Hello all!
I’d like to formely introduce myself as I’ve got a story I care much to share with you all.
My name is Shanyu Juneja, I am 15 year old and I code and own stuff.
Originally, I started my little adventure in Late 2016. I was just getting started with basic HTML (which is not a coding language, let’s be fair) and just barely scrapping the surface on some other stuff. I then got tired of it and since my peak interest at the time (and still is!) was Minecraft, I decided to devote time into learning Java. Java is the main coding infrastructure for Minecraft and Minecraft addons, so I just had to learn it.
6 months go by and progress is just slow. I lost all inspiration and love for what I was doing due to my endless issues. I was still 13 at the time and just gave up.
Time goes by, I attempt to get into Management. I start offering simple websites and join a firm with a buddy of mine. Soon enough, following my active participation, I get moved into a management position (voluntary work). This little firm was a sort of middle-men for Minecraft related work. We found freelancers and would give them commissions we seeked for in exchange for around 15-20% of the commission price.
Things went by and I was soon enough promoted into a head position, leading a team which had passed the 30 members threshold (Not entirely sure, forgot a lot of the numbers). I was happy but time was consumed and my PayPal (Parent one with authorization of use for receiving and transfering funds. Nothing illegal here :P) wasn’t nearly getting more than $50. At the time, $100 was a milestone for me.
Things continued until Late 2017 when I decided to branch out my own brand to be able to fund some dream of mine....
December 2017, I quit my position which I treasured. I only had myself and this domain. I did my best, but failures only followed the months that followed. Was it a curse? I felt defeated, hammered down, as if the world had torn my dreams to pieces. I truly wanted to be part of something: create a wonder that I could proudly say ‘I made and owned this’. By April 2018, I had turned 14. Big age!
However, things started to change. I started working a lot. Trying things, getting in touch with people and such. I did not make a penny until Summer 2018 when I did some motion-designing as a side job, as well as some voxel 3D design. I’m passionate about computers. I know a lot of everything but only scratched the surface until I found something I bonded with.
Winter 2018, school was back, and it was ready to taunt me with overloading work. I had no choice and worked really hard to keep up A’s and B’s at bare minimum. The outcome was pretty good and I kept my high level in scientific topics. This lasted until Sprint 2019 when the work-load had slightly eased up. I had a bit of time to do any sort of activity every week for a couple hours. Out of all the things I had previously tried, I decided to give coding another go.
My turning point was in May. I had bonded with this language and a sort of click happened overnight. I woke up one day feeling like I could make anything, and the moment my hands touched the keyboard words in the language I feared started appearing. Was all these years of failure leading to this?
I’m in no position to call myself a pro, or even advanced, but I can confidently affirm I passed the known and feared dead end most people drive in. I then started selling one bit of software, which with it’s funds I bought another and another. This kept going till now. I now can rely on a minimum per months of 1/7th of minimal wage/month, which is still bad but means the world to me as I’ve finally made enough to call it profitable for a teenager. I’ve finally caught attention of people in my environment whom didn’t even notice my presence in the early days. I nowadays focus a lot on C# and C++, a bit of PHP and of course Java. I usually sell around 20-50 copies of my software per months, and roughly make enough to live in a lower price of living country. Not a bad start!
I’ve still got massive plans for the future. I one day hope to be leading a cyber-security firm for the Gaming industry (specifically preventing exploiting in games).
I enormously appreciate every single individual who has supported me through this still very young journey.
Thank you for reading,
- Ghast
Tl:dr: Was a kid, tried to code, gave up. Joined a group, was happy, made no money, left the group, was not happy and almost super sad. Kept it up, found my niche, made a lot of money, invested that money, now has one little business I can proudly call my own. Life is good, but not all the time.
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