Software Developers Journey

Claude placed the start of his journey in the early days of the internet, learning HTML for the sake of Beanie Babies. He then described how this triggered his curiosity and ignited a never-ending passion. We talked about his first job and how his coworkers helped him navigate his unknown unknowns. How communities and relationships helped him evolve and grow. We then jumped into management and how...

Limor placed the start of her journey in her early childhood, doing a lot of maths and playing with computers. As a brilliant student during high school, she could enroll in enrichment classes and dip her does into computer science, which took us to do her military service in the IDF's Intelligence Corps Technological Unit 81. We talked about her experience as a QA engineer there and how she...

Brandon placed the start of his journey with his grandmother in computer expos in the 90s. But before coming to programming, his tale took a long detour, made of a search for purpose, social recognition, and his identity. We spoke of a pattern interrupt in the form of a year teaching English at the other end of the planet and how Brandon finally came to enroll in a Bootcamp. We finished this great...

Bekah started with a poignant story of how the birth of her 4th child was a traumatic event that threw her into depression, PTSD, and questioning her place in the world. We then talked about her discovery of the FreeCodeCamp, and how she ended up saying, "I'm done" with her first career. We then discussed the role of communities in finding her first job and how COVID led to the crea...

Matthew placed the start of his journey as a kid, introduced to the world of Nerds by his brother-in-law. Fast forward a few years, Matt spent the better time of his homeschooling on IRC, building stuff. But when the time came to go to college, he avoided anything tech related. He described a few pivotal points that led him to finally embrace software development and have the blast of his life. We...

Meshi placed the start her journey after high school when she did her mandatory military service in unit 8200 of the Israeli Defense Forces. She described how she learned cyber systems and cyber-analysis, became an officer and learned leadership early on. We then discussed how she wanted to explore, become a programmer and enroll in a part-time CS curriculum. We discussed becoming a team lead and...

Nikhil placed the start of his journey in high school, where a teacher managed to light the programming flame in his heart. A few years later, Nikhil graduated with a CS degree and joined a startup. He learned the value of thinking about the problem, embracing the whole system, and not just the solution. This set him up to create his own company. We talked about why the first one failed and then a...

Dean placed the start of his journey in 6th grade, reading science fiction and dreaming of building robots. From there on, in the late 70s, the virus never left him. The rest of the interview was a history lesson about software engineering. Dean spoke of the first company he created in high school and funded by Atari founder Nolan Bushnell. He talked about his time working for Xerox Parc and then...

Danny placed the start of his journey in high school when his astronomy class closed, and he had to take computer science instead. We then talked about the German concept of Berufsakademie and how he alternated between internships at Alcatel and a technical university for the next four years. We followed his journey from C++ to Java and Kotlin, creating drivers, discovering Blackberry development,...

Chris placed the start of his journey during his first career as an HR professional. We first talked about how blogging put software development on his radar and how "interesting" HR experiences slowly but indeed pushed him to transition toward web development. We explored how he gamed the recruiter systems, applied, and failed his first job interviews. We brushed over communities and ho...

Abhimanyu placed the start of his dev journey as a math undergrad who had not touched a computer before. We talked about how he enrolled in a CS curriculum at university and found himself typing with one finger among people with years of experience. We talked about him growing into this role and creating a smart-lightning company even before graduation. We discussed working in the open source comm...

Jake placed the start of his journey in middle school, having to learn his way with computers to play video games. From there, we talked about a small hardware review business he started and how following his curiosity set him up on the path of creating companies. We talked about starting and failing. We spoke of Lean Startup, MVPs, and talking to customers. We finally talked about solving your pa...

Laila placed the start of her journey in the hands of her older brothers, who showed a deep interest in seeing her grow and discover her full potential. One of them gave her her first computer and unknowingly set her on the path she is on today. We then talked about how she wanted to become a teacher but went for computer science instead. We discussed communities and public speaking. Laila shared...

Hannah placed the start of her journey when her mum brought back a Dell PC from the US. She brushed over her studies and realized that computer science was what she should pursue. We explored how she self-taught and went into mobile development. We talked about how she got involved in communities and got into the GDE Program. We discussed engineering management and her approach to mentorship. Here...

Jean-Philippe pinpointed the start of his journey at age 11 when his mother placed the family computer in his bedroom. JP talked about his childhood, discovering coding, and the internet, being an excellent student, promising greatness, and dropping out. He spoke of being unable to find a tech job and working as a truck driver. He then explained how he started doing phone support and grew to becom...

Dustin placed the start of his journey somewhere between the age of 7 and 18... or 16... with a C64 or a TRS-80. Fast forward a few years, he spoke of enrolling in a computer engineering curriculum to play on hardware and software. We then talked about the first company Dustin worked for. We spoke about the multiple roles he took during his 12 years tenure and how he slowly realized that if his mo...

Oshri placed the start of his journey at the age of 13 when he got his first computer and started being an online vigilante. Fast forward a few years, he was out of high school, searching for a job as a developer during the dot-com boom. We talked about his first job, the company he created, and crashed. We spoke of returning to being an employee and playing the title rat race until he became a fu...

Kevin started his story in the 80 & the 90s but quickly said, "Coding found me more than I found it." We then discussed his (very early) Bootcamp and how he went from one job to the next, slowly feeling less incompetent. We talked about ADHD, networking, people & organizational problems, and environment variables. We then dug our heels into eXtreme Programming and the Spine model...

Amy took us on a wild ride, made of embracing crazy adventures by fear of failure. We talked about her time as a hippie in a commune, her time in academia, and during her Ph. D., we spoke about transferring skills from one career to the next. We discussed slowly coming to software engineering and how she approached this next transition. And finally, we talked about her positioning as a highly skil...

Melanie's love for web development started in 1997 (not with Dreamweaver) and followed her to 2022, where she is pushing the state of Accessibility. We brushed over her childhood, spoke about her time as an Intelligence Analyst in the Navy, and saw how she slowly but surely built her skills. We talked about disabilities, reframing Accessibility for UX, we discussed improving the web, and how...

Bill placed the start of their journey at three different places. In their childhood, thanks to a geeky dad. Then right after college when they started working as a web developer. And finally, in 2020, when they embraced the fractional CTO idea. We dug into the fractional CTO business idea, the heuristics helping them decide to take on a project, and how to make it successful with different client...

Jenn first took us back in her studies, discovering FORTRAN and MATLAB and hating every minute of it. Fast forward a few years, she found she was missing the visual aspect of programming, and as soon as she put a finger into web development, off, she went. We spoke about her first jobs, good and bad managers. We spoke about transitioning from small to big to small companies. We discussed the advan...

Katerina placed the start of her journey in her studies when she found where she belonged. She spoke about her first job and how it set up the rest of her career. It led her toward freelancing and then creating her company Adeva. We spoke about how Katerina grew into her CEO role and remains grounded in tech. We talked about remote work and making connections in a remote world.  Here are the links...

Jonah started by telling us about her family and how she juggled her studies and put food on the table for her three siblings. We then discussed how she moved to Sweden and how her micro-manager of a boss led her to burnout. We then moved to her next and current job, which looks like the opposite, and touched on being led, freedom, learning, communities, teaching, public speaking, being an MVP and...

Max took us back to his childhood, at 6, when he got his first BBC-Micro computer. We spoke about learning BASIC and C++, using manuals and documentation instead of Stackoverflow, and how he studied chemistry. Max talked about depression, how he started working in open-source, and how alternating between open-source and paying gigs set him up for working on tea.xyz nowadays. We finished brushing o...