Intro

How life was as an IT Professional

A little bit of context before I go on to how I made my shift.

In 2001, I started out as a Software Engineer trainee in one of the largest Philippine IT companies back then, Software Ventures International Corporation (SVIC). At that time, mainframe programming was still “da bomb!” If I’m not mistaken, almost 80% of the trainees for that year still went through the same training, and only two batches were allocated for web programming.

During the training, some of my training batchmates and I took on a Java programming course outside of work; on Saturdays. Java was still growing in the Philippines at the time, and we wanted to get ahead of the curve. As they say, we have to be ahead and go where everyone is going even before they get there.

When I graduated from training, the company assigned me to a Java project due to my learnings and accolades at that extra-work academy. Yey for me! I didn’t have a chance to experience a mainframe project, but I still appreciated the programming and scripting languages I learned — COBOL, JCL, CICS. I loved CICS because it involved the UI.

And even before SVIC, I was already into web designing in college, where I took up Industrial Engineering (IE).

IE and Programming… “WHAT?” right?

Retrospective: Back then, you take what is available. At that time, the work demand for IE wasn’t that high, and the starting pay for engineers was not attractive. Most of the IE work was also very far from where I lived, and that’s what led many of my batchmates to shift to IT. Hey, it’s just one letter, right?

Back to 2001, my first actual project was Java, and I had a really good team lead and mentors. My web design skills were my main arsenal as I had the latest knowledge on Javascript and CSS. I learned what I could from my team leaders and I made my way to being a UI Designer and UI Technologist. At the time, they weren’t even a thing in the Philippines.

Fast forward to 2004, I left SVI and moved to Pointwest Technologies Corporation (PTC), which eventually grew to be the Largest Filipino-Owned IT-BPM Company in the Philippines. It was in Pointwest where I spent the rest of my 16 years as a UI Designer slash Java Developer slash UI Architect slash UX Designer. The company was only in their second year of operations when I joined, and it was where I met a lot of my mentors and found a lot of friends.

It was like my second family, come to think of it.

On the side, I grew my consultancy skills as a Customer Experience Designer and Digital Marketing Specialist; helping companies grow and nurture their customer base through seamless digital-to-offline channels.

(To date, I still do this on the side.)

But there was still something missing, and there was this feeling that all the effort I was putting in was either unrecognized or that I could achieve so much more doing something else. Sometime around 2011, we put up our wedding photography business. But even then it felt like I was restrained.

In 2019, I started my journey as a financial consultant. After careful deliberation and discussion with several insurance companies, I chose Pru Life UK. After 5 months of being in the company and with the other agents and managers in the Lazurite District, it started feeling like a new home.

It was then that I asked myself: If I was doing so well and I had a second family in Pointwest, why shift careers to being a financial consultant and move to Pru Life UK under Lazurite?