A long long time ago…
In 2019 when I graduated with a degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of British Columbia I was confused as what to do. The path to graduation had been more or less straightforward go to school, study hard and get good grades. The routine has been the same since middle school. Now I am standing at these crossroads telling myself the next decision I make is crucial as it will dictate how my career plays out, make a wrong mistake here and your essentially sabotaging the rest of your life (dramatic yes, I know, but these were the thoughts going through my head at the time).
What do I want ?
Pushing the thoughts of failure to the back, I started my job hunt. I made a promise when starting that no matter the external pressures I would not get caught up in getting A job but getting the THE job. For me that meant working somewhere where I would be challenged, my work would matter and I wouldn’t get lost as a cog within this big intricate machine of a company. Most importantly I wanted to be part of something innovative, the happiest I had been working was during my capstone project building an interactive modular led display.
I was there from start to finish, wiring up the electrical components, writing code and eventually doing market research and figuring out ways to sell the product.
Has to be a Startup
Now I am sitting here thinking what kind of job will give me exposure to all the things above, from what I described it sounds like I don’t know what I want I am just rambling. The answer I came up with after hours of looking at various job descriptions and scrolling through LinkedIn was joining a STARTUP. I would be part of a small group of highly motivated people that posses the technical expertise and the entrepreneurial spirit to get their idea off the ground.
Content with having found a solution, it dawned on me I have no idea how to actually get a job in a startup, everyone in my network was in the oil and gas industry(Yes, I realize I should have networked better during my uni days, but C’est la vi).
So I started watching Youtube videos, reading articles, messaging strangers on Linkedin asking for their help. The conclusion I arrived at was it’s generally very difficult to join a startup at the beginning of your career as most people working there have years of experience across multiple disciples, a valuble trait to have since resources are often scarce in such enviroments and people often wear multiple hats within the company.
Work done Behind the Scene
This was going to be an issue but I thought lets give it an honest effort and not give up at the first sign of struggle. My plan of action was to gain experience, and expand my repertoire of skills. At the time I had a friend who’s uncle had just started a driving school business and I thought what could I do to improve his customer acquisition numbers and client engagement rate. I looked at the competition and saw that none of them had an app(how is that possible in 2019 😵), this was my opportunity.
I choose to use React Native as my development framework since this would allow me to write a cross platform app without needing to learn Swift(Thank god). I had a big responsibility to the owner to represent his business in the best way possible, for me it was a learning experience but this was his brand and livelihood. I didn’t take that responsibility lightly and spent the next 4 months learning, executing and revising till I arrived at an acceptable version of the app that everyone involved was really happy with. You can actually check it out here:
With my newly acquired react native skills, I started applying for software positions and discovered a new horror “Technical Interviews” doesn’t sound as daunting as it is. Mention the words to anybody that has encountered them and see their face twist in pain as they relive the horror. To prep for these interviews I spent 3 hours daily for weeks on LeetCode doing coding challenges and understanding various data structures and algorithms.
I failed countless times, freezing up during interviews, not being able to communicate my thoughts well but I took it all in stride and thought of the failures as learning opportunities and 6 months after I had first started on this journey I finally landed a job as a software engineer at a smart lighting startup in Seattle.
Parting thoughts
My biggest takeaway from this experience is that the things that are worthwhile often require the biggest risks and a stubborn attitude.When you set out to do things out of the ordinary, ordinary people tend to doubt.
It’s kind of ironic but something I have learned is that often times when you hear a lot of No’s your heading in the right direction(or your completely wrong 😆, either way it will be a great learning opportunity) .
