Eddie

2009 was the year I made my move. I quit my job at Power Integrations after four years as an analog IC design engineer and finally made the jump to web design/development.

I had been contemplating the move for a few years already. At one point, summer 2008 was my personal deadline for the move. Then my project kept getting delayed and I pushed it back to fall 2008. Then Lehman Brothers went bust and the global financial machine seized up. Suddenly, just having a job felt quite nice.

But as spring came around again, I decided I was not happy with the way things were going and needed to make a change. Last week of May, I told my boss of my intent to quit and applied for the web designer position at Zynga (through Bigi; did you get your referral bonus yet?). First week of June, I was interviewed for web developer (not design) position at Zynga. Second week of June, I was given an offer from Zynga and immediately accepted. June 30th was my last day at Power Integrations; the following Monday, July 6th, was my first day at Zynga.

Six months later, I’ve established myself as the CSS expert and sole UI-centric developer on the team. While that means I’m assigned all the awesome IE6/7 CSS bugs, I have also been given the opportunity to do my own layouts and mockups, tasks normally reserved for the UI designers. Taking a concept from design to code—what I’ve long been doing as a hobby—is now my career.

I’m incredibly fortunate that this change has worked out so well for me. There were many places where things could have gone wrong or I could have come up short. If it weren’t for Bigi, maybe my resumé would’ve been screened out by a recruiter looking for web designers instead of ending up in the hands of the team manager, who decided that I’d be a better fit for web development. If it weren’t for the people I’ve met at TIC/AIC/TVA, I probably wouldn’t have pursued web design with the same grit and dedication. And of course, if it weren’t for Lloyd and AIC ten years ago, would I even be talking about this now?

I think the takeaway is best summed up in a snippet of the Burnham quote Gruber ended today’s post with: “Make big plans; aim high in hope and work”. That is my resolution for 2010. I hope it is yours too.