It feels like 2023 just started, and yet here we are in 2024 already — time really does fly. 2023 felt like a whirlwind, but looking back, it was a year packed with dense experiences and meaningful growth. Let me reflect on how I grew over the past year and map out my goals for 2024.

2023 in Review

1) Ready, Set, Go!

After a long period of preparation, 2023 was finally the year I got to start working as a frontend developer for real. Literally — ready... set... go! I'm grateful I got to close out the year shouting "go!"

2) 2023 Timeline

My 2023 can be broken down into three major themes: SSAFY, job hunting, and internship.

1. First half: SSAFY second-semester projects and graduation
   • Project 1: Bakkubakku
   • Project 2: Biscuit
   • Project 3: Kkiri
   • Graduated from SSAFY
2. Second half: Job hunting period with personal projects
   • Built a tech blog
   • Started a tech blog study group
   • Wanted Pre-onboarding Internship
   • Personal to-do list project
3. Internship (October – present): Working as a startup developer intern
   • Developed an internal back-office system
   • Started frontend work on the product

Looking at it laid out like this, I feel proud of how densely and diligently I lived this year. Counting by sheer number regardless of duration, I worked on a total of 11 projects!

3) What I Did and What I Learned

Based on the timeline above, let me talk about the experiences from this year that had the biggest growth moments. (Almost all of them had some, but I'll try to narrow it down.)

Three Projects and Graduating from SSAFY

Good memories — and goodbye!

Honestly, I have a lot of mixed feelings about my project experience at SSAFY. Not winning any awards is one disappointment, but beyond awards, when I think about whether I grew technically in a meaningful, visible way — the only thing that comes to mind is that I got faster at searching and implementing. The second and third team projects especially left me with a sense of letdown, since I had high expectations for those teams.

That said, even without standout results, I learned a lot about collaboration. The chemistry with my teammates in those second and third projects was genuinely great on a personal level — but being too close actually hurt our performance. That taught me an important lesson: no matter how close you are with someone, you should never lose your professional edge.

One clear gain from SSAFY, though, was developer friends. Coming from a non-CS background, I didn't have a single developer friend before — but through SSAFY I made several talented ones. I think that's the best reason I'm glad I joined. Having people to lean on and commiserate with as we navigate our careers is genuinely encouraging.

Migrating My Tech Blog

What led me to think more deeply

After graduating from SSAFY, I spent about a month building my own tech blog as both a Next.js learning project and a personal endeavor. I had been running a blog on Velog and, looking back at it, realized I'd been prioritizing quantity over quality — so I did some honest self-reflection and moved to this current blog.

During my time at SSAFY, I wrote in a "just get it out there" mindset — summarizing what I studied and posting it right away. That approach got me over 100 posts in a year, but it started to feel meaningless. I figured I'd already built the habit and learned how to write, so I migrated to focus on quality over quantity.

On this current blog, I write fewer posts, but I try to weave in my own thinking and process with each one — aiming for something with a real point of view. That's still the goal I'm working toward.

Starting the FE Blog Study Group

Great people create great synergy

When I migrated my blog, I wanted to build a system to keep myself writing consistently, so I created a study group where members post to their blogs every week. I recruited specifically for frontend developers (or job seekers) so we could share relevant insights, and from the start I introduced a deposit system to attract accountable, diligent members.

That high barrier of entry worked — five wonderful, proactive, and dedicated people joined me. Thanks to their enthusiasm, we ended up doing things I never initially imagined: working through the TOSS NEXT Challenge problems together, hosting an offline tech conference, reading a TypeScript book as a group, and more.

It really drove home the point: people are everything. When the right people are in a room together, good synergy just happens naturally.

Wanted Pre-onboarding Internship and Personal Projects

The turning point of 2023

Driven by questions like "What does good code look like?" and "How do you actually design and write good code and architecture?", I applied for the Pre-onboarding Internship run by Wanted Lab. During my SSAFY projects, I always had this nagging feeling of "Am I writing this right? Is this well-written code?" — but I never got to answer those questions, since the focus was always just on shipping features.

Then I discovered the Pre-onboarding Internship program, and its curriculum was full of concepts that could answer exactly those questions. I committed to applying, put serious effort into the pre-assignment, and got in.

I call this the turning point of 2023 because it was the period where I grew the most technically. As I described above, I took lectures that addressed my questions about good code, then applied those ideas directly while working on company assignments. Through that process of deliberate design and implementation, I started to develop both the eye to recognize good code and the ability to write it.

Starting the Internship and First Project

The realrealreal_start

I got lucky — applied to a job posting on a whim and somehow got the offer, and joined a B2B startup as an intern. Things moved so fast from offer to start date that I blinked and was already at my desk. I was lucky to onboard alongside another new teammate, which was a relief for someone as introverted as I am.

