard, trying to connect the dots.
Then came the actual building part. I pushed hard for using a more modern framework, something that would enforce better structure and make it easier for the team to contribute without breaking things. There was a bit of pushback at first, folks were comfortable with the old ways, even if they complained about them. But I laid out the arguments, showed them some examples, and eventually, they got on board. We started small, migrating one critical service at a time to the new gateway. Each successful migration felt like a huge win, a little step forward. We hit some snags, obviously. Database connection issues, unexpected latency spikes, you name it. Each time, it was a scramble to figure out what went wrong, fix it, and learn from it. I learned so much about debugging in production during those months, stuff you just don’t get in a perfectly controlled dev environment.
Around August, another significant moment popped up. The company decided to really invest in automating their deployment process. Up until then, it was mostly manual, prone to errors, and took forever. I saw this as a golden opportunity to really streamline things. I volunteered to lead that effort, even though I was still relatively new. I spent weeks researching different tools, playing around with scripts, trying to build something robust. It wasn’t just about the tech, though. It was also about getting the development and operations teams to talk to each other more, to understand each other’s needs. That’s where the real challenge was, getting everyone on the same page.
By the time October rolled around, we had a pretty solid CI/CD pipeline in place. Deployments went from taking hours, with fingers crossed, to minutes, with confidence. It felt incredible to see that shift, to know I played a big part in making everyone’s lives a bit easier. I wasn’t just coding anymore; I was building processes, helping a team work better. That really changed my perspective on what I wanted out of my career.
Looking back at the end of 2017, I was a totally different engineer than I was at the start. I had tackled cloud migrations, rebuilt core infrastructure, and implemented automation. I learned how to advocate for new technologies, how to manage expectations, and how to lead a small project from concept to completion. That year taught me that sometimes, the biggest leaps happen when you step out of your comfort zone, even if it feels a little scary at first. It was definitely a defining period for me, setting me on a path where I felt like I was genuinely making a difference.
