👀 Starting Out: Villa College Days
At Villa College, I started as an IT Officer handling everything from printer troubles to network issues. What most people don't know is that working at an educational institution had its own unique challenges. The doctors (faculty) there had particularly high expectations - make one mistake during a class presentation or while fixing equipment, and you might get scolded right in front of students. Nothing builds character quite like troubleshooting a projector while a professor gives you the death stare!
During this time, I was also building a Movie Renting Software for my diploma project using Visual Basic. The interface wasn't winning any design awards, but I was pretty proud when I got that payment system working without crashing every other minute.
The WAMCO Experience: Tech Support with a Side of Heights
At WAMCO (Waste Management Corporation), I became something of an IT field technician. Here's something not on my resume: as a self-described "fat nerd," climbing tall ladders to install network equipment and cameras was honestly one of the biggest challenges! There I was, huffing and puffing up ladders with equipment in hand, questioning my career choices while trying not to look down.
The culture was straightforward—keep everything running, regardless of conditions. I learned to create solutions with limited resources, a skill that's proven invaluable throughout my career.
Banking on Growth: Learning at BML
Moving to Bank of Maldives felt like stepping into a different world. Suddenly I had the title "Information Systems Engineer" and was fixing bugs in systems where a single mistake could affect someone's money.
The code reviews there were intense but incredibly educational. One of the biggest lessons I learned was to avoid nested for loops when doing database changes—a performance insight that has shaped my coding practices ever since. The senior developers would meticulously go through each line, questioning design decisions and suggesting alternatives. Those sessions were intimidating but transformed how I approach code structure.
For the Dollar Sale Portal project, I spent considerable time implementing Laravel Queues to handle asynchronous processing, which would have significantly improved performance. Unfortunately, that particular feature never made it to production—one of those slightly disappointing realities of development work where sometimes your most innovative solutions stay on the staging server.
SME Finance: Current Challenges
These days at SME Development Finance Corporation, I'm building software that helps businesses secure funding. Interestingly, the biggest challenge hasn't been technical—it's been adapting to the company culture. Each organization has its own unwritten rules, communication styles, and expectations. Learning to navigate these cultural nuances while delivering quality code has been a whole educational experience in itself.
I work with OCR technology to extract text from documents (which is both fascinating and frustratingly finicky) and build dashboards that make complex data digestible. We've had projects where requirements changed midstream, requiring quick pivots and architectural adjustments.
The Multilingual Developer Brain
Working with multiple programming languages creates some interesting mental patterns. There are days when I catch myself writing Python syntax in JavaScript code or looking up PHP solutions when I'm actually working in TypeScript.
Each language has its own character: Python feels logical and straightforward, JavaScript is versatile but sometimes perplexing, and PHP—while not the trendiest—remains reliably useful for certain tasks.
Navigating Cultural Transitions
The technical learning curve between jobs was steep, but the cultural shifts were even more pronounced. Going from an educational environment where timelines were flexible to banking where minutes of downtime had significant consequences required serious adjustment.
Documentation standards varied wildly between organizations. At WAMCO, basic notes were sufficient, while at BML, documentation was treated as mission-critical. I once submitted what I thought was a thorough document only to have it returned with extensive correction marks and comments.
Side Projects: The After-Hours Learning Lab
Between my full-time roles, I've worked on several side projects that have expanded my skills. The FSM website taught me the complexities of user permission systems. The Travgo Maldives project showed me that development environments can be deceiving—things that work perfectly in testing might fail spectacularly in production.
Working on the Matcon website, I experienced that heart-stopping moment when a content management system suddenly malfunctioned. After the initial panic subsided, I traced the issue to a configuration file that had somehow reverted to defaults—one of those moments that teaches you both technical debugging and crisis management simultaneously.
🎶 Looking Forward
Eight years into this tech journey, my brain is filled with programming languages, frameworks, and cultural adaptations. What I've learned is that being adaptable isn't just about mastering new syntax—it's about understanding how to function effectively in completely different work environments.
For those just starting in tech, my advice is to embrace both the technical and cultural learning opportunities. Pay attention to the unwritten rules as much as the coding standards. And remember that even in the most challenging moments—when you're balancing on a ladder installing equipment or watching your code get dissected in a review—there's valuable learning happening.
The tech journey continues, and I'm curious to see what languages and cultures I'll adapt to next!
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