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How a mid-career upskilling landed this Singaporean a tech role
AsiaOne
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3/25/2025
"The main ingredient to have a successful mid-career switch is to have very strong family support," quips Timothy as he reflects on transitioning his career and upskilling, that eventually landed him a role in software engineering.
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Learning
Transcript
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00:00
These games are some of my favourite games.
00:05
I played them with my wife, friends and also my kids.
00:11
So Agricola is like, you're a farmer and then you're trying to grow a farm.
00:16
But each person's ability to grow a farm is different because of a set of cards that you're
00:21
holding.
00:22
There's a lot of things to do but not enough time to do it.
00:23
It's a bit like life.
00:24
My name is Timothy and I'm a software engineer at Rafferra Kennedy.
00:31
I started out as a pharmaceutical sales rep and then after that I went to manage an events
00:37
company for about three years.
00:39
But then after that I wanted to do something more technical and started to learn about
00:43
coding and technology in particular.
00:46
There's just something magical about software and how it controls every part of your life.
00:53
Like phones, things on the screen or cameras even.
00:56
In humans there's the DNA that controls us but in computers, the code is the one that's
01:02
controlling the computers.
01:03
So yeah, I was interested in knowing how that works.
01:06
I would say I was around 33 when I went for my first bootcamp.
01:09
I was learning about recommended systems initially and that required me to learn some Python
01:15
and then I decided to join a bootcamp for data science.
01:20
Then after that I realised I enjoy coding quite a bit and I decided to enrol in another
01:24
bootcamp.
01:25
This one is on app development.
01:27
So in that course I learnt about JavaScript.
01:30
I was already married with two kids.
01:32
Before I did the switch, I had to ensure that my wife had a stable job.
01:35
We were in single income for one to two years.
01:38
So naturally everything had to be scaled down in terms of expenses but luckily we had emergency
01:44
money.
01:46
I think when I first started in Raffle Candy, there were other engineers that were younger
01:52
than me but they had much more experience than me.
01:55
But one thing good that I had also was that I brought in some of the experience that I
01:59
had from my other past roles.
02:02
I was comfortable talking to customers from my past experience as a salesperson.
02:05
So there were some calls that I would take with customers.
02:09
The most rewarding part would be one of the merchants commenting that Raffle Candy is
02:14
a world-class product.
02:15
So maybe really proud to be in the team that actually created this product.
02:18
I don't think my kids have verbally said that they know that I switched careers halfway.
02:24
My eldest probably felt it because he was with me throughout at least the three career
02:28
changes.
02:29
So maybe he sees his dad at home more often than not.
02:32
He knows somehow that there's a change in what I've done.
02:37
The main ingredient to have a successful mid-career switch is to have a very strong family support.
02:44
I mean if you're married, your wife needs to be there to be encouraging and maybe hold
02:50
the fort for a while.
02:51
If you're not married, then your parents hopefully can be supportive and help you with it.
02:56
Yes, family will be the most significant factor for where I am right now.
03:04
The main lesson I learned from R-Skilling is learn more about myself actually.
03:08
Like what I really enjoy, what kind of work environment I would thrive in.
03:16
Actually the end goal is to one day develop an app of my own.
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