From Accountant to Software Engineer

From the office to a remote setup in my comfy home, I still ask myself, how did I get here…

It is late in Jakarta, and I am staring at lines of code at home, quietly. My tests finally turn green. My cursor blinks next to git push. It is funny to remember that a year ago I was refreshing job boards and telling myself to go back to accounting. Tonight, I am shipping a feature for a small team a continent away. I still ask myself; how did I get here.

The backstory: an accountant with a question

I started at one of the Big Four accounting firms. For many people that is the goal. The work taught me discipline and care. I am grateful for that. At the same time a quiet question kept visiting me. Even when I did audit and compliance well, who was helped in a clear way, and how did their day change because of it. Many people love that field and do it with excellence. For me, the question stayed.

I was quite a tech geek back then, and I still am. I tweak settings. I learn shortcuts. I break things and fix them. I helped my colleagues with Excel and other software tools that could ease the workload. Around that time there was a growing trend in data analytics. The firm was pushing data analytics training with tools like Power BI. My LinkedIn feed was full of posts about it and bootcamp testimonials. It seemed promising.

A lost lamb, leading myself into a dark valley

I quit. I told myself a few months of study to switch careers would be enough. I thought the worst case would be about half a year.

It was not. Looking back, it is obvious. What was I thinking, lol 😂.

For almost two years I lived between “I can try this new tutorial” and “I can build this new project.” I came to realize that I love programming and the problem-solving that comes with it. Realizing my lack of computer science background, I leaned toward data analytics and data engineering, areas that overlapped with accounting. I built notebooks, dashboards, and small pipelines. I applied to roles. I collected rejections. I rewrote my résumé more times than I want to admit.

There was a week I reopened listings for accounting jobs. It felt like defeat and also relief. I thought I could at least go back.

On paper I was learning to code. Off paper I was fighting the story in my head that said I was late and not good enough.

The chasing irony

I prayed, but nothing changed the next day. I kept grinding: tutorials, blogs, projects. Looking for hope, I kept reading the Bible. The story of Daniel stayed with me. His work was excellent. He found favor because his work was faithful and sharp. He was innocent yet under pressure, wrongly accused and sentenced to death. In all of that, he did not give up. He prayed even more and still confessed his faith in God. I thought to myself, if I worked my best yet was not rewarded, and was even wrongly accused, I would be disappointed. Then I tried to understand Daniel’s thinking. He worked as if he worked for God. He did not expect rewards. He did not put his hope in others or in himself. He entrusted outcomes to God.

Over months one sentence became real to me. I belong to God. If that is true, then my career is not an idol and not a ladder I must climb at any cost. I can stop trying to control everything. I can show up and do good work where I am, even if “where I am” is in the middle of a messy code and a tiny unpaid project that no one will notice.

That change did not immediately hand me a job. It changed how I moved. I felt more confident. Work felt more enjoyable. I built code projects, wrote blogs, and uploaded YouTube videos. I did it not only for the sake of chasing jobs anymore.

A new opportunity came

The start was not a job offer. It was a simple chat on LinkedIn. Someone on a Dutch team had seen a small open-source project I built. I had written a connector in VBA that let Excel talk directly to an API. The idea came from a real need from a freelance client I met on Upwork. Commercially, it did not become a paid project. Out of curiosity, I finished the project in my own time and open-sourced the code.

That message led to a short intro call. It was a bit awkward. I remember mumbling a lot. My English was not very clear. I was not used to speaking with Europeans. Miraculously, one call led to another. There were no formal interviews and no take-home tests. They hired me. I was really surprised.

The company had been a software consulting shop. They built tailored automations and one-off tools. When I joined, we started our first SaaS product. It was a bit experimental. I am the solo developer. The rest of the team was busy with the ongoing tailored software work. I plan work, write backend and frontend code, add tests, deploy, read the logs, and keep the service running. It is something I could never imagine doing before.

Thank God the AI boom had started. I could build my own support with AI. It boosted the amount of work I could handle, especially with an AI-assisted IDE. I also learned a lot by doing it.

Today feels like a dream

I wake up late in the afternoon. There is a glass of iced coffee on my desk and a failing test I do not yet understand. I ask the AI assistant why that edge case breaks. I do my weekly call while it is still morning for my team in the Netherlands. We start with small talk. I am still learning to make it less awkward and to speak English more naturally. We discuss the problem and resolve it. It is ordinary. It still feels like grace.

Faith notes

I prayed for a job. What I received first was a change in perspective. Daniel’s story taught me to entrust outcomes to God and to work with excellence where I stand. When the door opened, I could see it because I was not pushing every door anymore.

I do not think God is a vending machine where faith goes in and offers come out. I think God is a Father who cares about the kind of person you become while you learn to ship code, handle pressure, and tell the truth about what you do not know yet.

“I did not stop working. I stopped trying to control the outcome. The work started to work.”

I did the reps. But the way the pieces landed, the team, the timing, the shift from consulting to product, and the chance to build something people use, feels like a gift I could not have arranged. I call that grace.

If you are between spreadsheets and stack traces, between too many tabs and quiet prayers, I see you. If this story fits where you are, send me a DM on LinkedIn. I am happy to have a short chat or a simple sharing session if it helps.