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Vaishali
Vaishali

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I Was One Day Away From Quitting β€” And Then My Career Took An Unexpected Turn

WeCoded 2026: Echoes of Experience πŸ’œ

This is a submission for the 2026 WeCoded Challenge: Echoes of Experience


Here's a story from my own journey.

There's a version of this story where everything falling apart is the lowest point.

It's not.

A New City, A New Job, A Slow Unraveling

My second job came with a lot of firsts β€” a new city, a new culture, a completely unfamiliar environment. New food, new language, new people.

At first, it was exciting.

But slowly the pressure started building. I was trying to adapt to a new workplace, understand unfamiliar systems, and fit into a culture I was still figuring out.

Somewhere along the way, I lost my footing.

I could feel it. I wasn't performing at my best, and the gap between what I expected from myself and what I was delivering kept growing.

Eventually, I realized the role probably wasn’t the right fit for me β€” I was spending more energy just trying to keep up than actually learning.

I was one day away from leaving.
Then the job didn't work out, and suddenly that decision was made for me.

That job had been the only thing connecting me to that city β€” losing it meant suddenly feeling disconnected from everything around me.


When Direction Disappears

What followed was a strange period.

Logically, I knew the situation wasn't right for me anyway.
But emotionally it still hurt.
It was the first time in my career that something had clearly failed.

For a while I kept doing what you're supposed to do β€” applying for jobs, preparing for interviews, trying to learn new things.

But underneath all that activity there was a deeper problem.

I had lost my sense of direction.

The hardest part of that phase wasn't rejection or uncertainty.
It was waking up and not knowing what the next meaningful step should be.


The Mantra I Had Forgotten

During that time, I remembered something I used to tell myself earlier in my career:

I don't wake up every day just to go to a job.
I wake up to be better than my yesterday self.

Somewhere in the pressure of trying to "keep up," I had forgotten that.

The difficult period forced me to rediscover it.


Building Stupid Things Saved Me

When I eventually went back to my hometown to reset, I stopped trying to follow a perfect plan.

Instead, I started building things again.

One of the first things I made was a GTA-inspired clone β€” not because anyone asked for it, not because it would help me get hired, but simply because I wanted to see if I could build it.

It had no ROI. No roadmap. No expectations.

But something unexpected happened.
It reminded me why I started building software in the first place.

Not for job titles.
Not for resumes.
But because creating something from nothing is deeply satisfying.

That small project gave me back something I had quietly lost: confidence.


The Turning Point

As I started applying again, I began noticing a shift.

Frontend roles were becoming harder to find, and the ones that existed were increasingly looking for senior profiles or broader skill sets.

The industry was changing faster than I had expected.

I realized I had two options:
keep trying to force the same path forward β€” or start adapting.

That's when I stopped asking:

"Will AI replace developers?"

and started asking a different question:

"How can I learn to work with it?"

That one shift in thinking changed everything.


The Mess Nobody Talks About

Learning AI turned out to be far messier than I expected.

I jumped between courses. Restarted multiple times. Tried different approaches and often felt like I was moving in circles.

Eventually I realized the confusion wasn't a sign I was failing β€” it was simply what learning something new looked like, especially in a space evolving this quickly.

And if I was struggling to find a clear path, chances were others were too β€” and maybe we could figure it out together.
That’s what learning in public is really about.

That's what led me to start writing on Dev.to and building my presence on X β€” not because I had answers, but because sharing the messy process felt more honest than pretending the path was clear.

Over time, that also taught me something important:
Building skills matters.
But being visible while you build them matters just as much.


A Different Way To Look At That Year

Looking back now, I see that period very differently.

At the time, it felt like unemployment.

But now I think of it more as a pause β€” a limited one β€” that gave me space to experiment, learn new technologies, and rethink the direction I actually wanted to take.

During this period, I started exploring AI, building projects, and eventually launched my first Chrome extension on the Web Store. The moment it went live, I genuinely thought: did that actually work?

It wasn't a startup. It wasn't viral.
But it was real. It was mine. And it existed in the world.

That mattered.


The Real Lesson

If there's one thing that year taught me, it's this:

A job can define your role β€” but it can't define you.
I had to build that identity myself: publicly, imperfectly, one post and one project at a time.

The unexpected turn my career took didn't end my journey β€” it clarified it.

Careers in tech rarely follow a straight line.
Sometimes the path disappears.
And when it does, you're forced to stop following one β€” and start building your own.

Stop waiting for the perfect roadmap. Start building one.

Top comments (41)

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tomorrmonkey profile image
golden Star

Great and excellent.

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dev-in-progress profile image
Vaishali

Thanks, glad you liked it!

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tomorrmonkey profile image
golden Star

It's my pleasure.

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naomi_ansah_d792faf7a1276 profile image
Naomi Ansah

This really resonated with me.

The line about β€œwaking up and not knowing what the next meaningful step should be” hits hard. I think many of us in tech go through that phase where the path suddenly feels unclear.

What stood out most to me was the part about building things again just for the joy of creating. That’s something I’m rediscovering myself while learning cloud and sharing my projects publicly.

Sometimes the small projects we build during uncertain times end up rebuilding our confidence more than anything else.

Thank you for sharing such an honest story.

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Vaishali

Thank you for such a thoughtful comment β€” I'm really glad the post resonated with you.

