Allow me to introduce myself
Hey There! Nice of you to pop in. As you might have guessed by now, my name is Sammi and I code. I have to admit, I’m not the best at coding right now but that’s why we’re here. We’ve all been in this position, trying something new but "imposter syndrome is knocking at your door, while you're being told you're 'just not the best fit right now”. Knowing that if you were given the chance, you would kill it…but the opportunity never quite presents itself. I’m sitting at the intersection of “I know how to do this” Avenue, and “I’m not smart enough” Boulevard. But before I turn this into a woe is me session, let me give you some background on how we got here in the 1st place.
My tech journey first started way back in 2019. I was working as a Lead Support Agent in a call center at a tech health startup, and I was OVER IT. My breaking point came when an incredibly irate man called me a very unkind name over pet medication. I decided that I wanted more control over my career, and that night, I researched different technical positions that I could explore. I’ve always been interested in learning how to code from my Myspace days, but thought it was out of reach for me. It was always assumed that a CS degree or a fulltime bootcamp was needed, and I simply couldn't commit to that at the time. There also wasn’t much representation for self taught engineers, especially with my educational background and economical status. I was jumping into uncharted waters.
Let's be honest, it's widely known that the tech industry offers lucrative opportunities, and as a single mom living in New York, more money was always needed. With the support of my parents, I was able to enroll in a part time, 3 month coding course that would expose me to the basics (HTML, CSS and Javascript). I attended after work, 3 days a week and by the end of the course, I built a charming money-counting game inspired by my son. Towards the end of my course, a Software Engineer internship position opened up at my company. With more support from my manager and the HR team, I was allowed to join the 1st cohort. I’m very thankful to all those who were involved in getting my coding career started, it’s a very difficult thing to pivot into, especially with no background.
After finishing the internship, I discovered the world of support engineering. Who knew there was a need for someone who was good with technical things and customers?? It was the perfect segway to jump into this new world that I wanted to explore. The goal was to, do support engineering, get better at coding, then become a software engineer. Easy enough right? WRONG??? I grossly underestimated how much practice was needed to retain everything I learned during my bootcamp and my internship. I assumed that working in a technical capacity was sufficient, and when needed, I could pull an “if statement” out of my brain like a rabbit out of a hat. So although the goal was to become a software engineer, I never fully committed and ended up staying in support engineering for 4 and half years.
So now we are here. Recently unemployed for the 2nd time in 8 months, finally ready to fully commit to the journey. Before leaving my last company, I was already taking steps to advance myself technically. I had enrolled in an online, self paced bootcamp. After relearning React, I decided to pause the bootcamp so that I can take some time to build real world projects and drive the concepts home. So far, I’ve built some simple projects like a Tic Tac Toe game and some single call API generators, as well as some more challenging things like a dictionary chrome extension using a built-in local server (more on this later).
If you made it this far, you’re awesome. Hope you’re ready to embark on this journey with me, as I reteach myself how to code and become a grade A software engineer.
