Perseverance into the world Software Engineering. Stay on the treadmill!

I first learned about web development from one of my fathers a year before I was about to go off to college. It was my junior year of high school and he asked me “son… have you ever heard of web development?” I replied “no, what is it?” he said, “well it’s a skill that would be extremely sought after in the future where you get to build websites.” At the time I thought that sounded really cool and thought I’d give it a shot. The reason why he introduced me to web development was probably that I didn’t have any skills at the time(haha). I mean I was doing “okay” in my classes, but I didn’t have any interests in any of them, I knew I wanted to attend a university. I played soccer on my schools team which I was good at and I was a breakdancer and danced for two different crews… I thought I wanted to be a dancer and dance for a famous artist like Beyonce or someone… but I realized wasn’t preparing myself for the real world at least that’s how I felt. I had absolutely zero skills, and I was little worried so I started looking up courses online and I found TeamTreehouse and Skillcrush which where both inexpensive online resources that taught me how to code. I started teaching myself HTML and CSS on and off and throughout my time at my university, I would build a simple website or two, and after building my first website I was hooked! I felt like a wizard casting a spell. The very first site I built was a static HTML and CSS website with flexbox thrown everywhere possible. I felt ecstatic and I wanted to build more.
While a student at Eastern Illinois University, which is where I studied, I was actually planning on becoming a lawyer and go to Law school. So I became a philosophy major after switching my major four or five times… Now fast forward to my second to last year of school which was my forth year, I was still on track to be a lawyer finishing off the remainder of my credits. One day one of my dad’s called me and asked if I was still building websites and learning about web development… I told him “yeah… I am from time to time. So to help regain my interest he recommended me to check out a city called Austin, Texas for a summer internship because Austin, Texas was on track to become the next hottest tech hub and hottest job market for developers was increasing rapidly. So the summer before my last year at EIU when I would graduate I visited Austin, stayed there for a few months for an internship with the company my dad worked for at the time to learn about web development and how to navigate the corporate world. It was such an eye opener for me… it was my first corporate job and I learned so much from it! I learned about project and product management, analytics, and the life cycle of a product. That summer really shifted what I wanted to be doing, back then I knew I wanted to be in Austin, TX and I knew I wanted to be an Engineer to build amazing experiences for people.
Okay to fast forward again, during my last year as an undergrad I started spending a lot more of my time studying web development and I applied to a code academy in Austin, TX called the Iron Yard for the summer of 2016. After I graduated and received my BA. I moved to Austin 5days later without knowing really anyone and I prepared to attend my code boot camp. Now the Iron Yard had three different cohorts that summer that started and end it at the same time that I got to choose from, they were, FED(Front End Development), BED(Backend Development), and web design. At the time I thought, “well maybe I should join the BED cohort because I’m already somewhat familiar with the FED”. NO! Big mistake… the BED cohort I was preparing for revolved around using Ruby to build up the backend and in short… I hated it! Ruby was waaaayyyy to abstract for me, and its abstraction wasn’t intuitive for me at all.

Then after completing the cohort and during it, I worked odd jobs, dog walking, dog sitting, I worked at restaurants, I worked at Apple as a contractor for two different positions. Neither was related to web development, but after work, I would continue to build webapps and websites, reading up on HTML. CSS and Javascript to further my knowledge and experience. I would also practice during work, I would write functions on the back of receipt papers during my shifts, I would write code in my notebook. I would think about code from my total of 26 miles a day bike rides from and to Apple since I didn’t own a car. I constantly thought about code and I knew once I landed my first web development job I’d love it!
So a year has passed since I completed the Iron yard, we’re in 2017 and I’ve applied to hundreds if not thousands of job positions in FED. But two months prior to the anniversary date I started to teach myself ReactJS because what I heard from my mentor was that learning a JS framework or library would make me and my resume a lot more attractive to hiring managers. So from there, I started taking courses, watching videos, and building webapps and personal projects. But it’s been a year and I had no interviews, no chances… I knew if someone gave me one chance to even speak with them I would show them who I am, what I can do, how determined I am to kill it! But for over a year I never received a phone call and rarely ever heard a response back… I think what kept me going was my “Why”… because my “Why”… was stronger than my “What”… why did I want to become a web developer? At first it was for the wrong reasons, I admit, I wanted to live a web developer or software engineer lifestyle with that attractive salary but throughout that first year. I started to redefine my why… my why became a number of things it was because “I finally want to stick to something and have a skill instead of always bouncing around or giving up on something”, it was “because I wanted to contribute enhancing peoples experiences on the web”, it was “because I wanted my future family to live a similar lifestyle and/or better than my own. I wanted to provide for them and more!” My why evolved… and in return, I had the strength to persevere day by day, by week, month and year. Then sometime in early October, I either received a call or an email from an employer about a position I applied for and I was so ecstatic! I was working at another company at the time and I got up from my cubicle to call them back right away and I had a short conversation with the COO which led to the next steps with a phone call with an engineer quickly after. She said she liked how assertive I was when I called them back. Those little actions can make a huge difference.

