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Second career developers
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Issra Hashim and Alican Akyuz are both "second career developers". One in training, one senior. They join host Pavlos Vinieratos to talk about their transition from careers unrelated to development and coding, to exactly that. Listen to their stories here.
Hello everyone, this is Pavlos Vinieratos, from Artsy Engineering Radio. Today I'm talking to Issra Hashim and Alican Akyuz, and our topic is second career developers. Alrlight, hello, hello, welcome to the podcast. We have two people here, Issra and Alican. They are both, they basically have a second career developer title, I guess. One is early in it, and one is not early in it. Do you wanna go and introduce yourself a little bit, Issra?
Issra:Sure. My name is Issra, I've been doing this boot camp in software engineering. I don't have a background in software engineering. So I studied archaeology and religions at university and then I did a master's in journalism. So I've worked in the art industry for a bit. And then I really wanted to change and through fate, I believe so it's just I met a few people that worked in tech, I've talked with, yeah, a few friends, heard that it was something that could be interesting to me, and I really liked that problem solving aspect. So I just decided to like put everything because I needed a change. And so that bootcamp has been going really well. So I'm about two thirds into it. So there's only like a few weeks left. Yeah, I've been loving it so far.
Pavlos Vinieratos:How long is the whole thing, the duration of the whole thing?
Issra:12 weeks, and I think we're in week eight? We've just finished week eight?
Pavlos Vinieratos:Cool, nice. And how about you Alican, you want to give us an intro?
Alican:Yeah, sure. Hello, everyone. My name is Alican. I'm currently working as a software engineer at Artsy. Like Issra, I also come from a different background. Formally, I studied literature as an undergraduate students, then I did my master's degree in cultural studies. Then I was a PhD student briefly in comparative literature. And before switching to software engineering, I was a teaching assistant. And as a PhD student, and academic career was the path that I saw myself as a trajectory. But then things happened, which we will talk about soon.
Pavlos Vinieratos:Okay. All right. And then I can also quickly introduce myself, I guess, my name is Pavlos. I'm also an engineer at Artsy, and I studied engineering, from the beginning I knew that I wanted to do it, so I'm in the in that way, it's very different. And I'm very interested and I'm always happy when I hear people like switching to development from anything else. So that's why I wanted to do this episode. Perfect. I have I mean, I have a bunch of questions. But let's start with some basic ones, as you both said, that you kind of started from Yeah, very, very different fields, both of them. Was there. Was there for both of you this question, I guess, was there a thought in the beginning that you know, you might want to do something else? Or that you want to do specifically engineering? How did it kind of start? Alican, you wanna start?
Alican:Sure, sure. For me, going to engineering path was one of the options but wasn't the only option. To be completely honest. It wasn't the love of coding or software that pulled me into that world. But it was other reasons. And there were some other options for me, too, like going into more product management direction, for example, or graphic design direction, but I was inspired by people around me at the time. And I saw their lifestyle as software engineer. And that pushed me into that direction.
Pavlos Vinieratos:What is the lifestyle you saw? Or what kind of lifestyle was that?
Unknown:Oh, you can't imagine. So I finished my master's degree. I'm in Berlin in summer. And I'm so broke, I don't have any money. Nothing. And I have this friend software engineers working for five hours a day, earning good money, living their life, going on vacations with their friends, so on so forth. And I was always left behind. And so financial aspect was one of the triggers for me at the time. It makes me also having to have time for myself to do other things in life. Like I'm interested in music. So as a software engineer, I have time to spend in that area as well and other things. In non tech related areas that I experienced, it's usually you give your everything to it. You work there eight hours sit at that desk, or whatever you are doing. And there is not much left much energy and time left for other things. So that was the lifestyle that I saw, earning good money, and also having time to live the life.
Pavlos Vinieratos:Okay, that makes sense. That makes sense. Definitely sounds like something many people wanna other. And how about you, Issra? Did you did you have something similar or something different?
Issra:Yeah, I want to say very similar. Definitely lifestyle was one component that attracted me. So I guess the the salary aspect, the fact that it was growing, I mean, it would essentially go along with your skill, so it could grow exponentially depending on whether you're good or bad at it. I also didn't see that, you know, engineering is the love of my life, let me just go there and do it. I've always very much taken education and jobs to be, what is my interest now? And this is why I've just, not everything but unrelated things, but mostly humanities. And I think one thing that also attracted me to coding was that this was skill based more so then, with other things that I have say humanities, it's mainly about theories and then essays. So in essence, discussion, right, so there's a lot of room for debates, and you know, reinterpretations. But with coding, yeah, there's just either you're right or wrong. But there's so many ways of doing one thing. And that's where I thought it was interesting as well, the creativity aspect to it, whether you're working on front end or back end, I guess. So there's multiple ways to get to the same answer. But when you get there, it's really satisfying. I just tried my hand at it online and figured I liked it. So I was like, why not?
