How I became a developer

This post has nothing to do with my son, but it documents my career change that happened so fast it seemed like a miracle to some and surprised most people.

With two master degrees in language and culture, I was educated to be a secondary school teacher. Although throughout my life, I had friends who were nerdy and who worked in IT, it never occurred to me that, one day, I would become one of them.

The progress was slowly started after becoming a mother. Being at home with my son gave me time to rethink what I want to do with my career and how to link that to what I enjoy the most in my daily life. To those who know me, I love sitting behind the computer, either gaming or browsing or whatever. Struggling with lack of self-confidence and insecurity almost my whole life, the blurred boundary between my real life and the digital dimension helped me to discover myself and to explore the world. Furthermore, I love to hang out with nerdy people, especially when they have similar interests. programming seemed fascinating to me but I had always thought that I couldn't do it. An emotion-driven person like me can never think logically and deal with lines and lines of abstract code and numbers.

But thanks to the support and encouragement of my dearest husband and this YOLO attitude I have acquired after becoming a mother, I started some online courses in web development. I found out that it's fun to create something and have a working result in front of me. Nevertheless, it was very difficult for me in the beginning, sitting at home without any guidance or structure. I stopped and was convinced that I'm not cut out to be a programmer, and decided to apply for teaching positions again.

Then we moved  to Sweden and my teaching career was thrown out of the window. Living in a foreign country without speaking its language and not knowing anyone, it would take me at least 2 years to qualify for the Swedish educational system. No international schools would take me since I'm not a native speaker nor a very experienced teacher. I put motherhood before my career and hence only had little working experience. I looked into cyber security and programming again and continued my online courses. I also signed up for SFI (Swedish for Immigrants).

Then one day, I saw this advertisement flying by while browsing Facebook: intensive programming training for immigrants with academic background. Only strong motivation required. I applied without giving it too much thought. One day later, the recruiting agency that organized this training called me and gave me further tests. Surprisingly, I passed the logic/math test and a programming test. The next interview process was face-to-face interview, in which they checked my motivation again. It wasn't even a week later that they told me I'm in. I would be one of the 30 participants that they chose out of more than 300 applicants! Although I accepted the offer, I was still skeptical and worried that I wouldn't make it, either because of my incapability or lack of time due to family. My son was sent to preschool just one week before the training started. The timing was almost too perfect.

What happened during the training could be another lengthy post, but it turned out that I was very good at learning how to code. My classmates all had engineering background and some even had a master degree in computer science. Why they couldn't find a job in Sweden still baffles me. I had little problem keeping up with them and sometimes was even ahead of them. I was the only one who scored 100 for the test at the end of period one, which surprised EVERYONE (I even got a personal congrats from the recruiting agency manager). I had very positive feedback for my individual project and my team won the best software design for the group project. Additionally, I used my soft skills to make myself well-received by my peers and to create a sense of community for the training, which was very appreciated generally. Long story short, I aced it.

However, I didn't get a single interview from companies. I applied to some companies myself and got eliminated as soon as they found out that I have no IT degree. I realized it's hard for companies to trust my abilities as I have no relevant background at all. As more and more classmates got a job, I started to feel desperate and doubtful. Even my mom, who initially cheered me on started to voice her doubt and skepticism. It was a big blow to me...to think that I have once again disappointed my family and that maybe it was another mistake I made in life. But my husband told me not to give up. I swear, I wouldn't have come so far without his support and unwavering belief in me. After finishing the training, I continued to learn on my own, but not with the same intensiveness and rigor. I tried to code everyday and keep my GitHub active. Everyday I applied for jobs and even managed to score some interviews. I figured perhaps it's better to do an internship first to gain some more experience. In the meantime, the recruiting agency helped me in finding a job as well.

Two months after the training ended, I suddenly got positive responses from four companies in about the same week. I managed to pass the first round and got to the second round, which is a programming test. Those companies really liked my personality and thought I have an interesting background. I "failed" one testing-related test and they went on with a more experienced candidate. One company couldn't offer me an internship even though they like me because of external administrative reasons. Two companies sent me programming tests with a tight deadlines....and suddenly I had to make choices. I decided to say no to the internship and put all my effort in doing the programming test for one of the companies. it was a test about making an expense manager using JavaScript, which I'm not all too familiar with. I spent one (traumatic) week completing the test, asking for all the help I can get and camping StackOverflow. I had to learn framework and package managers from scratch. Every feature that I had to implement did not happen smoothly. I almost rage quit several times XD That week I had very little sleep. On day 7, the application was not completely bug-free. I submitted what I managed to do and I thought I would never hear back from the company again.

But the next day, the CTO of that company emailed me back and invited me for an interview meeting the team. My initial response was like "Oh no! they will ask me a lot of technical questions" and "How should I explain the mistakes I made in the app". I prepared for the worst and went there nervously. The team interview turned out to be very pleasant. My "biggest mistake" turned out to be an advantage. And I managed to leave a great first impression on the team thanks to my super stalking skill, haha! I felt so good after the interview, I knew for certainly they would hire me.

And they did :)

Two lessons to gain from my story are:

1. Believe in yourself even if nobody else does. Keep chasing your dream and challenge the impossible. Being an underdog can be a disadvantage AND an advantage. It makes your work harder :)

2. The CTO handpicked me out of all the presented candidates because I was the only one who kept my GitHub account active. It showed my commitment and passion. I'm sure that some of my classmates code daily like I do, but how you present yourself is also one way of getting noticed that sets you apart from others.