Small story: My career change
I sincerely hope this won’t be boring
I’ve never written anything work-related on any blog so this will be my first try. I hope this will motivate me to write about other subjects and help someone seeking guidance through a similar experience.
TL;DR
I used to be a motion designer and I’ve gone through a career change to start anew as a full stack dev. I talk about balance, going back to school and money.
10 years of motion design
For those of you who don’t know what motion design is, it is the art of making design move (as the label suggests). People will use fancy words to describe it but it is basically that.
Now, what marks the difference between someone-who-moves-design and a proper motion designer is the art of making things move in a beautiful way, that also serves the purpose of the design and subject at hand.
Here are two fun examples of what I liked to create in my free time.
Yes, I was fascinated with perfect loops.
If you want to see more of my motion design work, please feel free → Hit me
Motion design is awesome
Yes, motion design is awesome really. I became so “fluent” in the process of creating animations that I reached a point where there was nothing I felt I couldn't create. In 2D, that is.
What got to me is freelancing.
Freelancing in motion design (and without a doubt, so is freelancing in many other fields) is like having 10 jobs merged into one.
CEO, accounting, communication, community management, animation, artistic direction, product direction… and so on.
Some people like having multiple roles, but that wasn’t the case for me. All I was interested in, all I wanted to do was the core craft: animation.
Discovering code
Motion design can be done through plenty of softwares.
Blender, Cavalry, Davinci Resolve … to name a few.
But the market monopoly stands with After Effects (AE). AE is irreplaceable. People will talk about all the alternatives, including free and open-source alternatives, but none come close.
After Effects
In After Effects (AE), it is possible to “code movement”. AE is layer based. And each layer has a few default transform properties like position, rotation, scale… etc.
For example, it is possible to code random movement into one of the properties like the position property.
The following function would command the position property of that layer to move randomly every 2 seconds in a 10 px² amplitude.
wiggle(2, 10)
There are many more ways to code movement. These code snippets are called “expressions” in the AE jargon.
These expressions are written in ExtendScript, and over the years, I built a small library of frequently used expressions: AE expressions.
I became increasingly interested in coding and realized that I could create entire animations without using the default method: keyframes.
The geekee persona inside me took that as a new superpower, of course.
The design world
As I came closer and closer to the dev world, I progressively got more context and insight to be able to compare it to the design world that I knew well and the dev world seduced me to the point of no return.
The design world comes with its down sides. Like ego. In contrast, the dev world initially seemed ego-free to me. Ego was one of the main reasons I started resenting designers — until I realized that the only thing that had changed was my own perspective.
But I’m guessing that this subject could star in a whole new article.
Bootcamp
I chose a bootcamp rather than a classic education because I wanted it to be fast. My son was 1,5 yo and I didn’t want my career change to stretch in time too much.
The bootcamp I chose was carefully tailored to make me learn webdev quickly and efficiently. It was 5 intensive months from February to July 2023.
Getting started
The first month was dedicated to learning/making an MVP in simple HTML and CSS, of course, and just a tad of PHP. In a 3-people team, we made a fake space-travel agency website. That was fun.
Then we started to learn about the MVC architecture and how to dev that. That was a whole lot less fun. Looking back, I think it was less fun because learning the logic and philosophy behind those architectures, with close to zero experience, like MCV but also (later) DDD or MVVM is like painfully learning a foreign language.
Remember Dances with Wolves? Well it was like that part when John Dunbar learns the Lakota language with the Sioux people in that peaceful valley, except you’re on a schedule, your kid is growing up by the minute, you’re not earning any money, your partner is suffering from post-partum, you’re just out of covid lock-downs and it costs about 50 bucks an hour to be alive in the city.
Frameworks
Then we quickly learned about Symfony. That was the highlight of the journey, really. Learning a framework not even 3 months in, might sound a little too soon (rightfully) but in my case it helped me learn what it means to code — to develop.
In order to learn how to use a framework for the first time — when basic coding skills are still shaky — one has to choose how to grasp the knowledge at hand. These are your choices:
- Learn the how-tos: In order for my task to be completed, I want to find out how I can complete my task.
- Learn the whys: My task, as much as I want it to be completed, is a means to an end but the end isn’t the task, it is what I learn as I accomplish the means.
As you might guess, the best approach is learning the 'whys'—at least for me.
For example, it couldn’t make sense to me to use AI during that bootcamp. As you probably know, breaking and repairing stuff, with nothing but your own knowledge and search-and-find skills, is the best way to make the means valuable in your own learning curve to get to the end.
But I did have some debates over the years about that. The most common opposing argument was often along the lines of “Why bother? AI will be there always, everywhere, anyway.” And I strongly disagree with the relevance of that argument when you’ve hit your first line of code 2 months ago.