I completely agree about small projects during uncertain times. Sometimes building things just for the joy of creating is what helps rebuild confidence and direction.

Wishing you the best with your cloud journey and the projects you're sharing.

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naomi_ansah_d792faf7a1276 profile image
Naomi Ansah

Thank you!

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georgekobaidze profile image
Giorgi Kobaidze

Such a great and relatable post, you're 100% right. Nothing should define you other than yourself, and I say that from experience.

Once you realize you're not a developer just to do whatever someone else needs, but also to do what you need, that's when you start feeling better about yourself and your motivation skyrockets.

And this motivation is different, it's not external. External motivation usually fades away pretty quickly. This is internal motivation, the kind that stays with you long-term, and that's way more important than the other kind.

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Vaishali

Thank you, I really appreciate this perspective. You're absolutely right β€” internal motivation feels very different from external motivation, and it tends to stay with you much longer.

I'm really glad the post resonated with you.

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benjamin_nguyen_8ca6ff360 profile image
Benjamin Nguyen • Edited

Wow! It is a great article. I completely understand your story because we have all been there in our career. It doesn't matter which industries. You feel that the role did not work out etc... I mention to people that one door close and another door open. The journey is not the final destination but it is just the beginning of it.

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Vaishali

Thank you for such a thoughtful comment. You're right β€” many of us go through similar moments in our careers, even if the details are different.
I like how you framed it as a journey rather than a destination.

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benjamin_nguyen_8ca6ff360 profile image
Benjamin Nguyen

You are welcome! that is true about our career. You have to look at life as as journey than a destination. You will never know where you will be in 5 or 10 years.

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dev-in-progress profile image
Vaishali

Thanks for the reminder. That's very true β€” sometimes the most interesting parts of the journey are the ones we never planned.

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benjamin_nguyen_8ca6ff360 profile image
Benjamin Nguyen

exactly! I have to remind myself sometimes :)

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dev-in-progress profile image
Vaishali

Very true β€” we all need that reminder sometimes.

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benjamin_nguyen_8ca6ff360 profile image
Benjamin Nguyen

yep!

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eaglelucid profile image
Victor Okefie

The line that matters: "waking up and not knowing what the next meaningful step should be." That's not unemployment that's the gap between what you were told to want and what you actually need. Most people fill it with more applications. You built stupid things instead. That's the difference.

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Vaishali

That's a really interesting way to frame it. Building those small projects during that time helped me reconnect with why I started coding in the first place.

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eaglelucid profile image
Victor Okefie

That's exactly it, sometimes we get lose of why we actually started, but the good thing is we find a way why it happened in the first place and never lose such fuel.

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dev-in-progress profile image
Vaishali

True - finding our β€œwhy” again makes all the difference.

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bumbulik0 profile image
Marco Sbragi

I really understand you. I retired after many years of work. And with my wife leave Italy for coming in Georgia in Tbilisi. Georgia is a very beautiful place but i'll be honest after 3 years i knows 20 words of this language. It is very difficult to understand and more again to learn at my age. All habits change, all rituals, getting up to go to work, new country, different people (fantastic persons). Then i rethink why i chose to involve in IT, because i am curios, like you if i well understood, want to explore and resolve problem and discover every time new ways to do things. For this reason i started again to study,, builded my personal website, and play with Projects on IA and write some open source tool. Ah, and I started playing the guitar again. Good luck to you.
Ciao.

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georgekobaidze profile image
Giorgi Kobaidze

Did someone mention "Tbilisi, Georgia"? πŸ˜„ I live there, and yes, Georgian is an incredibly difficult language to learn. I take it for granted since it's my native language, but I can only imagine how challenging it must be for others.

It's nothing like most other languages, it's completely different. I recently started learning Italian, and many things feel pretty easy because I already know English and can spot similarities between the two. Georgian, though? That's a completely different animal. It even has its own unique alphabet.

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EmberNoGlow

"That's a completely different animal" - How beautifully this is said πŸ˜‹

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Vaishali

Thank you so much for such a thoughtful comment. Moving to a new place really changes everything β€” the language, the routines, even the small daily habits.

The city also had beautiful weather, and I was really lucky with the people around me. For me, the biggest challenge was actually the food more than the language.

It's inspiring that you started building projects again and even picked up the guitar. I’ve also been thinking about learning the guitar someday and exploring some hobbies once things settle down a bit.

Wishing you many more curious adventures ahead. Ciao!

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jaboarnoldlandry profile image
jabo Landry

This is great. I wish you luck in your journey. Thanks for the nice experience you've shared in this article

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Vaishali

Thank you, that means a lot. Writing this one felt very different from my usual technical posts.
Sometimes the lessons that shape our careers don’t come from code, but from the messy parts in between.

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LazyDoomSlayer

I totally agree with this mentality. These days, everyone aims big, but it’s the small wins that often make the biggest impact in day-to-day life.

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Vaishali

Well said. Big goals matter, but it's usually the small wins that keep the journey moving.

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david_w0628 profile image
David Wilson

Thank you

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Vaishali

Glad it resonated.

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Elmar Chavez

True, everyone is different. The hardest part is finding yourself again after you have forgotten it for a while. But when you do, I assure you, all will be well.

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Vaishali • Edited

Thank you for the kind and thoughtful words.
I hope so too β€” and soon. When it does, this article will remind me of what this time has taught me.

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