My First Year in Web Dev

March 16th, 2024 marks one year since I committed to web development. Summer 2022, I graduated from my teaching credential program feeling absolutely exhausted on all levels. All I wanted was peace. So I moved back in with my parents. I worked easy part-time jobs and took some classes for fun at my local community college.

Searching for light

Peace was not easy to find however. My mom was sick and had to have heart surgery while I was still emotionally recovering from the worst couple years of my life. I started to learn JavaScript for fun while I was in my teaching credential program. I played Bitburner which is a game where you write scripts to earn money by running hacks on other people's servers, all in-game btw. I would spend weekends optimizing my scripts instead of grading and doing my assignments.

In my search for peace and my next phase, computer programming seemed like a good place to look.

I had completed most of a minor in Computer Science during my undergrad. With a Math B.A. and computer science, I thought there had to be something I could do with that. So my first move was to explore and see what might interest me. In November/December 2022, I started applying to software engineering internships to see if I could landing anything off the bat.

To no one's surprise, I got nothing. My skills were rough and the big tech companies were starting their big layoffs. The easy covid jobs of 2020-2021 were gone. It meant that I had to really polish my skills if I were to even have a chance. Problem was, I hadn't even picked an area to pursue and I didn't the money to go back to school or do a bootcamp. My interests thus far were android/mobile development or web dev but I was still waddling around in the dark about where to start.

The fuse is lit

Someone I had tutored at my part-time job, Manny, told me about Bay Valley Tech, a free online web development bootcamp provided for CA residents. I decided to try it out since I had made websites with Wix and Wordpress in the past. When that started in February 2023, I put web developer in my LinkedIn title just to announce my interest. But then, on March 16th, I received a message:

I see you have an experience as a teacher/tutor/software developer/ web developer.
I am interested knowing more about you and the knowledge you have. In your about section "You wrote your dream is to create software and apps to promote common well-being" which caught my eye.
I have been working on a few ideas that might interest you. Let me know when you are free to chat or jump on a quick call.

Saurav, an IT professional at my job, reached out to me about a project that he was working on. During that call, it became apparent that I wasn't qualified to do what he wanted. He asked what frameworks I was familiar with and I sheepishly confessed that I didn't know what a framework was. I quickly added that I was more than willing to learn but that I just hadn't gotten there yet.

He paused. But then he gave me a chance. He understood my eagerness and told me to learn about frameworks and talk to him again in a week. I was in! But not yet! So I crammed as much info as I could find about frameworks, I picked React, and quickly started learning the basics. The next week we met and we continued to work on the project. I enjoyed making websites with Wix, I had an opportunity to work on a project, and I had a bootcamp to teach me.

*It was at that moment that I decided to dedicate myself to making websites.
*

The following months were a blur so I'll make a list of everything that happened:

1. Someone reached out to me on LinkedIn to teach a highschool Web Design class (August 2023)
2. Helped start a coding club at my community college (August 2023)
3. Got an UX Writing internship @ Phils Drills through ParkerDewey (March 2023)
4. That internship turned into Shopify Development. (May 2023)
5. Attended student hackathon (April 2023)

I have a dream

It was also around here that a dream had started to take form. A dream to make a website that made it easy for people to apply for and manage their Medi-Cal. I've been on Medi-Cal all my life and I thought month-long waits for appointments, long holds on the phone, and getting bounced around was the norm. When I was hungry in college, I heard about Calfresh (food stamps) but was dismissive because I thought applying would be hassle like Medi-Cal. I discovered that Code for America had built GetCalfresh.org which made it simple to apply in 10 minutes. I was astonished. I thought,

This is the power of good web development!

I decided that I would stick with web development until this ideal Medi-Cal web app was built, even if I had to do it myself!

Community makes the stars align

After spending the whole summer learning React, I realized I had no one to talk to about it with. I went looking for React events in the Bay Area to meet others who were working with the framework. I found a React Native event in San Francisco around September/October. I didn't know anything about React Native but I said fuck it, I'll go for the exposure.

