This blog post is a brief about how my career developed as a Flutter Engineer.

Career as a Flutter Engineer

Prologue

I Am basically a student studying Engineering (CSE), at Bangalore. Since my childhood, I have been fascinated about technology. I am from a family where, I am supported to do anything, but with as less expenditure as possible, as I too am from a middle class family like most of the other humans from India.

Episode 1 — School Life

My school life wasn’t as good as a life anyone would wish for. I had one of my worst days at school, but the life at home during my school days was amazing. I was exposed to a lot of technology by many of my relatives, and friends near home.

I was this young small thin kid, who used to open up things and mess around to learn how things worked. There were times, when I had opened up laptops, and the noob me had no idea how a computer hardware works, cleared the thermal paste from the processor, and tried turning it on, by substituting thermal paste with Toothpaste🤣🤣🤣(I know, please don’t judge me, I didn’t know what I was doing).

Episode 2— Pre-University Life

I got my admission done into Jain College, Bangalore (Trust me, Jain College Area has a lot of good food nearby 🤣🤣). As I was passionate about Computers and Technology, I got into PCMCs (Science Stream with Computer Science).

I was also admitted at an academy, for tutorial classes. This is where I met one of the best teachers of my life. He taught me Computer Science in such a beautiful way, that even to this day, I remember each and every concept which he has taught me.

This is where I learnt things like Boolean, C (written in C++), C++, OOPS, SQL, and HTML(Basics).

Ok, lemme get into something personal here…. It was during this time, that I got my first love of my life, and the best friend of my life (I consider him as my brother now though). And as people say, first love doesn’t last for long…. And it came true. I was such a noob in love, and women too, that when we broke up, which was after only 2 months of dating, was left all alone. I had no idea of what to do.

This is where my best friend, I talked previously about, becomes an important part of my life. If it were not for him, I would have either been mad, or dead. He persuaded me about a lot of things. He gave me advices to divert my mind from whatever is happening, and meet new people, take up new hobbies.

It was during this time, that I started to contact a few people, and started to develop custom ROMs for the OnePlus 2. Many of them failed, and the ones which succeeded, were filled with bugs, mainly RIL issues. I was doing all this in GCP (Google Cloud Platform), and my subscription expired, and I stopped developing custom ROMs. I started to test out custom ROMs for one of a developer (maintainer), from this point of time.

Episode 3 — University Life

BOOM! Here comes University!

I finished my Pre University course, and 10th grade, with somewhat an average grade (I am not a topper). I got my admission in a tier 2 College, in Bangalore, into B.E. (CSE).

It was during this time, I got my first contract. It was a 5 figure contract with a local gym, for Web Development. A big mistake I did here was that I didn’t take any written contract of any form, nor did I ask him for a certificate, as terms became worse during the ending stages when he delayed on the payments.

I stopped his hosting and left the domain with a blank page with a marquee saying that the client has not paid the developer.

When this incident happened, I was not truly happy, and I didn’t know much things yet, and I’m sorry to say this, but Engineering Syllabus didn’t teach me much of what I wanted. So, I successfully wasted 1 semester.

During my 2nd semester, I was helping out the only super senior who was the closest to me, on her final year Project. It was based on Cloud Vision. I still remember the time when we used to spend hours in a laboratory trying to find ways to solve problems.

I cleared 2nd semester too, and then comes 3rd semester. When I was in 1st year, a few Super Seniors had advice me to take up internships from Internshala and other platforms, and That is what I did. I got my first internship agreement to learn Flutter from a company based in Pune, on June 10th, 2019, from Frapp. It was a nice learning experience, where I learnt Flutter and Firebase. Parallelly, I was running out of money, and, I got my first freelance contract on a California based company, on March 15th, 2020. Here I was responsible for UI, and integrating a few Plugins. I was also responsible for writing tests, for the App. The contract was initially for 6 months. They were very pleased with my coding skills.

I was unfortunately terminated from the company, as I was lacking much of communicative skills. This was also the time when COVID-19 took over the world. I was very much disappointed by this. This is where my oldest friend (even she’s on of my best friends) comes into my life and persuades me, and cheers me up. She advised me to polish my skills on whatever I Know, and start applying for other companies.

I listened to her and started to develop simple projects, and implement new ideologies. I became well versed at API integrations at this point. I then got a new Internship at a Bangalore based company, on June 02nd, 2020, for 6 months. Here, I learnt many things, many logics, many plugins. This is also the time when I learnt Providers. This particular topic called Providers is one of the best things to exist.

Unfortunately, My college’s placements aren’t going well, and there’s no much opportunities. Meanwhile, i finished the previous internship, and got into another internship, from January 03rd, 2020. This contract is also about to end by the end of this month, i.e., March, 2021.

I am now working with my supervisor, who has now established his own startup, as a freelance Flutter Engineer, from March 19th, 2021, with a contract of 2 months.

I am also working on my final year project based on Blockchain Technology. I have done a mini project to manage our college fests, using MySQL, and Electron JS.

Now, I also teach many worthy people about the things which I know, just to get them a better future.

Epilogue

What all have I learnt from this?

First of all! — Always get a written contract if you’re doing any work for anyone else.

Second! — Don’t hold any grudges with anyone in the Professional World.

Third! — Please concentrate on your Communication Skills. It is very important.

Fourth! — Make sure you don’t underquote or overquote yourself.

Fifth! — This is perhaps the most important point. Don’t take up a project if you’re doubtful that you can not do it. Just convey the message to the client BEFORE SIGNING THE CONTRACT.

Sixth! — Learn to manage both personal life and professional life, and never merge them both.

Many people always ask me, How do I manage all these things at a time?!

The answer is very Simple…. Sacrifice on small luxuries! There have been many sleepless nights in my journey of whatever life I’ve till now.

All and All, this was my journey of my development life career. Thanks for reading it!