Graduated with a degree in occupational safety, taught himself code, got a junior tech role within 3 months, and never looked back ever since

Watch the full interview here : 

In this episode of Stories of Hackers, we talked with Brian, Brian graduated with a degree in Occupational Safety but started to learn coding after realizing the huge potential in the tech industry. He got himself a junior tech role in just 3 months after his self-learning journey! We hope you guys can learn some new insights from Brian’s story and his experience, enjoy!

Can you introduce yourself and your background to our community?

Hey guys, my name is Brian and currently I'm working as a frontend developer for two years and I started this journey back in 2019 and the thing is i'm a self-taught developer so at one point, i just looked at the tech industry it was booming. I wasn't really fond of my previous job, a sales job, so that's why I started to touch a little bit on HTML and CSS and that's how I got started.

For my education background, I graduated with a degree in this course called Occupational Health and Safety. A lot of people might not know what it is but basically, let me give you an example where we’re like the police in a construction site so if everyone remembers the incident recently where a block just fell down from an MRT. Well, my role is to prevent things like that from happening.

After I graduated, I was first working in a shipbuilding company but after a while I noticed that the job itself is pretty boring and then I got introduced to a sales role and became an insurance agent for a while and most of my career I was involved in sales until I took another leap into the tech world. 

That’s interesting...so what got you even signing up for that course or that degree in the first place?

I studied in Curtin University and the reason to why i took that course in the first place because back in my town, Miri, it was a town with the production of Oil and Gas, back then everyone recommended me to enter the Occupational Health and Safety course and claim that you can get 8,000 to 10,000 salary in just few years after you graduated and working in the field.

It was really more like an autopilot thing, right after high school then I just followed the trend of that time and  didn't even ask myself what I really wanted to do.

How did you get your first tech role? And what company is that?

Back then, I  really wanted to come to KL (Kuala Lumpur) but it’s hard for my degree to get a suitable job in KL so what happened was actually I started learning about digital marketing. I took a course on digital marketing as I was interested in knowing how a simple product  can sell for hundreds or thousands of ringgits.

Even with my knowledge on digital marketing, when I moved to KL, nobody wanted to hire me. I can't get any internship or full-time job at all, and that’s how I started learning about tech. My thought process was for you to market your products well, you need a nice website. To increase my knowledge and improve my skill, I purchased a paid full stack development course on Udemy. It was a course by Colt Steele and I believe anyone who is self-taught will stumble across this course. I didn't finish the full course because I just want to learn about the frontend. And then I did another course which is “ How to build your website” and that’s it, that’s how I started applying for jobs and got myself a job as a frontend developer after three months of self-learning. 

What was your support system and what kept you going to pursue your dream?

Well, what kept me going back then is honestly it's the fact that i just need a job you know? And the thing is, I don't want to go back to the sales role. 

I just push myself to make sure that I understand what I'm doing. I can’t speak for everyone but I didn't get a job in digital marketing because probably companies are looking for marketing graduates but it's not so much in the web development case, like everyone is talking about to get into web development you don't really need a degree for it. My families were also very supportive back then and that’s why I have the courage to just give this a shot. 

I’m sure the first three months of the self-learning journey were very tough and stressful for you. Can you walk us through your learning process? What's your day-to-day life look like?

I am a major procrastinator,  so my first month was just learning basic HTML and CSS, so I started with “floats”. Right now if you talk about floats, nobody uses this anymore, everyone just uses “flat”. Basically “float” is the way you structure your page. The first month is a lot of trying to understand what certain syntax actually means. I am using this “Pomodoro Technique” and learn about four to five hours per day.

It was pretty hard especially even if you look at certain things on StackOverflow, you just don't get it. Especially when it comes to JavaScript, compared to HTML where you can just try it out and it works right in front of your face. Javascript that can get a little bit tricky.

Before I got my first tech job, I only knew about building static websites with just HTML, CSS, Javascript, jquery and bootstrap. My portfolio at that time was two sample projects, where one of them is the gym membership website another one is like a restaurant website where there's a section where if you click it will generate a random recipe. 

That’s really awesome, would you have done anything differently if you could go back in time?

Yes, I would, if let's say I can go back in time, I would put more focus on JavaScript because to be a front-end developer, like it or not you need to know at least one framework. If you don't have a very good understanding on how javascript actually works i think it's extremely difficult to learn a framework by itself.

If you can go back in time again and have a choice to skip uni, go through a three months self-learning and get a job right after three months that probably pay above your entry level salary, what do you think of this idea?

I really believe it depends on your risk tolerance, because the safer bet is to get a degree. But if you decide to move into tech but you're not sure if you want to get into courses like accounting or marketing that don't really do with tech,i think you can make the choice all by yourself because there are certain degrees i feel like it will contribute to your success as a web developer or software engineer in the future.

What’s your plan for the future? Do you see yourself going more into the full stack role or?

My plan is I'm focusing on frontend first um because currently I don't use any front-end framework so I have to do it on the side.The thing is,  i'm not learning at the pace that i wanted to, so i would just focus on frontend first to avoid confusing myself.  I will jump back to the backend soon, which I am ready to do now but not too much.

What’s the biggest challenge you faced in your learning journey?

Basically not getting the help when you need it i would say. So for those who are about to start their journey to become a self-taught developer, seeking help is extremely important and one of the hardest things to do as well. I made this mistake because I just go and try to find answers on StackOverflow when I can actually go to platforms like let's say now for example, The Hacker Collective to ask for help. So that's the hardest part, getting stuck on something longer than you think you should.

Are there any closing notes you want to say to our community?

For all the developers out there, just be patient and be disciplined with your time. If you want to code an hour or two hours a day, make sure you do it consistently because you will forget if you do it only once a week.

Thanks for the awesome interview !

Hope you enjoyed this series!

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