Pavlos Vinieratos:Nice. Yeah. So it seems it seems to me that for both of you, then it was something it kind of started that something you saw and you wanted to do as work rather than something that you wanted to first learn. Does that make sense? So it was more like, that's what I want to do as a job and less, that's kind of like what they want to do as a hobby or whatever. Is that Is that correct? Or am I wrong?
Alican:For me? It was it wasn't that clear? Like it wasn't that black or white? It was a good option. And I wanted to do as a work, but I wasn't sure if I could or if I will like it until I tried. Get into it a bit, then things have changed for me. I really like that actually, that mental space that coding puts you in, you put on your music, you focus on a problem. That's the creative space, I guess Issra was mentioning, you can be creative there. And after that point, I actually liked it. Combined with the previous reasons, that then I said, Okay, I'm gonna do this as a job as work now.
Issra:Yeah, very, very similar to Alican again, I think, right now studying it, I'm still not 100% sure I want this to be my career full time, that's it. The other aspect that I like about coding is that it's a never ending learning curve. So I really like that. You never kind of settle once your new job, I guess you do in a way. But if you ever want to, you have to keep up right with the latest, I don't know, language, I'm still learning, I'm sorry. But you know, the latest things right? And software, always updates happening. So you have to read new documentation. It's just, and that's what I like. Even right now. I think I am still in the mindset of I'll try it for a few years. See how I find it. Um, but nothing set in stone.
Pavlos Vinieratos:Okay, that makes sense. And yeah, very interesting. I do have some questions about expectations. And after you finish, but do you want to very quickly give us a, you know, a short list of what are you learning right now, or what you learned already? Or what you are going to learn after?
Issra:Yeah, of course, if I remember at all. So we did I think we started the boot camp doing a bit of HTML, CSS, to start us off. We had, so we had HTML, CSS, JavaScript, as well, vanilla JavaScript, and our first project was building a game with no JavaScript so that was chaotic, but beautiful. Then we moved on to front end so we've we've used React and I guess Express. node, again, sorry if I'm like butchering this.
Pavlos Vinieratos:I mean there are a billion of those things, so you know, no one knows all of the things, so don't worry about that.
Issra:But yes, just been doing a lot of front end. And lately we did back end. So that was with Mongo mongoose, as well. And I'm currently doing a project where we have to build both front end back end. So a full on application. So that's where I'm at. And I think the rest of the course will be just learning about back end, but SQL. So I'm guessing Django.
Pavlos Vinieratos:Interesting, interesting. I've seen your first assignment, which was really nice and really fun to see, to play around and also see the code, that was really cool. Looking forward to sending me, you sending me the rest of your stuff.
Issra:Yeah, I'll say it to you Alican , if you want to play it, but apologies, I, yeah, it's not the best. This is one of the things that I find really cool, again, is that you have a portfolio to show like, it's not just you talking about yourself and like kind of have hyping yourself up with your skills. It's, you have things that you can show and be like I built this, like I made this myself with my own two hands and well an API maybe but
Alican:yeah, it's so true. It's so tangible, right, compared to other areas, especially humanities. But you have and especially if you are working as a front end developer, you change one line of code, and you see the result immediately. That's, that's one of the aspects I enjoy as a software engineer.
Pavlos Vinieratos:And did you also start with similar things, Alican, like, kind of HTML CSS before coming to react stuff, or like directly react or something else? Or how was it?
Alican:quite similar, I learned first JavaScript as like programming, not for web, but doing all sorts of algorithms and stuff. Then I started a front end course with HTML, CSS, quite similar, react on the front end and nodeJS with Express on the backhand with SQL stuff.
Pavlos Vinieratos:And how has it been for you since then? So when did you get the first job as, you know, a developer?
Alican:so I did this one, which was a free online coding bootcamp for one month only. And then I did another one, which was a four month long online, more scheduled one, with Python, and mostly focusing on backends. The time span between writing my first line of JavaScript and getting my job was 10 months, I believe, nine to 10 months. For me, the real learning experience was after I finished my coding bootcamp, and build a full stack application like Issra described, that was the time when I've had like, Okay, I'm ready for a job now.
