Accounting student taught himself how to code and transitioned into the tech industry 

Watch the full interview here : 

In this episode of Stories of Hackers, we talked with one of our team members at The Hacker Collective, Pierce. Pierce has an accounting background, but after discovering his true passion for technology, he turned to the field and never looked back.  We hope you guys can learn some new insights from Pierce’s story and his experience, enjoy!

Can you give us a little background of yourself so our community gets to know you better?

Hey guys, my name is Pierce and  I'm from Malaysia, currently staying in Johor. During my college time, I studied accounting, business, all that stuff and I also learned quite a lot of other stuff like taekwondo and piano.

Why did you choose accounting in the first place?

Well, back then after SPM, I really didn't have much direction about where i would study after that, so you know when someone has no direction but your parents still want you to go to a college or university, the safest course you can think of would probably be business, accounting or finance, the courses that deal with money. I then enrolled into a college for a diploma and also got the ACCA papers there. I am just a few papers away from fully finishing my ACCA.

That's cool, I just want to understand that to do ACCA you don't need a diploma right? So why would you still go for the diploma?

I was doing the college diploma alongside ACCA. The reason that I didn't focus on ACCA only was because back then our mindset was just to get into a college/university to get a diploma/degree. ACCA is just a part of the course so that's why I'm doing both of them. 

So Pierce...what sparked your interest to take the plunge and start learning technology?

I guess you could say that it all started from my first audit job, where I was working there for a few months and I didn't really like it.  The job was really repetitive and you're basically just looking through tons of account books and just checking if the figures are correct and all that stuff, really repetitive work.

There's so many things you can learn besides technology, maybe digital marketing, design and all that, why do you choose technology?

I actually have a friend who's in the tech tech career and he also kinda inspired me a bit as well. He's a web developer and also does some mobile app development. I saw him doing quite well and then he introduced me to a few sources to learn up coding.  I had a look at them and found it to be quite interesting so I've been studying about it for a few months and I haven't stopped since then.

Pierce,  you're one of the guys who were with us a couple of months ago joining the Hi-Po program which is our peer-to-peer learning program. What actually got you signing up for it in the first place you know you were learning yourself and everything was going fine?

Yeah it's true that there is a lot of information for you to study code online free but the thing is there really isn’t exactly a structure so i was kind of confused on what exactly to learn and I was learning all sorts of stuff, with no focus. I happened to come across The Hacker Collective ads one day and found it to be quite good, it seems quite structured and most importantly the community part so that I'm not alone in my learning journey.

For the past one to two months, what have you been working on with us?

I've been helping out with the THC website, a bit on pathforge and currently helping out on menubase project and lifepitch project.

That’s awesome! you're working on so many projects,thanks for sharing. Now, what is your end goal or your future plan?  Do you want to go deeper into data science or a mobile app or you feel that software engineering or web development is the way forward and you want to focus on one, what's your thoughts on this?

I see potential in web development as you know nowadays web apps are getting more advanced, so much that some companies don't even have a mobile app and they just use their web app instead so yeah i believe web development is the way to go for me and I'll continue going down that path.  

As a self-taught learner, in your learning journey what are some of the biggest challenges that you faced?

Well... for self-taught learners, like I mentioned before it would be the fact that there’s no clear structure for you to follow and you will feel lost as you wouldn't be sure exactly what to learn. There’s so much information online that you feel overwhelmed. That’s the biggest challenge that I faced and I'm glad to join a community like The Hacker Collective and get guidance for the mentors here. 

Can you share with us what's the typical day like for you as a remote developer?

It's pretty much the same routine as back when I was self-learning how to code. I get up around 10 a.m. and spend almost the whole day on my laptop, coding away.

I'm one of those guys who can't give up if i don't solve the coding problem, i don't sleep. There are even some rare cases where I couldn't solve it in one day and  that problem bothers me so much that I'm even dreaming about that problem and then magically the next day the solution to the  problem came to me in my head and I just managed to solve it the next day. Guess this is what makes me a true developer haha. 

Do you regret doing your ACCA or your diploma?  What are your thoughts about it? 

Well yeah, i guess i regret it a bit because if i found my tech passion earlier then by now i'd have way more experience of course. I am actually just one paper away from finishing the ACCA and I am planning to take the last paper, though I am not planning to actually be a chartered accountant as that would require me for two years of working in the accounting field.

That’s great, any advice for our community out there before we end this interview?

To beginners who are just embarking on this journey, just don't give up, persevere and have this mindset of willing to continue working on a problem until it gets solved . That's how it really got me this far with that kind of mindset so yeah try to have that kind of mindset whenever possible. Good luck :D

Thanks for the awesome interview !

Hope you enjoyed this series!

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