7-Eleven staff taught himself to code part-time for 8 years and got a full-time developer job! 

Watch the full interview here : 

In this episode of Stories of Hackers, we chatted with Leonard. Leonard has always been interested in the tech world and he’s even went on the self-learning journey while working as a 7-eleven staff for the last 8 years until recently he got himself a full time developer job! We hope Leonard’s story is able to inspire and impact you guys in pursuing your dream, your goal. Enjoy! 

Can you briefly introduce your background so our community can get an idea of who you actually are?

Hey guys, my name is Leonard and I am 31 years old now and I started learning to code when I was 23 years old through codecademy.com and any free resources I can get from the internet. When I was 18 years old, I was studying computer networking. It's a  certificate and the reason I chose to pursue that is because I was not able to get into university as my SPM result wasn't good enough to enter a local university and the private university fees are too high for me to afford it.

From what I previously heard, you’ve been self-studying like crazy for the past 8 years, what’s the journey like? And why're you doing this?

I actually enrolled in a college for a short while but dropped out because of financial issues and later went to pursue a certificate. After I got my certificate in computer networking, I went to an IT company to work as IT support engineer but because the project that I am working on got cancelled, I left the company and went on to work in a coffee shop when I was around 21 to 22 years old. When I was working there, I decided that I wanted to improve myself and learn something during my free time and upskill myself. I was from a computer system networking background, so I self-taught myself a lot of knowledge on coding and then got another job as system administrator and then from there, I started to learn more deeply into coding.

What inspired you to start fresh and go into coding when you were from a systems networking background? 

I love coding, web programming, but what really inspired me was the Mark Zuckerberg story, the Facebook founder.You know? How does someone like him, a software engineer and a college dropout, be able to create a company like Facebook. His story really inspires me to create something and to be successful. I believe that coding is the future, it is very important and in

every part of the industry because nowadays, anywhere you go. Let's say you go for a baking shop, they also need someone to develop a website for them, or an online system. Everything right now is related to coding in one way or another. 

You did it for eight years, I want to understand why it took so long you know. Is there something stopping you?

It’s because most of the companies out there, they want experience,  they don't want the beginners or fresh graduates. At that time, I was feeling that I'm not getting ready yet to go into the industry and apply for jobs because I still don't have the enough skills or knowledge for any developer jobs. I was doing this tech journey completely self-taught where I went online for any free resources and learned from it. 

Is there any tips for anyone who wants to start this tech journey too?

For everyone who wants to go on the tech journey too,  don't stop learning and never give up. I was working at 7-eleven and Family Mart before as a normal employee, a normal receptionist  there for a few years to support myself while self-learning on coding after I finished my work. I preserved through those tough periods and now I am working my dream job as a full-time web developer! 

Thanks for the awesome interview !

Hope you enjoyed this series!

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