Pavlos Vinieratos:That sounds very satisfying, for sure. And how has it been since then? I mean, you know, you once you did that, and you felt like, Yeah, this is like, this is great. This is what I want to do. And, you know, all the way to today, like how has this been, you know, getting better or getting worse, staying the same? What's up?
Alican:it has been a very interesting adventure. It's not as exciting as it was in the beginning to be completely honest. Because when I first got my, got my first job, in a very small startup here in Berlin called Better fishing. We were nine people on in a room just building something. And I really felt like, Okay, I'm a part of something right now. I have skills, I can demonstrate that we can bond with those guys and girls. It was a real experience. Then, after working there, one year ish, I switch to a bigger and more corporate company. Worked there two years, that was the place where I learned mostly like how modern tech startups work, like agile methodologies, sort of things like teams outside of software development, but that you need to have to work in tech, then I'm at Artsy right now. And I'm quite happy at the place I am right now.
Pavlos Vinieratos:nice, it's very good to hear. I guess related.. Do you have any questions about this, Issra? Otherwise, I have more for you.
Issra:I think it's it's great to hear about this because when you're learning it, you're always thinking what next? And there's this I don't know if it's a myth, it's not a myth so much is just there's this idea of Yeah, you'll just get a job like that. Right? It's just gonna happen because this is so in demand and you're learning the, again the languages that are most in demand. So it is really cool to hear the reality of it and how long it actually takes because it can never be as easy as they advertised. Never trust them. So really, really interesting. But yeah, what did you find was the bigger challenge I heard you mentioned the non technical like non skilled aspect, when you move to the second job that was the bigger startup. What was the the more challenging aspects of that?
Alican:The whole working rhythm, I would say, of the team there. For example, retrospective meeting, I had no idea about this. Even I didn't even know the words retrospective. Or very scheduled grooming sessions, sprint planning sort of things. In my first job, there were things that needed to be done, they put on a JIRA board, a Kanban board, and whoever had time, pick the ticket and did it. That was it, no planning, nothing. Things are super fast. But in the second one, we were already having meetings in this quarter to plan the next two quarters. So it was a bit challenging in that sense to think about things technically, seeing the future, like this technically can go, should our decisions right now be affected by that? That's kind of exciting, or challenging.
Pavlos Vinieratos:I mean, it's definitely a lot of extra, you know, extra dev work, whatever. And it definitely shows when you go to to a bigger company. So when it's, you know, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 people or whatever, then it's very easy to just have a very, you know, just a list of, a to-do list, basically. But yeah, when it gets bigger, and you know, the size that we are now and I'm sure you know, way bigger, yeah, it kind of gets gets interesting. Some of them are interesting skills to learn. And some of them are less so. But all of them necessary. Yes.
Alican:Let me add one more thing to this. I just thought about this. It's git.
Issra:I was just about to mention git.
Pavlos Vinieratos:Very good, very good.
Alican:A more human friendly phrase for this would be, working together with other people on the same code repository. So for me in my first job, I own the front end, and I did it by myself. Everything belonged to me. I committed as I liked, no rules, nothing. But in my second job, it was very different. There were so many people working on the same codebase different repos different micro services, all this infrastructure and using git learning concepts like I don't know, rebasing, cherry-picking so on so forth, were a real challenge for me in that second job.
Pavlos Vinieratos:Interesting. I can definitely imagine that. Have you used git Issra, or not yet?
Issra:Yeah. So we've been using git to usually submit homework. But lately, so we're on project three. Project two, we were pair coding. So it was fun, because just one of us was, had the repo under git, but right now we're, there's four of us. So what we've done is got, I'm gonna butcher this again. But basically, there's like the main branch and development branch. And we're like, creating branches, each one of us and we're merging, and we're pushing again to the origin. And sometimes there's merge conflicts. So because we're too scared of just breaking something, we just share a screen and we're doing it and we're doing it like each one at a time. I have a cheat sheet at my desk. It's so bad, because that's the thing as well, I feel like with software engineering, I pictured it going in as like, you know, this, like architecture, like you build really strong structural buildings, like the metaphor is just like you're building your structures are really strong, they're solid, but then you realize it's just like, one paper, it's always next, and you're just watching it and seeing if it doesn't fall like you're like, Okay, this works. Save commit. That's it.
