A Journey from Coffee to Code
A short story about my move into the tech industry
First things first I’m Stephen 👋. I have been working as a Junior Web Application Developer for a finance company called Interactive Investor for the past 8 months. What a journey it has been so far. I just wanted to share my experiences to give an insight into the leap I made from barista to developer.
Throughout my life, I have always had a deep interest in technology and computing in general. I studied computing at university but did not feel it was for me. I scraped through my time there and lost interest in the end. It put me into a position where I lost touch with what I wanted to do as a career, and this put me down. After university all I wanted to do was go out and see the world, so my girlfriend and I disembarked on our biggest journey yet — travelling. It has been exactly a year today that I returned from New Zealand. A year since the end of one of the most rewarding experiences of my life.
Fortunately, whilst travelling I had a job I could quite easily travel with. I first became a barista to fund my university lifestyle whilst studying in Leeds. I worked with some very skilled baristas who taught me that it is more than just coffee. As my own skills developed so did a passion, but I felt something always lacked. I was aware of this feeling in other hospitality jobs that I took on whilst I saved for travelling. Something was missing.
I had time to reflect whilst I was away on who or what I wanted to be. I was so sure that a career in tech was for me, but university had dampened the passion and I did not know how to reignite the flame. Whilst I was working as a barista in New Zealand a good friend from home got in touch with a contact and new challenge. This contact wanted a simple website building for his newly established cleaning business. This was my first ‘real’ client and knew it would be challenging with my full-time job and 12-hour time difference.
It’s almost like someone flipped a switch in my head. Alongside working a full-time job in New Zealand, I was able to produce a fully working website for a client from planning to production. I built a brochure style site using the technologies taught at university. With only intermediate-level knowledge, I had to learn on the go. Solving real problems and gaining real experience was super beneficial to my growth as a developer. Having the accountability to perform well pushed me to do better. This simple website was a career-defining moment.
After this first project, I wanted to increase my knowledge and skill set so that I could take on bigger projects. I chose React which is a popular library for JavaScript. The reputation of React attracted me to it, I saw a lot of people investing time in it. As soon as I started learning React, I was hooked, I really enjoy working in components. If you have not already checked it out, do. I was self-disciplined and kept the momentum up by doing some learning every day for almost a year whilst travelling and working before returning to the U.K. It may sound like a cliché, but travelling was an eye-opening experience for me, and I honestly feel like I found myself and the path that I wanted to be on.
When I got back home, I started focusing on being employable. I fleshed out my LinkedIn with my new experiences and what I had learnt whilst being away. I also took on another barista job to earn some money while I continued to learn the skills to be employable as a web developer. After a couple of months, I was contacted by a recruiter through LinkedIn who was able to offer me a job that matched all my skills.
I had read about how notorious the interviewing stages are for tech jobs. In the lead up to my interview with Interactive Investor, I was panicking, I was overwhelmed with self-doubt. Did I have enough experience? What if I couldn’t perform in the technical test? Was I ready? In the end, I came to think of the interview as a learning experience. This was my first in the tech world, it more than likely was not going to result in a job. But it would be a valuable experience that I could help prepare for the future.
After a nerve-wracking week after the interview, despite trying not to get my hopes up, my recruiter contacted me, and I actually had landed the job. It was a surreal feeling. After the path I had been on I just did not expect the outcome. It was a proud moment of self-success; everything had paid off. I have worked for Interactive Investor for 8 months now as a junior and in that time my confidence and knowledge have grown exponentially.
On reflection, I feel that every step you take good or bad it will all lead you to your ultimate goal. Just take small steps and be consistent whether it be learning a new skill or switching careers. Just make a start because you will be surprised with how it will turn out. I certainly couldn’t have predicted where I would have been before travelling. You could always dwell on mistakes you made in the past but instead of dwelling capitalise on them and let them shape your future. (A little deep but sometimes it is needed 🌌)
Thanks for reading
A big shout out to Grant at Forward Role recruitment for connecting me to the role.
