1827 days working on the web
Tags: personalnews, webdev
Published: 2018-10-07 09:33:31

---
title: 1827 days working on the web
published: true
tags: personalnews, webdev
canonical_url: https://www.chenhuijing.com/blog/1827-days-working-on-the-web/
---

Today marks the 5-year anniversary of my first role as a developer. I wrote 2 similar check-point posts previously, [one in 2015](https://www.chenhuijing.com/blog/542-days-as-a-drupal-developer/), and [one in 2017](https://www.chenhuijing.com/blog/1239-days-as-a-web-developer/), so these checkpoint blog posts seem to occur every 500–700 days. Maybe.

I was never the type to keep a journal, so this blog is as close to a diary as I’ll ever get. Between the time I wrote the last checkpoint post and now, lots of things have changed. At the time I was working with an incredible team and a fantastic boss, but due to management issues, the company is now defunct.

We’re all still in touch and meet up fairly regularly. I’m also still working with aforementioned boss, [Markus Kirchberg](https://sg.linkedin.com/in/markuskirchberg), on an entity called [Wismut Labs](https://www.wismutlabs.com).

## When life gives you lemons…

With the team disbanding and the company shutting down operations in Singapore, the logical option was to find another job. But at the time, I had a reasonable amount of savings and really wanted some way to keep the team together, so I registered Wismut Labs Pte Ltd and together with Markus, we tried to get something going.

<figcaption>Unfortunately, we didn't take too many photos back then</figcaption> ![Team Deep Labs (missing some folks)](https://www.chenhuijing.com/assets/images/posts/1827-days/deeplabs-640.jpg)

Between Markus’s proven expertise in data analytics and management, and my penchant for building web UIs on a short turnaround, we were positioned to provide consulting for firms looking to build data science teams or start data-related projects. Although we managed to meet with a number of potential clients, we were constantly dropped in favour of large firms. Nobody ever got fired for choosing IBM. 🤷

I did manage to pick up a couple of freelance projects to tide me over but by the end of the year, a regular salary looked quite enticing, so I took a full-time position at a local payments startup near where I lived. Even though I wasn’t there for too long, I managed to accomplish quite a bit, including [a complete rework](https://dev.to/huijing/refactoring-an-inherited-codebase-pd7) of one of their product’s frontend.

## …be grateful to everyone who helps you make lemonade 🍋

In the meantime, I got invited to my first speaking engagement outside of Singapore by [Charis Rhoda](https://imakewebsites.hk/) for [Webconf.asia](https://www.webconf.asia/), as well as had my first CFP acceptance for [piterCSS](https://pitercss.com/), for the same topic (thank you, [Vadim](https://twitter.com/pepelsbey)). I hadn’t been much of a public speaker up till that point, I mean, hosting a meetup is different from standing on a conference stage, right?

But given my state of fun-employment for the bulk of 2017, I got the opportunity to do a lot of things that I probably wouldn’t have been able to handle with a typical full-time job, like getting involved with the [Chinese Language Requirements Task Force](http://w3c.github.io/clreq/charter/), writing a lot more articles, helping out with events like the [Mozilla Developer Asia Roadshow](https://hacks.mozilla.org/2017/02/devroadshow/), and travelling to speak at conferences.

<figcaption>On the road with these fine folks</figcaption> ![Mozilla Developer Roadshow team in KL](https://www.chenhuijing.com/assets/images/posts/1827-days/moz-640.jpg)

All that travel allowed me to meet and hear from people I never otherwise would have in person. I made friends with developers from the Russian-speaking web community, chatted with developers who actually built browsers, as well as specification editors. Hearing perspectives from the various roles in tech was also very eye-opening for someone who hasn’t been in this industry all that long.

## Beginning a new role

I’ve been helped along by so many people, and this makes me want to pay it forward. As grateful as I am for the opportunities I’ve been afforded, I also want these opportunities to be available to people from my region and my community.

As of today, I’m one week into my new role with [Nexmo](https://www.nexmo.com/) on their [Developer Relations](https://www.nexmo.com/blog/2017/03/14/one-year-developer-relations-nexmo-dr/) team. Personally, I didn’t even know what Developer Relations was until I met people in such roles while at conferences. After finding out what it was, I never thought it’d be a possibility for me because DevRel isn’t really a thing in my region.

<figcaption>Hello from Nexmo</figcaption> ![At the London office](https://www.chenhuijing.com/assets/images/posts/1827-days/nexmo-640.jpg)

But through a series of fortunate events, I’m excited to be taking up this new role as a Developer Advocate. I might be rubbish at it, but I would be doing myself a disservice if I didn’t give it a shot. One of the things I’ll be doing is chronicling my journey as I learn more about DevRel, from a Southeast-asian perspective.

Not sure where I’ll post those, maybe here, maybe on a separate site, but stay tuned for updates! 💃