A new challenge
Current situation
As written in my profile(this is an archived version as the actual about page got updated) my current programmer’s life is divided in two halves. I’m a C++ embedded UI software architect and developer by day and a (Flutter-)Mobile Software Engineer by night.
I really like my day job as it is challenging to work on architectures and software development topics that target a very huge amount of different projects. The problem scope is fascinating and completely different from a very product focused way of working as it focuses on streamlining multiple UI projects in parallel.
Passion
Since roughly 10 years I focus most of my spare time programming on mobile app development. Mainly Android apps.
Recently (~ March 2021) I discovered Flutter and since then fell in love with it. Not only does it present a fascinating alternative for developing embedded UI applications and shows a way to finally get rid of C++ developed UI applications it also is a great way of developing cross-platform applications. Either for Android and iOS or for the different desktop systems.
This is why I started working with Flutter at home as well as experimenting with it for embedded UI scenarios and pitched it at work as a viable alternative to Qt/QML that we use today.
From time to time I also watched out for job opportunities (inside Bosch but outside as well) for mobile app development because I really love developing them, and it would be awesome to do that as a main job as well.
Sadly the opportunities here in the region I live were not interesting for me.
Corona changed it all
Then I stumbled across a job opening at BMW. They were looking for a mobile software engineer for Flutter development.
Before Corona I would just have ignored that opening because I’m not willing to commute multiple hours a day and the likeliness of a company accepting (partially) remote work was rather low.
But Corona changed the overall acceptance for remote work, so I gave it a try.
My profile was not matching 100% to the job description because although I have plenty of professional software development experience in big international organizations, I don’t have any professional mobile app development experience.
Of course, I have plenty of mobile development experience but only in my spare time and not professionally in a big team.
I tried it anyway.
The process took a while but in the end I somehow convinced the BMW app team to hire me! 😁
I’m really excited to start my new job next month and work professionally on mobile app development using Flutter. Two topics that excite me most!
Leaving Bosch
The sad part is to leave BSH / Bosch. I work there for over 11 years now. Many colleagues are friends and I have acquired a very good position over the years. The amount of trust I get and the amount of responsibilities I have is enormous. It feels a bit like betrayal to leave.
I do my very best to use the remaining time to brief all the successors to the different roles and topics I had to lower the impact of me leaving as much as possible, but it still doesn’t feel good.