From Accountant To iOS Developer: My Experience

I worked as an accountant for three years after I graduated from a school that is famous for business and accounting in China. Even though my income was enough to live a decent life in China, I was never happy with my work. Every day I would wake up asking myself “what am I doing? Is it how my life would be like for the next ten or twenty years?”

Then two years later I quit my job. I couldn’t stand it anymore. It was no surprise that my parents and friends were shocked. I travelled, read for a year for nothing. Then someday when my savings were coming to zero, I had to take another job as an financial management staff in a big corporate.

Almost one year later I was totally desperate. Every single day I counted my minutes at work, and couldn’t sleep at night because I couldn’t even face the reality that I was going to work again the next day.

However, I was doing an excellent job as a financial staff. My manager did have high expectations for me. But the better I was doing my job, the worse I felt. It was like that you knew you were sailing in a wrong direction, but the sail boat just could’nt stop moving faster.

I visited Quora every time I felt I couldn’t breathe. And then I jumped into the water.

Another door opened underwater. I learned a lot from great people like Oliver Emberton in Quora (People Who Help Me Make Career Decision), and I read those essays again and again.

At the same time I started to study Objective-C and iOS development because I was interested in coding. I had a little coding experience, only sufficient enough for building my own website. So then I started building stuff like Oliver Embertonhad suggested ( Oliver Emberton’s answer to Career Advice: At age 25, would you pursue a good paying corporate job that makes you unhappy or a hobby that makes you happy but has no guarantee to pay the bills?). The hours after work and weekends were spent coding. This went for almost a year.

Then one day when I was able to build my own app and had saved up enough money to support myself for a few months, I quit my job again. I worked on my own apps for about four months. The city library was my new home. I also built my personal blog to demonstrate my expertise in coding (JianZong). Then as soon as I had built some demo apps, I applied for iOS development occupations online. Luckily, I only interviewed for one company and I got a job.

Though my salary is a little shorter compared with my financial job, I am much happier now. Everyday is a new challenge, and I have a lot of fun stuff for me to learn. I am now eager to learn new technology and enjoy building different stuff at work.