19 year old tutor turned software developer

Watch the full interview here:

In this episode of Stories of Hackers, we chatted with one of our team members at The Hacker Collective, Yee Qiang. Yee Qiang is one of our former students, and today, he works with us as a junior software developer. He is a technology enthusiast and educator, and he believes that everyone can become a self-taught developer. We would like you guys to know his story, and hopefully it will inspire you on your journey too, enjoy!

Hey Yee Qiang, can you give a short introduction about yourself to our community? 

Hey guys, I'm Yee Qiang and I am 19 years old right now, currently working in Hacker Collective as well and I was part of the students in The Hacker Collective program previously. I come from a teaching background and I always teach online lessons.

Even before I graduated I actually got into teaching because I needed to help out the finances in my family so that's why I really got into teaching and that’s where I found my passion are . I teach tuition for almost a year and a half and during this journey i got an opportunity to learn coding as well, in my tuition center they offer me a position where i can help them in their system and stuff. 

I find it very interesting and might be good at it. I was building an auto automation system which helps the administration to automate their process, for example, registration system.  Because of my own experience in my tuition center, I feel that they are not valuing the values that you provide, they always put time as the most priority thing in the business so that is where I started to find that I need to really explore more in myself.

Maybe you can provide us an example about what do you mean by they value time as priority? 

The system that i built for them really saved them a lot of time as it automates the process of sending whatsapp messages but what the employer told me is that initially it took them almost like maybe a few days and needs almost two to three people to actually complete that task.  They actually told me that why can't you earn almost the same, like bonus and maybe commissions as others but I just do all these tasks in just a short time.

That doesn't even make any sense. 

Exactly, so that's why i started to feel that a lot of people actually valuing the time more than your value. 

I think i understand your point which means a lot of more traditional mindset people right, they don't compare the input versus output for from both staffs which i feel is very backwards and i'm glad you see it as well and you see your value. 

Moving on from that as well, what got you into tutoring?

The reason i got into tutoring is because me myself, i struggle a lot when i want to learn because i'm not very a good learner myself so i really struggle a lot when i don't have someone that can really makes everything simple for me so that's always my passion to do that to someone else and i hope that someone else can continue the passion as well so that is the main motive I got into tutoring.

Second, the reason why I'm not continuing my study in college and stuff is because of financial and I don't really like how the current education system works. If you don't have money then you can't get into college.

If I am not mistaken, you were a math tutor right? How much of an advantage do you think being good in maths gave you when it came to learning code?

There are a lot of people who say that you don't really need maths in coding right but i think it's not the maths you need but how you solve problems, how you train your logic thinking skill. I feel that I can actually learn something very fast in terms of coding right. It's actually because I have a good fundamental in maths and that's really helped me think.

What tech do you work with currently?

I'm really focusing on a lot of Vue.Js right the framework and also in terms of CSS, I actually started to really focus on Tailwind CSS and I've been using both of these a lot. I find it very interesting, not just the framework itself but the projects you are able to build. I think it's very amazing.

You want to share with us some projects that you're currently working on?

Yeah sure, so one of the projects I am on right now is like building a logistic website. The very challenging part about this project is that you have to figure out the entire flow, just imagine you know a very great website like Amazon. You need to figure out how many types of users you have and you need to figure out a lot of flows. That's actually not really part of the coding, it's part of the planning process and that's why i love building projects so much because you have to really figure out you know all the skeletons and stuff because if you don't have all those structure right when you really got deep into coding ,you will just get lost.

I want to ask you two things:

1. What do you feel is the toughest when it comes to front-end development? And
2. What do you think is needed for someone to land a job in front-end development?

For the first question i feel that first of all a lot of people think that front-end um developers is just designing right design websites you know making making it beautiful but i don't think that's the only case right because that's my impression as well. At first I always thought that I don't want to become frontend because it's not my thing right, designing and that's not my thing but it really is more like how you're building the brains of a website. You have to really plan well and that's the toughest part, making sure of the entire structure, even the simplest thing like how to construct your files because in terms of working in a team, how do you structure everything so that everyone can be on the same page? I think that's the hard part.

For the second question, the advice i can give if you really want to get a front-end developer job is to really build projects ,when i first get started i always think that just going through the tutorials, youtube videos will make me good already but i think after i got into this career right and after i built some projects already I feel that i kind of get the pattern recognition of all these projects. I think that's the main point, building projects, building more and more projects and finding a pattern on how you plan your projects. Once you actually know getting comfortable with all those thinking processes, all these strategies you are using you are able to actually build any projects you want.

Any tips for the newbies in coding?

Just try to explore everything, the best advice i can give right is that try to explore right anything you want right even it's something crazy right maybe you know just got a job or maybe do something or maybe starting a business right even though you are 18 you want to start a business just go ahead and try it because i think from there you will you at least understand something, you get some experience from there and that's the best advice i can give. Even though you don't have the money right, let's say you want to start a business you don't have the money but i think the experience that gives you, the mistakes that you make in those tries and the lessons you will learn, i think it's valuable. 

Thanks for the awesome interview Yee Qiang!

Hope you enjoyed this series!

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