Underdog's path to greatness

Life is hard and often is not fair.

We are different at the point of birth. Somebody will get a rich and caring family, somebody will have to go to work at 16 when both parents died (happened to a friend of mine).
Somebody will be preparing for a quality university from day 1, somebody will experience parents constantly arguing and divorcing, in a messy way.

However, these things are only important as part of your story, but they can only determine your future success in the world of IT if you allow it to be determined.

Let me explain. I have been helping hundreds, thousands of people since June 2022 to progress in IT. I have established that there is one and only one condition, which I need from a person, to make sure my new friend reaches the goals required.

What is this condition? Well, it is simple. Really simple. You must care, a lot. I do not really care what exactly you care about, as long as it is genuine and legal.

For example, you might care about getting a highly-paid job, so you could support your parents. True, that is the “only money” situation, but this is a very good starting point. I deeply respect people supporting their parents. See? I do not care for money, but your true goal, “supporting parents” - is the one I resonate deeply with.

Now, where do we go from here?

Actually, before I continue, I need to draw you a portrait of a person I am normally helping.

Typically it is not somebody from IIT, MIT, Oxford and so long, fith all respect to those great institutions.

Although studying IT in these institutions might be a questionable choice in terms of efficiency, they are still providing a top-notch education.

So an MIT friend will not be even aware of my existence, at least not till that friend burns out to ground 0 at the job he/she hates.

I can help with restoring from burnout, but these days that is not my focus, as joblessness is a more widespread problem.

Back to the portrait.

Normally it will be somebody caring.
Some examples of care:

1. family
2. community
3. accessible education
4. nature
5. art

Normally, my new friend lives in Central Africa (Kenya, Nigeria, Gambia, Gabon, Ghana) or India (New Delphi, Kolkata, West Bengal, Bengaluru).

Often my friend thinks that he/she is a “nobody”, “knows nothing” and “is a total failure”.

Here is how I help them to open their eyes and appreciate how cool they already are.

I show that “just” finding "Nikita" and the OpenSource community is a huge proactive step, which only a small % of people in the world did.

I explain that current skills, like multiple languages and computer literacy, are great, as this person fought for them when other’s got them from a school, paid by parents (no offence to private schools, they might be great).

I will check my friend’s background in terms of hobbies and tech stack.

TBH, it’s not a tech stack I am interested in. I just like listening to people who care. They need somebody who will just listen, I might be even the first person who did it.

By this stage, I know what that person likes/dislikes, strong and weak sides and so on.

Now we are ready to work.

Now we can do any of the following:

• grow into a job in a focused way
• contribute to the project which supports something you care for
• establish your online presence

Interested to know more?

Well, leave your questions in the comments below - I will write more articles to learn from and guide the amazing community of which you are a very important (no jokes) part.

Please follow me on socials - my community work is free and I really appreciate your support, as it helps me to help more people.