It's still challenging now, but that first month was especially tough because I was struggling to understand the business domain. I'd always worked on B2C-oriented projects, so wrapping my head around a B2B business model was genuinely hard. That lack of domain understanding made it difficult to even design the features I was responsible for. This is why domain knowledge matters so much — I understood that firsthand. I'm still in the process of asking questions, thinking things through, and learning how this company's business works.

Frontend Work in Full Swing

I want to do great work!

I was fully onboarded into frontend work. I joined a SaaS product launch project, building out features for the product and resolving bugs and issues. I ran into all kinds of problems I'd never encountered in previous projects — it demanded a whole different level of debugging skill and problem-solving ability. We even hit deployment issues on launch day, which evaporated five hours and left me feeling like a bystander during the crisis — but the experience pushed my growth exponentially.

Lately I find myself genuinely wanting to be great at my job. I don't feel like I'm there yet, so I'm constantly thinking about how to work more cleanly, more precisely, with no loose ends. The most important thing to me right now: finishing work so completely that it doesn't need anyone else to come behind me and clean it up.

I'm also thinking about what business problems I can actually solve through frontend engineering at this company. Being a B2B product, there's sometimes a tendency to dismiss UI/UX and usability as lower priorities, which can be discouraging — but I personally believe that regardless of context, users are users, and usability improvements matter enormously.

So these days I'm running new feature development in parallel with refactoring and improvement work that had been accumulating as technical debt.

Let's Go, 2024!

Let me list out the things I want to do across career, technical learning, and personal development — by keyword.

1) Becoming a Full-Time Frontend Developer

Even as an intern, I'm technically already a developer — but becoming a full-time employee as soon as possible is my primary goal for the start of this year. Between SSAFY and job hunting, I spent 1 year and 4 months as a job seeker, and even after joining a company it's not a great feeling to still be in that limbo. I just want to get rid of the anxiety about the future and be in a position where I can focus entirely on the work.

When I joined the current company, I was told they were "considering the possibility of full-time employment," but there hasn't been any follow-up on that since. Being a B2B company, I'm not even sure if they need more frontend headcount, so the uncertainty is real. But since this isn't something I can fully control, I'm going to focus on doing my best work and creating as much business impact as I can from my end.

The best case scenario would be converting to full-time at my current company (I really don't want to job hunt again). At the same time, other opportunities may open up — and no matter what happens, I'll try to stay positive about it!

2) Running the Study Group Well

I want to keep doing a good job with the FE blog study group I run. On the last day of last year, we wrapped up our annual retrospective for 2023 — and the positives far outweighed the negatives, which makes me excited for this year too. As the organizer, I want to keep steering this community so that everyone stays engaged and keeps growing.

Through our retrospective, we came up with action items together: activities beyond studying, like hanging out just for fun, trying a collaborative project, opening a "talk it out" corner for sharing worries. Lots of great ideas came up! Let's tackle them one by one, slowly but surely, and build good memories and growth together. :)

3) A Healthy Mind Needs a Healthy Body

If there's one thing I've lost since starting to study software development, it's my health. Things went downhill fast, especially after entering the second semester at SSAFY. Before that, I was working out at least 3–4 times a week; at my worst it dropped to once or twice. No surprise the body started to feel it.

I started Pilates toward the end of last year as a new form of exercise. This year, I want to be consistent with Pilates as my one anchor workout — hitting all three: staying healthy, managing my fitness, and building stamina. Goal: at least 3 workouts per week!

4) Books as (Developer) Soul Food

I used to love reading non-technical books — humanities, essays, that kind of thing. But since I started studying development, I basically put a wall between myself and anything that wasn't a dev book. If I get the chance to go full-time this year, I want to loosen that compulsion to read only technical material and rebuild the habit of reading broadly again.

5) Never Stop Recording

Separate from the blog, I want to keep building a consistent record of my life. My day-to-day journal, of course — but also regular retrospectives to stay prepared for the future (especially career transitions down the road).

And yes, I'll keep writing on this blog consistently! This year I want to write things that go a bit deeper technically and capture more of my real work experiences.

Closing Thoughts

This is my first time writing a full-year retrospective, and looking back at everything, I realized I did so much more than I thought. I genuinely want to tell myself: you worked hard — nice job. The months of grinding to become a developer (still ongoing)... there's still a lot I'm not great at, but now that I'm in the real world of work, I feel a genuine excitement about what I do and a hunger to get better at it.

(Not sure if anyone actually reads this blog, but) here's to another great year. Stay healthy and happy, everyone~!