Hello Steemers,
My name is Kashif Ali and I am journalist turned software engineer living and working in the bay area.
One year ago, I was broke and almost homeless in San Francisco. I was working at a local restaurant as dishwasher few hours per week on less than minimum wage. Now, I am working for Adobe as a full-time employee. This is a short story of my struggle from dishwasher to Software engineer within a year. From Journalism to dishwashing is another story and will write that some other time. I will only focus last one year of my life to justify the title of my headline.
Journalism and writing was my passion (and still is) but I wanted to change my career path and explore the tech world. If you haven't noticed lately, journalism is going through some tough time these days. Google and Facebook have sucked most of the digital marketing dollars and every major news organization is fighting for survival.
I started my search to getting into tech world without going to school for four years and paying big bucks. I soon ended up on Udacity but I feel frustrated without help and getting stuck on small tasks. Meanwhile, I discovered the idea of coding bootcamp via @haseebq blog.
I felt motivated and pumped and started putting some serious effort to get into coding bootcamp. Coding bootcamp's are the fastest way to learn to code, within 12 weeks you learn one or two coding languages with full stack web development projects. It costs around $15,000 to $22,000 to attend the bootcamps.
Getting into top bootcamps are tougher than getting into Harvard. Bootcamp graduates usually start their career as junior developers and can earn $70,000 to $110,000 per year. App Academy and Hack reactor claim that their graduate's average salary is $105,000.
My default choice was App Academy because of their tuition fee model. They only require a small deposit and 18% of your first-year salary but really really hard to get in. Did I mention Harvard?
You can learn more about getting into coding bootcamp from @haseebq blog.
https://haseebq.com/cracking-the-coding-bootcamp-the-definitive-guide
Long story short because of my unique situation I created my own criteria to select bootcamps.
I reached out to 5 bootcamps, got admitted in three and asked about scholarship availability. Some offered a partial fee discount. Folks at General Assembly reviewed my situation very emphatically and referred me to Adobe Digital Academy scholarship program. It's a corporate social responsibility program for underrepresented minorities in the tech and for the people in need. The selection process for the Academy was hard but I got the scholarship. They paid my bootcamp fee and gave small stipend monthly for living expenses for three months and a possibility of three months internship. If I complete bootcamp successfully. That was a major major stepping stone in my journey. I can't thank enough for that opportunity. My long-term goal was to drive for Uber and collect some money to get into bootcamp.
The first month of the bootcamp was rough, I didn't have the money to feed myself and class schedule and teaching speed was very very fast, to say the least. I dropped out of the cohort and joined the next one with more preparation. Adobe and GA people were very helpful during this transition.
I graduated from bootcamp in May 2017. It was very challenging 12 weeks but at the end of the day is definitely worth it. I made lifelong friends and contacts. I meet with four hour work week fame Tim Ferries. I learned to code from scratch and built four shiny full stack apps. I faced my fear of public speaking, challenged imposter syndrome and learned about growth mindset.
Now, the most difficult and crucial part of this transition was ahead of me. Finding a job without any prior experience in tech and coding. One of my friends asked me on graduation day,
Friend: what are you gonna do?
Me: Find a job in tech.
Friend: They said it can be very hard and challenging
Me: There are 22,000 tech companies in the bay area, from startups to Google and Facebook. I am sure, one of them will need me. Either I will find a job in tech or will die trying.
Friend: Damn, brah. I got goosebump. I am gonna do the same.
Adobe came to rescue and offered me a three months internship. I joined Adobe in late June with other summer interns. I was assigned to salesforce team and I knew only one thing about salesforce. That, it's a CRM. So, the internship was another bootcamp experience for me. I have to learn quickly and contribute meaningfully to the project.
After three weeks of trying, I didn't move a single inch towards success. I was frustrated and my imposter syndrome was killing me. I was certain that I might not get a full-time offer. I remember one Caltrain ride back to SF. I started writing everything that was going through my mind from last few weeks. I wrote all of my fears and success. I concluded the worst and best possible outcomes. I read that document few times and decided to give my best regardless of the end result.
Long story short I finished the project, got an extension and finally a full-time job offer. Which I accepted and joined Adobe as a full-time employee in late October 2017.
It took me almost one year to turn around my life. I was almost homeless, didn't eat for three days at one point. I started attending meetups for free foods and contacts :)
I noticed some blockchain events popping up more and more in my network and meetup. I . attended few of those in early October and one with Vitalik Buterin, Joseph Poon, and Jun Hasegawa.
(Organised by SF SF Ethereum Developers Pic credit: https://www.meetup.com/SF-Ethereum-Developers/photos/28173666/#464667594
I was listening to @crypt0 live stream and found about Steemit. That's how I ended up here.
Today, the market is going down and everyone watching the bloodbath. There are a lot of variables that caused this market crash and I am definitely not the expert on the crypto market but I can only tell you one thing.
Invest in yourself, it will definitely be more valuable than BTC and ETH.