Apprenticeship
In France, where I am based, people can go through studies in a program called Alternance.
It is basically an apprenticeship where the student alternates between job and school. Your employer pays for your school fees, receives some state financial aid in return and pays me minimum wage. I study “for free”, my employer doesn’t pay me much and the school is paid for. Everyone’s happy.
This program has its up and down sides, but, that too, could be the subject of whole new article.
Apprenticeship hunting
In order for those brand new skills to amount to something, my best route was the apprenticeship, for reasons mentioned above.
The anxiety started.
Am I going to find some company to employ me? If I don’t find one, what will happen? Was those months of intensive learning for nothing? I don’t have the time to freelance this thing out and, more importantly I do not want to go back to freelancing.
I hate selling myself, as I am (wrongfully, my loved would say) always convinced that nobody cares.
Then, like rarely in my life, something broke.
Luck
I was very fortunate to find an apprenticeship as a 32 years old apprentice whose first line of code happened not even 5 months prior. I guess that the company was seduced by my 10 years of freelance (ironically), even if it was in another field. Today, I understand why that could be seducing: I’m mature, I know how to look for answers, I’m responsible… blablabla. Basically the list is what-a-gen-z-kid-wouldn’t-be cliché list.
The truth is: it was luck.
And I was (still am) ready to invest in that luck to the furthest extent possible.
I believe that life throws opportunities at us in many ways and forms and it is our responsibility to identify them and grab them whenever possible. Luckily for me and many other European/Occidental people, I was brought up, live and probably will die in a place where these opportunities are easier to identify than other places.
Plus, let’s be honest, I also was lucky enough to have a proper and privileged young education both from school and parents that geared me up with the tools and thoughts to understand that concept.
Master’s degree
I decided I wanted to carry on my studies and went on to start a master’s degree in Software Architecture, focusing on Java and Angular.
Still hired in the company paying for my studies, I started that program and couldn’t be more thankful. Learning Java has been like an epiphany for me and a real step up in my understanding of OOP like never before. I’m still shaky in my Angular skills because I’ve barely used anything other than Vue.js at work.
Conclusion
Changing careers is hard, especially if people are depending on you and all of your time cannot be spent investing that said career change.
I don’t know who this will help but here are the key lessons I’ve learnt along the way for anyone trying to go through a similar experience:
Use the difficulty, as Michael Caine would say.
It will be tough, and at some point, it will piss you off. But difficulty, like any other obstacle, can be understood and used to your advantage. Whatever career change you’re pursuing, treat the struggle as just another challenge—another step in the process. Accept it as the new default, and push through.
Leave social-media.
If you’re not careful, social media can become your new reality—but that reality is completely disconnected from your world, your struggles, and your goals. If you don’t want to leave social media entirely, at least stay off it while you study, then come back when you’re done.
Read
This might not apply to you personally, but I’ve met too many people who just don’t read at all to leave this point out. As a kid, I hated reading, but I finally understand its power. It expands my perspective and keeps my bubble from collapsing.
Identify value
In this day and age, recognizing real value is difficult. The internet and social media have created a world where being "right" is determined by engagement stats, not truth. The loudest voice isn’t necessarily the correct one. My dad used to say: Beware of people who “know.” They’re not wrong—they just know something. But that “something” isn’t necessarily what you need.
Final thoughts
The choices I made for this career change had an impact on my loved ones. Mainly my partner and son.
While all this was going on, my partner had had a very painful birth labor, my son was one of those babies who just hate sleep.
What the hell is that about by the way? As an adult, when I think about free and solo life pleasures, I can quickly list eat, sleep, pee, take a dump and masturbate. That last one doesn’t apply to a one-year-old, but the other four? He’ll practice and enjoy them forever. Meanwhile, the first two are the only things I want to do whenever I get the chance. Yet somehow, babies hate them. Enough of the tired-dad rant.
The biggest challenge, aside from balancing work and studying every night, was money.
Let’s be honest—I’ve never learned how to manage money properly, and I regret almost every financial decision I’ve made over the past 10 years.
As a single and/or childless freelancer, money didn’t seem like a big deal. But now, with a spouse, a child, and inflation driving up every price tag, the importance of financial stability has hit me hard.
When I was younger, I thought making money was just about being able to buy things. And it is. But on another level, money is freedom. And as it turns out, freedom isn’t about the size of your car, RGB lights on your computer, or living in a privileged neighborhood.
Saying that “money is freedom” is a bit of a paradox. Earning money is so essential for survival that it consumes most of the time we have in a day. So how is it freedom if all that time is spent earning freedom? Some might say that if you love what you do, then you’re on the right track. But how long does that last?
That’s a question for another article.
Thanks for reading, whoever you are.
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