A Year of Trial and Error, and the Career Change I Chose Next

A Year of Embracing Change and Learning to Bridge Business and Technology

This year began with the development of new services and market validation initiatives. In the summer, I shifted my focus to cloud infrastructure migration and system transitions to ensure service continuity. It was truly a year full of change and challenges.

During the development of a new product, we faced an unexpected challenge. Communication gaps during the upstream phase led to significant delays in requirement definition. Meanwhile, a shift in business direction rendered the previously defined requirements obsolete, ultimately resulting in the project being put on hold.

As the project progressed, I realized the importance of carefully distinguishing between “facts” and “opinions or hypotheses” in stakeholder requests. This experience underscored the necessity of designing solutions that align seamlessly with both business objectives and technical goals.

Throughout this year, I gained a deeper understanding of the challenges involved in properly aligning business needs with technical implementations. I also reflected on the critical importance of achieving this alignment. The key to smoothly progressing a project wasn’t about increasing the amount of communication. Instead, it was about ensuring aligned understanding among teams and stakeholders. This approach helped reduce communication costs and allowed the team to focus more on development.

As I approach the Final Month

This year, my mother was diagnosed with duodenal cancer. It was discovered by chance during an endoscopy, and I believe it was the doctor’s “intuition” that ultimately saved her life. While many say she was “lucky,” this experience has reinforced the need for a platform that can make such intuition visible and enable learning across departments and hospitals. Being involved in a service that combines medical DX with education has held a particularly special meaning for me in my career.

I joined my current company during its first year of establishment, driven by the desire to deliver engineering that truly helps others. Throughout my work, I’ve always focused on creating value for both “end-users” and “team members.” Being part of the journey where a service takes shape and witnessing the moments when the team grows have been incredibly rewarding experiences for me.

This year was a continuous cycle of trial and error in the challenging context of business downsizing. Even after successfully developing an MVP, we faced the bitter experience of being unable to move forward, resulting in increasing costs. Yet, the lessons learned through this iterative process were invaluable. What I found most rewarding was the growth I experienced by focusing not only on my own challenges but also on addressing the challenges faced by the service and the team. It was a truly fulfilling journey.

This is my fourth company, and I firmly believe in the significant social impact that the vision of this organization can achieve. While the future of the service remains uncertain due to business downsizing, I still feel that what we have built so far holds the potential to impact many lives.

In this final month, I want to move forward with gratitude for this service and the team, while preparing to carry the experiences I’ve gained here to the next stage. I am committed to giving it my all until the very end.

Moving Forward

Starting in February next year, I will embark on a new career as a Technology Specialist (Digital Application & Innovation) at a global IT company. In this role, I will leverage cloud-native technologies to drive PoC and MVP initiatives, addressing technical challenges and supporting clients in achieving their business goals.

I decided to make this career move because organizational turmoil made it increasingly difficult to operate with agility, leading to repeated discussions without tangible progress. While I have gained many valuable lessons and growth opportunities through trial and error in the past, the sense of stagnation became undeniable. To overcome this feeling and push my career forward once again, I chose to take on new challenges in a fresh environment.

Since starting my career as an engineer in 2011, I have worked as a backend engineer, gaining experience across frontend, server-side, and now infrastructure. Having consistently been involved in service development, this career change represents a significant turning point for me, and I admit I feel a bit uncertain. However, through this new challenge, I aim not only to leverage my past experience but also to gain fresh perspectives and deliver value in the next stage of my journey.

Cloud infrastructure, while convenient, can easily become overly complex. I believe the key lies in maintaining simplicity while delivering optimal solutions. By leveraging the power of digital technologies, I aim to deliver value quickly to clients with limited resources while also proposing solutions that go beyond traditional frameworks. In this new environment, I look forward to embracing challenges and dedicating myself to making a meaningful impact.