Niloo becomes a web developer
Anybody who had known me six years ago, before leaving Iran and moving to Finland to continue my studies in literature, would have laughed at the idea of me becoming a web developer, or having a slightest thing to do with the tech world.
And here I am today, proud to consider myself a junior web developer and even prouder to be part of the Integrify community. This is what I would call the never ending process of growing and self-improvement. To live, to dream and to create till the end.
When I was living in Iran I was a literary translator and I translated a few books from English to Persian. I enjoyed it a lot but I knew that if I stay there I’m bound to leave my passion and do some kind of boring office work to make some money.
Together with my husband we moved to Finland to continue our studies and bring about new opportunities into our life. It was during this period that I became more concerned about building a sustainable and decent career for myself, something I would enjoy doing on an everyday basis and at the same time something that would help me earn a meaningful and comfortable life.
We came to the conclusion that living in a country where we don’t speak the native language, our best chance of getting into the job market would be in software development. For my husband who was a self taught programmer it was a relatively smooth shift of direction. But for me it was as if my whole world collapsed — I felt so lost and scared, it just seemed impossible.
I tried different online courses and I became interested in programming. I decided to do a bachelor degree in IT at Metropolia University of Helsinki. It was a good start, but I was still full of doubt and fear, even among my classmates I felt like the odd one out, I felt like I didn’t belong.
The tech world is quite vast and it is easy to get lost in it, to feel puzzled and just jump from one subject to the other without fully grasping them. It took me a while to finally choose the front-end web development as my main focus and I started participating in relevant online courses such as Udacity’s React Nanodegree. But still something was missing. I did not feel confident. Every time I made something or solved a problem I would dismiss it as sheer coincidence. And here is when Integrify stepped in to save me.
When you bring a considerable change in your professional life and set new goals for yourself you absolutely need support, encouragement, and of course luck. I was so fortunate to have them all. My beloved husband never stopped supporting and believing in me and above all he introduced me to Integrify. I consider myself extremely lucky to get into Integrify. To me it was everything my path towards becoming a successful developer was lacking.
In this welcoming and focused community I no longer feel like a lost bird wandering about the infinite sky. Here I am part of a diverse, kind, supportive, motivated and knowledgeable group and together we are flying towards success and a better future. We have a goal and we are provided with means to reach it. This warm feeling of belonging to the right community is very empowering.
These days I feel confident and competent. I have attend various tech meetups with my mates, I communicate with other developers and I feel like I’m part of this community. The future is no longer blurry and scary. I have a plan to be a successful developer, to create interesting and useful apps and tools to help the newcomers feel welcomed and to encourage women to join this industry. I know Integrify will help me reach this plan and make my dreams come true.
I look back at these two prolific months I have spent in Integrify and I feel so happy, so content and extremely grateful. It is so exciting to be able to track your progress day by day, and notice that you have literally learned something new every single day.