Pavlos Vinieratos:Yeah, definitely git was, I mean, I feel like git is a thing that's, you know, a tiny obstacle for every everyone. Like, it doesn't matter. You know, what, how you start using this. And I feel like, you know, for being scared of it, you know, I feel like everyone is scared of it in the beginning. But, you know, once you break something the first time, and then you fix it by just googling for half an hour or whatever, then you become less scared or whether you're just Okay, now it makes sense, you know, so yeah. Definitely, it's something that it takes some time and some getting used to, but it's very, very useful for sure. Yeah, that's interesting. It should be like a whole class, you know, a git class.
Issra:Yeah, I don't think I've heard that developers. Like there's so many developers that don't know git they just know
Pavlos Vinieratos:There's a lot of tools, a lot of tutorials, a how to use it. And I feel like I'm okay right now. lot of ways to use it. So it's, it's pretty interesting. But yeah, definitely, I would be very excited to, you know, if you at one point you make an open source, you know, a commit to eigen of Artsy, that would be nice.
Issra:Yeah, I'll let you know, guys if everything crumbles down.
Pavlos Vinieratos:Nice. Okay, let's see, for some questions here. I had, I had some more, which I kind of we kind of talked about this. But one question was, if you have, Issra, if you have specific expectations about, you know, once you're done, you know, what's going to happen afterwards, I know that, you know, you expect like to get a job, and then you will look but is there you know, specific things that you expect or specific timeline? Or it's kind of like, let's, let's go with the flow. How are you thinking about this?
Issra:Yeah, um, I can say that before walking into the boot camp, I was thinking of getting a job working the timeline out. So basically, boot camp and December, mid December, probably by January and start applying and maybe get something whenever, again, running on my savings. So I'm gonna burn through my savings. But I think doing the bootcamp now, I realized that for something to break, but also there might there hubs where developers are more in demand than others. That's dependent again on I'm guessing where you want to work if it's startup or corporate sector wise industry. So, um, I think my expectations have changed in that sense. Because I know that I really like working in the startup environment. But then again, I don't know, it's just very different. Because you, when you learn code, you write everything yourself, but then I'm guessing when you're working, because you have to look at somebody else's code. To figure this out, and sort of work on it. I'm anticipating this to be one of the biggest challenges when it comes to like switching to going for a job and tell me, Alican, if like this is reality. I think that's the the big thing. And I also am still not sure whether or not I want to do you like full stack, or just focus on front end back end, because I do enjoy doing both. So I guess, TBC, we'll see what happens.
Pavlos Vinieratos:That makes sense, I definitely think that once you start, you know, in a company at at any, you know, doing front end or back end or full stack or whatever, you will, you know, you will see in a few months, you will know that, you know, this is what I want to do. And this is what I don't care about so much. And this is how we work and, and and also, I think that just learning, like what you learned before your first job and what you learn after, or you know, the first six months or whatever, I think that what you learn, while you're in a job is way, way, way more, like, faster and more things that you learn because of other developers that you work with. And it just becomes so much easier and so much faster, you know.
Alican:definitely. And I think it's fair to expect that it will be a challenge to work on the code that other people wrote before you when you start a job. But also, I think we shouldn't forget that it's a challenge for everyone. Even if you are like very many years experienced software engineer and you start a new job, there will be a time for you to get used to that their code bases in that new company. And everyone has a different style of writing code, you know, even if it's react something very structured, you see very different patterns as far in different places. And I think every company that I know of, is okay, with newstarter to take in the first month to get used to the code base without actually building something. So no worries there.
Pavlos Vinieratos:Yeah, for sure. And I think that's also, I mean, specifically we do it, but I know that many other companies do it as well, where while someone new is onboarding, they're very open and they're very encouraged to complain about things or improve or suggest improvements, you know, either in the documentation or some setup stuff or anything and they can just say to someone and they, you know, the other person will fix it or they can make their own PR if they feel comfortable enough or you know, any other way. So definitely don't be scared about that. It's, it's gonna be nice and every you know, every every job, every next job is gonna be the same thing you know, over and over. It's always nice. And okay, how about I thought of this question, which I thought was very interesting. Do you think that at any point in the future, you might go back to whatever you studied in the beginning? Or if you think that, you know, you might just change to something completely different from development as well, for both of you?
