The Project Ended. What to Keep.

#programming #beginners #career #webdev

The project I've worked on for the last 3.5 years has shut down permanently. For good.

These things happen when building software. I guess it's human to feel... failure?
Even if it's unrelated to our tech work.

Projects die. This is a reality

We, tech workers, must gather the experience and move on.

So I started on this project in December 2021. The project was live for 6? 7 years when I came on board. I work at MegaCoorp™, pretty sure I've mentioned this in another post.

At this scale, a 'project' doesn't just mean devs. it's Product designers + designers + product management + marketing + legal + operations + customer service + dev + QA + infra team.

MegaCoorp™ is relocating all these people. I've already been allocated to another project (more on this in another post soon!)

---🪾---

I'm going off on a tangent. What I wanted to tell you today is,

what I think you should carry with you when you close the chapter on the last N years of your life ✨💕✨✨

Let it go. 🎶❄️🎵

Elsa working in Tech, generated by Grok3

NO, seriously.

Let it go.

Let the frustration, the rage, the bitter-ness fade

Those last N years did happen; but the project, your work, is gone.

There are just two things you should keep:

what you learned technically, so you'll apply those to your next step AND
the human connections you've made. Even if you're not going to interact with those people in the short term, I've learned that the tech world is really, like REALLY small.

You will–
listen–
you WILL meet some of those people again in your career. I bet you.

So, keep the tech learning, keep the human connections you've made. And let the rest go.