From Chief Enterprise Architect to Developer
Tags: programming, career
Published: 2018-02-27 18:16:15

---
title: "From Chief Enterprise Architect to Developer"
published: true
tags: programming,career
canonical_url: https://medium.com/@geraldcroes/from-chief-enterprise-architect-to-developer-81d225f40c15
---

![](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1024/1*jEkqhRqzDpRdnk8nb-go4g.jpeg)<figcaption>Photo by Gerald Croes — Mini World Lyon</figcaption>

You’ve read the title right, I’ve quit my (dream) job — CEA — for a new job — developer.

Now, I’ll wait a minute for the information to sink in.

…yes, that’s what I did.

All things considered, I might need a minute for myself too.

…Ok, that’s what _I_ did.

***

Seriously, how did that ever happen?

***

I think that it has to do with the way I got involved in IT.

Years ago, I stumbled onto programming thanks to laziness — a native skill I managed to nurture to undiscovered levels of mastery back when I was a teenager.

Because I didn’t like wasting my time doing homework (who does?), I was drawn to buy a fancy calculator that had far more buttons than one would need to pilot a plane. “If it has more buttons, it must do more things.” Laziness having its limits, guessing the roles of each button turned out to be quite ineffective, so I had to (grudgingly) open the 500-page manual … where a chapter caught my attention — _Programming Your Calculator._

Of course, buying a calculator doesn’t make you an “IT guy/gal”, at least no more than having acne during your teens or being socially awkward when standing in a 5-meter radius of a person of the opposite sex (even if both can help).

So the extra factor that came into play was my math teacher who, casting a glance at my new device, stared at me with a smirk, “Don’t put high hopes in _that_ because it will prove to be useless when working on matrixes. I’m interested in the reasoning, in _every step_ leading to the result, _not_ by the result itself.”

Challenge … accepted!

> No, the matrix wouldn’t have me.

So I eagerly went back to the manual and started to learn programming. If it were possible, I would make _that_ show _every step_ leading to the result.

And guess what?

Worked like a charm.

I managed to get the maximum mark for the test (in 15 minutes instead of the four scheduled hours), and I also managed to get calculators banned for the entire class. (No, didn’t see that coming.)

Anyway, I was hooked. I started to program everything I was taught instead of talking regular notes (whether I would have the calculator for the tests or not). The funny thing is that my math teacher and I started to get along together because I had been transformed into the most benevolent student, asking questions about every detail and edge-case about the formulas we were taught.

At the end of the year, I had become good at working harder to do less … although in the end I am not sure if I actually worked less than if I had been willing to do more.

The story could have stopped there and then, but one day, as I was facing every students’ dreaded conundrum (What do you want to do in the future?), I discovered the most unbelievable thing— “You know, if you like programming, you could do that for a living … I mean … work in IT.”

Developer was an actual job. People were getting paid for programming.

Not so dazzling when you remember that kicking in a ball is also a job, but great news nonetheless for someone who has two left feet.

Anyway, I went to an IT school and learned programming (for real).

> “Choose a job you love and you’ll never have to work a single day.”

After graduation, I joined a consulting agency and worked on many different projects.

Out of habit, I kept working during my free time to get rid of tasks I didn’t enjoy during the day. I learned new (and more concise) programming languages, I developed an IDE with code completion and macro recording, I wrote a framework that handled routing, security, templating and that had an embedded ORM, I tinkered with a dependency injection framework, I met design patterns, I programmed code generators, packaged reusable modules, designed a content management system, and so on.

> I did all this during my free time … so I’d have more fun during work hours.

And since I had gathered so much experience (working extra hours), I started to share my knowledge with my teammates … and it became part of my new job.

Habits being habits, I started to read books about optimizing teamwork, learned about agile methods, about dozens of tools that would help us improve our delivery … and since I had managed to put all this together … it became part of my new job.

Habits being habits … well, you get the drill … it became part of my new job … and I ended up being CEA.

But the more I became involved in business and management, the more I began drifting away from code. The more I was using the whiteboard, the more wistfully I looked at my keyboard. The more I was a CEA, the less I was in touch with _why_ I got involved in IT.

But one day, a friend of mine disclosed the most unbelievable thing — “You know, if you like programming so much, it’s still a job … ”

So it became my new job, and I’m quite excited.