Intro
Hello, here I have a kind of lengthy intro of my professional work in web development. I wrote it in case I am discovered on the internet by someone who may want to connect. I also have a few lessons learned in here in case they might be helpful. I could talk about any of these at great length for anyone who would like to chat.
TL;DR
- career switch from finance
- web dev bootcamp
- first job with AI/computer vision startup
- built a startup from scratch to MVP and investment
- early engineer on a fast-growing health tech company that got acquired
Here is the long version...
Getting into Coding
I went to a business school where I majored in finance because I figured people who work with money make more of it than others. The work itself was not that interesting to me, but I realized I had a talent of breaking down complexity and communicating it to others.
I saw a bunch of small startups in Cambridge getting bought up for big money and wondered how I could get myself on one of those teams. In college I thought coding was for smart people (haha!), but was now confident I could learn anything.
I figured there would be more competition for the non-technical roles and the opportunity to have a more creative career was particularly exciting to me. The thought of being able to build off my own ideas was also intriguing.
I took some online coding tutorials before and after work and realized I really enjoyed it!
Shout out: One Month
Web Dev Bootcamp
I wanted to make sure I could land a job and coming from such a different field I felt that I should get some structured learning experience.
Graduate school seemed really expensive and I was more interested in startups than maintaining legacy software for a large company -- I was leaving finance after all! So the web development bootcamps seemed like the best route to go and they claimed to have good track records with job placement.
I went with General Assembly's Web Development Immersive program and it was the best decision I ever made. We had a fun cohort of all different backgrounds who enjoyed each other. The curriculum covered practical material and gave us exposure to the industry at meetups and career sessions.
Shout out: General Assembly
First Job
My first job was with a AI/computer vision startup. My role was full-stack building on our client dashboard and some funky apps that would demonstrate the technology.
For the interview I was asked if I knew any CSS. I said I hadn't worked on it yet, but I could go home, make a demo, and send the link over. I have recommended this approach for the many junior engineers I've met since then.
I got to really develop CSS skills early on which I think was helpful since it is not necessarily logic-based way coding languages are so I had a solid foundation for what I would work on next.
My Start Up
A friend found out I learned to code and asked if I could help with launching his project off the ground. I did not know at the time this is what happens when your friends learn you know how to code now haha, but I had not started a side project yet and wanted to see what I could do. I was able to build it from concept to MVP which got us seed funding which allowed us to hire employees.
It was a chat app using Ruby on Rails as the REST server using websockets for real-time communication to the web client and mobile apps. I used vanilla JS with jQuery since React was not quite mainstream and my peers at work warned it might be a "Shiny New Thing" still. Go figure React is basically the default front-end library now and would have helped a lot with my own templating and hiring devs who wanted to gain experience with it.
I used Twilio for SMS. Heroku for hosting which later got moved to GCP by a senior engineer who helped out for a week so I got to learn DevOps when he left. For notifications I used OneSignal. For payments I used Stripe. We integrated in-house AI chat bots and I got to build the product out to make sure they were used effectively.
It was exciting to receive such strong feedback from our customers and investors which allowed me to gain an incredible amount of experience in such a short amount of time. I would not recommend a technical co-founder role for most people though as it was also stressful to have the success of the whole operation on your shoulders and risky to invest that much time without making a salary. As we realized we would be reaching a certain amount of success I had to hand the project over so I could get a job and pay bills.
Growth Company
I was able to land an opportunity with a health tech company where I was the 6th engineer on the team for a product that had been in production for a few years. There would be a decent mix of refactoring old code while building new features and preparing to scale for a large user base.
Getting work done was a nice part of being there of course, but I enjoyed being part of a more organized operation whereas before I had worked at two early-stage startups. Participating in roadmaps, sprint planning/retrospectives, mentoring junior devs, collaborating with multiple different departments, and various other ways of ensuring we were functioning more efficiently and effectively I knew would be helpful for me to take with me to any new opportunities.
The company more than doubled in size while I was there and then acquired. I am proud to have contributed to a meaningful mission alongside many outstanding individuals.
Currently
After the acquisition I was able to take a break from work after a particularly stressful non-work related situation brought on by the pandemic. I have become aware of how burnout works and used the time for myself to travel, relax, and ultimately get back into the next stage of learning and coding. I have been having fun playing around with concepts of generative art made popular by the NFT community. TypeScript seems to be reaching popularity the way React was for me during my startup and I have enjoyed developing my skills with it.
I am excited for my next opportunity and hopefully my future posts will be more technical :D
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