I arrive at the event and it's a presentation between two companies, Callstack and Abbott. I'm the only person there that's not from a company. It felt like I wasn't supposed to be there but everyone I talked to was kind and let me speak. There was even one guy, Efraín, whose family is from the same area as mine! A group of us went out for drinks afterwards and I eventually met, Steven. He told me he might have an opportunity me to do data visualization for them.

Every month I'd send him a message to check-in about that opportunity. In December, I finally got to meet him again on Zoom. I got another interview a few weeks later with another member of his team, Ryder. It was a very informal interview where he asked me about my technical knowledge, career goals, and even personal interests.

Around this time, I had started paying for a mentor, Lo, to help me guide my learning. I made so much progress on my personal projects and it really helped to have a professional to bounce ideas and concerns off of.

I heard back in Jan/Feb, that I'd been accepted and I would be starting as a Technical Resident for his team. It's currently my 4th week with Abbott and I didn't expect everyone to be so nice! Ryder, my mentor, and Steven are very understanding and helpful with getting me up to speed in the project. Since last week, I've been coming into the office (which is super close to my house!) with Efraín and he's been great at introducing me to everyone.

In January, I had also applied to the Technologists for Public Good Mentorship Program and got accepted! And my mentor, Luigi, is one of the people who built GetCalfresh.org! With his guidance, I've redesigned the CoveredCa.com mobile homepage. I'm currently learning about accessibility and performance to improve user experience on the website!

What I've Learned

• Effort becomes luck I got lucky that I went to that event and met Steven who provided me this opportunity. But if I had not put in the work to learn React, build projects, and put myself out there and go to random events, that opportunity wouldn't've been offered to me. Thus, effort has the power to raise your luck.
• It takes a village I would have never gotten this far without people who believed in me like Saurav, Manny, Phil (from Phil's Drills), and Steven! My mind works best when I have people that I look up to who validate me and push me to be my best self. This includes the therapists that I saw, Kyoko and Jason, from the free e-clinic at Palo Alto University.
• Dreams beg to be chased I couldn't accept the fact that Medi-Cal was so hard to use while Calfresh was so easy. It actually made me frustrated. That gave me the drive to do something about it. Even now, I still get restless thinking about how its not real yet. Finding this dream made such a drastic impact on my motivation. So be stubborn and carve a path with your own god-given hands!
• ADHD is REAL and requires real life-style changes I did okay in school because it gave me deadlines and consequences. They are clear signals to my brain to do what needs to be done. After you graduate, your grades become your bank account balance and your only deadline is your rent payment. So it was a huge struggle to stay focused and be productive while teaching myself. I got a work-study job at my community college that allowed me to study away from home while getting paid. On days I wasn't working, I went to the library or cafes, even on the weekends. Every day that I stayed home I felt slow, depressed, and distracted. If you have ADHD, I highly suggest figuring out ways to build an environment that tells you to focus. You have a disability that inhibits your ability to regulate your attention. We must rely on external signals to get our brains in focus.
• Depression is REAL and requires real help People say your health is the best investment. Well so is your mental health. Depression would make my brain rot. It would take days or weeks to get back to feeling productive. Therapy helped me a lot with untangling the mess of thoughts in my head and clarifying where my feelings were coming from so I could address them. Nowadays I feel a lot better but I still go to therapy because its good to practice one's awareness of their emotions.
• Take risks / Do stuff for yourself I had a bunch 'bucket list' type things I wanted to do but was putting off until I found a real job. But that ended up just making feel trapped. If you have the means, do something crazy once in a while. In September, I had a panic attack because I felt so trapped. So that same day, I bought a week-long trip to Mexico to see my family that I'd never met. Earlier in June or July I got my hair braided which oddly forced me to feel more confident. I also got the homies together to go to Half Moon Bay for my birthday. Life doesn't have to stop just because you're working. You work but You are not work. You are You and you must feed Your Self.

Conclusion

This year has been a wild ride. And I expect it to get even wilder from here! I hope that I will improve my ability to teach and help others. And I'm sure that I will build some cool stuff this year! Massive 'Thank You's to all my friends and mentors who've supported me through this journey!!! I hope to pay your kindness back and/or forward! Thanks for reading!