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Sk Imtiaz Ahmed
Sk Imtiaz Ahmed

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Quitting After a Decade In: Lessons I am Carrying Over

A decade in software engineering feels both long and short—long enough to burn out, short enough to still wonder what’s next. As the new year begins, I find myself at a crossroads, not just reflecting on my career but actively stepping away from it. The outline for this write-up took shape in my mind a month ago. As the new year begins, it marks exactly a decade since I started my career as a software engineer. I wanted to take some time to reflect on the journey. However, the real necessity of writing this piece became evident when I asked for feedback on my previous blog post in The Neighbourhood. An old friend responded with the following remark:

"Life of a tired engineer about to open a ranch or just retire."

How does one feel after reading such a comment? A mix of emotions. The fact that this person is a department/unit head says something about the work culture in Bangladeshi software companies. But he is an old friend, and I received his feedback with humility. It also made me realize that there is some truth in what he said. Not that I plan to retire anytime soon, but I am indeed quitting software engineering.

In fact, I feel like I had already quit shortly after joining XITE. I find no joy in building software for investors—the grind has taken too much from me. I still love building software, but only the way I started: for fun. So, I am transitioning away from my career as a software engineer to fully focus on cybersecurity.

Do I expect this field to be free of grind? Not at all. But I no longer approach work as my starry-eyed younger self, willing to dedicate all my time and energy to building things. Instead, I seek balance and professional growth. I want to cultivate a career with stability, avoiding the erratic trajectory that has defined my past. I believe this mindset is more appreciated in the West—especially in Europe, where clear boundaries exist between work and personal life. With that in mind, I intend to carry forward the lessons I have learned over the past decade and carve out a meaningful career.

My learning process has always been painful and inefficient, but it has also been practical and lasting. For the remainder of this post, I will highlight some of the key lessons I have gathered—both for documentation and in the hope that they may help others.

1. Always Putting Yourself Out There

My career began at iQuantile when I was still a university freshman. By then, I had built a solid foundation in Python and Linux, was learning Django, and had deployed a website on Heroku for an unofficial club I had formed at university. When I showed this project to Asad Bhai, a high school alum, he asked me to work for him. I did not think it would go like that. I was under the impression that it takes 4 years of education for this to happen. Thus the experience taught me something that has stuck around so far: to always put myself out there—publish my work and seek feedback. I had a lot of fun in iQuantile and even now try keep in touch. I met Miraz bhai there. He taught me Angular.js and I learned that I would rather not. This played some role in my decision to use React moving forward.

2. Never Involve Others Prematurely

At iQuantile, I encouraged a friend to join me(yes, same friend). He had high expectations of the professional world, coming out of academic excellence, whereas I was still experimenting and appeared more clueless than I actually was. As a result, he became discouraged and abandoned web development. Well, to be more accurate I don’t think he ever meant to pick it up. But this experience taught me to never involve people with my work prematurely—at least, not before I have gained enough clarity to guide them effectively.

3. Spend Early Years Learning, Not Just Doing

Since there were not a lot of opportunities to use React at iQuantile, I was looking for other opportunities. That is when I met the brilliant entrepreneur, Fatemi bhai, who now runs DeliveryHobe. He wanted me to build its precursor called ShopHobe. Those were some of the most foundational times for my career. I got paid a lot of money, considering I was only a student. He had a brilliant idea that he entrusted me the front-end with. And I got to implement the most over-engineered piece of garbage imaginable. But I learned a ton in the process. This reinforced my belief that early-career engineers should prioritize learning over immediate productivity. And if possible, they should join a startup—because startups provide the most explosive growth opportunities.

4. Always Have a Rough Approximate of Our Self Worth

Throughout my career, I have maintained a clear sense of my professional value. When I feel I deserve more, I seek it out. This mindset led me to Julia, the founder of Language In Motion (LIM). LIM was my first experience in outsourcing my services to a Western company. Working at LIM was a dream come true. I wanted to run away from the monstrosity I created but not loose the progress somehow. The person leading the Frontend team at the time, Miras, was a brilliant engineer. He had taught me some of the best ways to use functional programming in React. I loved working there. My colleagues were all brilliant and the product itself made a ton of sense. The only downside was that I did not like being micromanaged. I did mention this to Julia but things did not really change. Instead of handling the situation professionally, I made the mistake of burning bridges. That experience taught me to never burn bridges—because the tech industry is a small world, and relationships matter.

5. Find Mentors

While working for LIM, I was casually looking for more stable opportunities. To my utter surprise, my half-assed attempt at applying had actually hooked in a big fish. Getting hired by Cefalo was a surreal experience. I never imagined any Bangladeshi company would hire a college dropout. My time at Cefalo marked the start of my "official" career. This is because everything was official now. I was a full fledged employee at a Bangladeshi company, I paid taxes and silenced my parents’ doubts with a solid income. I know people who have been there for 15, 20 years. It's the kind of place you can settle into. But what I learned then was that I have this innate aversion towards getting too comfortable. I despise complacency. And on top of that working for Scandinavian companies was a huge change in pace for me. Every thing went so slow that I was afraid of loosing my edge. I was also very unlucky compared to my colleges. Most of them had an onboarding trip to Norway and a stable team.

At one point I was just tiered of "being a consultant". It became clear to me then that I prefer to work for product companies. But the most important lesson I learned at Cefalo was the value of a respectable senior. I was very fortunate to meet Shoeb bhai at Cefalo. He is an incredible human being and I have learned a lot of humility from him. So my advice to anyone with ambition is to find mentors. Having a good mentor guiding your career dramatically increases your chances of success. I owe a great debt to Shoeb bhai for being such a person for me.

6. Always Take Care of Yourselves

After or around about two years at Cefalo, I felt I was still stagnating career wise. Thankfully someone reached out to me with quite a lucrative opportunity. I found that the decision to join Bongo was a no brainer for me. The money was great and the team seemed pretty fun. Once I did join, I immediately fell in love with everything. Bongo had a lot going well for them. Very smart employees, cutting edge tech stack, remote work culture, an amazing product, competent leaders, positive revenue, and more. I did complain a lot, while I was there, about all sorts of things. But thats only because how much potential I saw there. But then there is such a thing as too much fun. I proceeded to overwork and messed up my mental and physical health. So my advice now-a-days is always to take care of ourselves. Nothing is worth doing if it comes at the cost of our well-being.

7. Always Be Grateful

As I look back on my career, what stands out to me most is how lucky I was. I was very fortunate to have been able to defy conventional logic and get this far. I rode the hiring boom, known to many as the Great Resignation, into getting hired abroad. But I feel that my luck ended there. While being a lot of nice things, my career abroad has been a disappointment so far. So the last piece of advice that I would like to leave you with is to always be grateful for what you have and find ways to truly appreciate your situation—however bad it may seem.

Moving Forward

As I transition into cybersecurity, I carry these lessons with me. My goal is to not repeat the mistakes of the past and to build a career with intention and balance. While I will always remain a builder at heart, I no longer see work as my entire identity. Instead, I seek fulfillment in professional growth, meaningful contributions, and a life beyond work.

To those navigating their own career paths, I hope my experiences offer some insights. The journey is never linear, but with self-awareness, resilience, and a willingness to learn, it is always possible to carve out a fulfilling future.

(P.S. I mentor professionals in their journeys, find out more: imtiaz.eu)

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