“Here’s the thing — none of us get out of life alive. So be gallant, be great, be gracious, and be grateful for the opportunities that you have”- Jake Bailey

Life before the lines {{ of code }}

I never thought I’d pivot into tech. Despite growing up influenced by games, computing and a curiosity for hacking (my cousin, working in cybersecurity, had shown me a few cool tricks) the stock market had attracted my attention at a young age and so finance seemed like the obvious choice.

Information and Finance

What attracted me most about finance wasn’t the money but the amount of information. I grew up curious about different subjects and always wanted to know how things worked. The stock market was of particular interest to me because prices were influenced, and still are, by current events. Wars, news, mergers, breakthroughs in Health, Tech etc… they influenced the market and I wanted to know everything about everything.

Working in the field of brokerage for a few years was exciting at first. I loved trading options and stocks and the ups and downs of the market. My excitement eventually wore out after realizing most of it is propped up and doesn’t contribute much to society. I wanted to build and fix things and apply more creative solutions to real life problems.

Software Developer ( I think ?)

“Doubt can only be removed by action.”- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

The career switch into tech world was a push from a close friend of mine who had a foray into the startup world and now works for a big tech company in Mexico City. We had grown up together and I felt an incredible amount support and motivation after a visit I had made to Mexico City that made me realize I needed a change, badly.

She had introduced me to many of her friends who themselves all had startups and were so passionate about their work that it was just the push I needed to take a chance and dive deep into software development.

Online classes & DevBootcamp

After going through some coding tutorials, the likes of Team Treehouse and Code Academy, I decided to apply to a programming bootcamp. I had read about the success of bootcamps in the US and that students from different backgrounds were coming together to work in teams and built projects so after doing a bit of research I opted for DevBootcamp in Chicago.

Living in Montreal, Canada at the time this decision came at quite the cost, figuratively and literally. I sold all my stuff, got rid of my apartment and took a break from work to commit myself to the program. There were times where I felt like I should have put more thought into my decision but ultimately the rewards far outweighed the risks.

Hello Impostor Syndrome, how nice to meet you

Every now and then doubts creep up on me. My inner critic comes back for a visit. Throughout the program, I had felt at times like my background wasn’t enough. I didn’t have a computer science degree, the majority of students didn’t either, but I still felt like the odd one out; the wouldn’t make it to the end and graduate.

What I had felt was one of my biggest achievements coming out of the program wasn’t learning how to code; but rather, learning how to learn. Surrounded by equally driven peers, we all wanted to push out boundaries and have the satisfaction of building a functioning web app. Applying what we’d learnt in such little time gave us a major adrenaline rush that we all got addicted to.

The fear of missing out

I don’t want to get into much detail of how fast and constant change is in the tech, but new frameworks, languages, fashions and the consequent fear of missing out.The same curiosity that leads people to switch into software development, the hunger for learning new things and exploring uncharted territory also leads to the fear of missing out due to technological overload. I’ve learned to accept it and to focus on being a better developer and de-cluttering my mind from wanting to learn everything out there.

Playing favourites

I love Javascript. On the back-end I’ve worked with Ruby on Rails but would like to go more in depth with Node. On the front-end, I’m a big fan of Angular and now learning more about Angular 2 ( mostly because of NativeScript) .

Moving forward

I’d like to build mobile apps with NativeScript. I’ve played with Ionic a bit but found NativeScript a lot more appealing. Currently working towards building a fashion web application with my friend and business partner and we have a few apps in mind for the future.

So you’ve talked about your background and tech, but what do you like and dislike?

I love to travel. My dad is now retired and travels all over the world so perhaps my knack for backpacking runs in the family. I love photography and have a website http://out-here.co/ that I plan to populate with pictures from my travels.

I hate slow walkers. I generally hate crowded places so I tend to avoid shopping as much as possible. I hate commuting too.

That’s all for now. If my story wasn’t boring enough, this community will help serve as a go to place for people who switched careers into software development and want to share insights, resources and laughs together.

If you’d like to see some of the projects my friend and I built visit:
sand-box.io