How I Became A Software Engineer Without A Computer Science Degree (and it changed my life)

Опубликовано: 24 Март 2020
на канале: Life of Luba

27,061

1.4k

⭐ Kite is a free AI-powered coding assistant that will help you code faster and smarter. The Kite plugin integrates with all the top editors and IDEs to give you smart completions and documentation while you’re typing. I've been using Kite for 6 months and I love it! https://www.kite.com/get-kite/?utm_me...

I started to learn to code when I was 20 years old, and within a year, I was already working as a software engineer at one of the top tech companies, and the whole experience, completely changed my life for the better.

Let’s back up - I’m originally from Belarus, where I spent the majority of my life. When I was 17 years old, I moved to Canada to study Chemical Engineering at one of the top Engineering universities in the world - University of Waterloo. I participated in chemistry olympiads and conferences when I was in high school and wanted to continue studying a subject related to chemistry.

Couple of years into my degree, I was looking for a career transition and decided to learn how to code. I started with Codecademy and Codecademy and online education completely changed my life.

This video is not even sponsored by them (I wish it was, hey Codecademy, pls, sponsor me!) but I am a huge believer in the platform. I quickly got hooked on coding because of how interactive the web development course on Codecademy was (I took the html, css class) and then I transitioned to taking more coding courses on Coursera (another favorite of mine). I’m also going to leave a link to the video where I talk about the best online platforms to learn coding.

Fast forward, 6 months into learning, I moved to San Francisco for the first time to intern at Yelp, which kickstarted my career in tech. I quickly fell in love with the industry and Silicon Valley - I was constantly surrounded by really smart people who were bursting with ideas, as an immigrant from Eastern Europe, I always wanted to live in a vibrant city, and San Francisco was perfect. I felt like I was learning and growing like never before.

I then had an opportunity to work on the biggest Canadian hackathon (Hack the North), went on to work as an Engineer at Airbnb, started a collaborative fraud organization Risksalon.org along with an annual conference, most importantly I started this YouTube channel and this awesome community!

Learning how to code has allowed me the freedom to reflect on my choices, to reflect on what is it that I’m excited about, and incredible opportunities to work on impactful projects and freedom to think about what’s next. Since about a year ago, after reflecting on what I wanted to do, I transitioned into first a Chief of Staff role, then into a Product Manager role, all within Airbnb. I’ve now been living in Silicon Valley for a few years and who knows where life will take me next :)

I want you to take a few things away from this video:

1. Tech is full of opportunities and my own journey is great example of this
2. Frequently spend time reflecting on your life and your choices: are you excited about what you are doing, what is your north start, are you doing the right things to move into that direction.
3. If you want to pick up any new skill, all you have to do is to put your mind to it and put in the work - I am a strong believer that you can learn anything, especially nowadays, when we have access to such incredible cluster of online learning
4. Take good care of yourself - you are your biggest asset and you need to make sure that you give this asset enough energy to keep going, to keep dreaming, and to keep executing

#Motivation #TechTips

► Sign up for algoexpert for practicing coding interview problems:
http://algoexpert.io/luba
Use code "luba" for a 30% discount, it's ending soon!

▶ Subscribe for more awesome videos! http://bit.ly/LifeofLuba

▶ MY YOUTUBE GEAR:
Main camera - https://amzn.to/2IoCueI
Second camera - https://amzn.to/2SapWMy
Microphone - https://amzn.to/2CQXsO6
Sound recorder - https://amzn.to/2MDTYDc
Indoor Lights - https://amzn.to/2B7Eu5M

▶ MY COMPUTER SETUP:
Macbook Pro - https://amzn.to/2Bc1xMR

-----------------------------------

▶ FOLLOW ME ON:
★ INSTAGRAM → / lifeoflubaa