Alican:For me, I think I'm almost certain that I'm not gonna go back to what I was doing. But I'm finding ways to combine the interests of my previous life, with the interests of my current life, so I'm thinking of personal projects that I could do. And I can combine my interest in literature and programming, for example. There are esoteric programming languages called like, there is one called Shakespeare, you write code with Shakespeare sonnets, for example. So I'm thinking of maybe I move in a project like that open source just for the fun of it, that kind of thing. But I don't think I will be going back because I really like what I'm doing. And it's 2021. You know, it feels right to work in tech.
Pavlos Vinieratos:And how about Issra? What do you think? Or is it too early to decide?
Issra:It's too early, but you never know, as well. I think I've really enjoyed again, the the skill learning aspect in the fact that just like Alican said, you could just move from one industry to the next as well, if she started to get bored, and whatever it is you're doing. And so I think maybe because like Alican, where I mean, I know I'm the type of person to really get interested in one thing, deep dive into that for like, a few years, and then just completely leave it move on to something else. And so you're like, medium, but like, and you have different weird skills that don't go together, but you have them and they're there. And this is why like coding and software engineering is it is a good way to make that work. So we'll see. I mean, if, again, if all of a sudden I get interested in philosophy or something else, I just want to jump back and do the other masters, I think we shouldn't really ever stop learning. So I just go by that. And yeah, we'll see where it takes us. But it's it's been definitely more interesting than I thought it would be.
Pavlos Vinieratos:Sounds like a very good plan. Very good plan. And, alright, I have here also, I guess a question, that's or not really a question more for Alican, if he has some tips, let's say for for Issra. So, you know, since you have been through this, you know, for a while, and I mean, you did say a couple of things before but I don't know, do you have anything very specific or very general maybe for you know, just switching, I guess? Being good at it, like you?
Alican:Yeah, there are actually so many specifics. But to give it a bit short, on a more higher level, I would say it's all about mental resilience. There is no thing that's like, there are moments where you feel like on this journey, oh, I can't do this. Maybe I'm not right for this. Maybe my brain just is not capable of understanding and doing this. And then you start your first job, there are so many points where you feel insecure about your background. But as I said, In the beginning, it's all about mental resilience. As long as you keep this fighting attitude, and you don't stop, you don't give up but you keep fighting. It's possible to solve and learn everything. And things that seem super complicated in the beginning sometimes become so easy. After a while you actually don't understand, oh my god, you say to yourself, How did I not get it in the first place? It's really surprising, so many encounter with problems like that. You remember that moments of three or four months in the future, where you will be looking back and don't you couldn't be even grasping, but went from there. And secondly, very shortly, you have to love it. I think you have to really enjoy it. It shouldn't feel like a burden that you have to do but more like something you enjoy and make money with.
Issra:These are good. And I just want to say also going into this you realize the community is amazing. It's very supportive. It's very open. I'm going to use this word but I don't know if It's very start-up-y just in this sense in that the feeling you get everyone is really open about helping each other out. And even when it comes to job openings are just discussing looking at your code, seeing what's wrong. Double checking pair coding, I mean, it's I haven't been in there too long, but I think this is also really important for everyone to know if like they're interested in of about going into this, or they're looking on, you know, maybe starting their coding journey, I find that this is one of the pros that really makes a difference when you're looking at it. So I mean, I, I can say for sure that talking to Pavlos, I used to work at Artsy, and you have been like one of the main reasons why I switched as well, because I was looking at whatever you were doing, you would talk to me, you talk about your projects, but also your meetings, how you guys work together, collaborated, and that really, really made me want to understand a bit more about coding. So this is, yeah, all good advice.
Pavlos Vinieratos:Very nice to hear. And I mean, at Artsy, I know that we have already, you know, five, six people or something that they definitely did this switch. And some of them, you know, started at Artsy, doing something completely different, went away, and then came back as a developer afterwards. So it will be great to have you here again. Great, I don't think I have any more questions. So unless you have questions for each other, I think we can end it here.
Issra:It's great to meet you Alican. And yea, thank you Pavlos for talking us through this.
Pavlos Vinieratos:Thank you so much. Both of you.
Alican:Yeah, guys. Thank you guys.
Pavlos Vinieratos:Thank you for joining. See you see you.
Alican:Bye bye.
Pavlos Vinieratos:Bye.
Steve Hicks:Thanks for listening. You can follow us on Twitter at Artsy open source. Keep up with our blog@artsy.github.io. This episode was mixed and edited by Alex Higgins. And thank you Eve Essex for our theme music. You can find her on all major streaming platforms. Until next time, this is Artsy Engineering Radio.