Then within a couple of weeks, I was sitting in front of the engineering manager for my first technical interview. I remember having to build a single page application that had an array of images I had to display in a carousel. It was to showcase my understanding of the concepts of state and props, stateful and stateless components, class components, ES6, refactoring etc. I was sweating bullets! Luckily I brought my own water bottle, but I was drinking from it like every 30 seconds. I would stutter at times but I thought I kept a pretty cool head overall. Then about a week later I received an email about the next steps to talk to the CEO and then a few weeks from there I started my first FED position. My first try at an interview and I nailed it! I was finally a web developer, and I learned so much more while working than I ever did by studying by myself. I learned about 10 times more on the job than I did on my own.
Since then I’ve worked for small startups as a contractor the past three years and I never lost my “Why”… in fact, my “Why” continued to grow. It grew as I learned new things about my career, about what I should know, what I would like to know, and more. My “Why”… fueled my learning, my passion to keep going no matter the struggle because I did struggle like everyone else but I never gave up. This quote from Will Smith helped carry me through, “I’m not afraid to die on a treadmill… I will not be outworked period! You might have more talent than me, you might be smarter than me, you might be sexier than me, you might be all of those things you got on me in all nine categories but if we get on the treadmill together, right, there’s two things. You’re getting off first or I’m going to die… it’s really that simple.” Those words stuck to my heart and soul. I learned what I needed to know and learned what I wanted to know. I bounced around doing contract work, and I learned a lot about how many different companies had their own way of doing things. I worked within the healthcare and blockchain industry, the education industry, and much more. But recently I knew I wanted a home… I was married for seven to eight months at the time. I realized I wanted to work permanently for another company. I didn’t want another contract position. I was in Japan with my wife visiting her friends and family for our second part of our wedding wearing our kimonos and we were there five to six weeks as we traveled west and southwest of Japan. We were in Japan from December 2019 to January 2020. It was my third time in Japan but the second time with my wife. Before the Pandemic hit the states… the position I currently had was a contract position that was coming to an end. My next role was another contract position as a FED I accepted of course but for the next couple of months, I kept looking because it was a short term contract and I didn’t think the company would extend it especially during the pandemic. So as I was job hunting during the pandemic, I was at my lowest… I didn’t think I would find something for the next six to nine months or year at least possibly I even considered becoming a favor deliverier, (Favor is Austins Uber eats)but I kept applying and didn’t give in. I started to apply to companies outside of Austin that my wife and I would be prepared to move to. Then within a couple of weeks near the end of my current contracting role, I had four different interviews for permanent roles in different cities that allowed me to work remotely until the pandemic subsided. I passed the coding assignments for all of them and made it to the final steps, received offers, and choose the one I really wanted to be apart of.

Now I wanted to share my experience with you all today because maybe today you’re experiencing what I’ve experienced or you have already or you’re just starting your journey. I wanted to share my journey with you because, when it looks impossible… those are the moments you’ll have to overcome again and again. They’ll be unexpected obstacles in your path, and you’ll have to overcome your state of mind. But you can do it… reinforce your “why” persevere through… go on the offensive and turn your dreams into reality. DO NOT GET OFF THAT TREADMILL!