How I Went from Making $15/hour part-time to Making $60K+ as a Software Engineer in 1 Year. Madala Follow Sep 25, 2019 · 9 min read

Not long ago, I was making $15 an hour at a job I hated. Now, I’m making $60K+ a year as a full-time software engineer. The crazy part is, this life transformation took place in under a year.

I was Lost…

January 2017

After having dropped out of college on what was coming up on two years I felt my window on a successful career in anything closing. I was making $15 an hour part-time at a local mall and I knew I wanted more for myself. Approaching three years and still having no desire to move up in the company. I was growing tired of the mundane, repetitive tasks and I could feel an urge to want to do more. I started to get an itch for something greater. I needed to do something… Something… Something that I was passionate about. Something that paid the bills. Something creative. I desperately kept thinking about my past and childhood multiple times a day. This was in hopes that I could piece together cut scenes that would give me the confidence and power to attack a career field I loved almost like being equipped with infinity stones. I became obsessed with trying to figure out what I was going to do. Over the next few weeks, I spent my free time going on walks hoping something would click. I Googled and watched countless Youtube videos on “How to find your passion”. I watched Eric Thomas “As Bad as you want to Breathe” video at least 15 times. Early January turned into mid- February. Still nothing.

Frozen with anxiety I stopped thinking about all of it. Maybe the pain would go away. Maybe I wouldn’t be so frantic if I had nothing to think about. Maybe I should just pick something without any thought just for the sake of moving in any direction… I guess that was better than no direction… or maybe just go back to not thinking about my future altogether. That’ll for sure stop this painful feedback loop. Yeah, I’ll stop thinking altogether. More painful days past. All of a sudden, I remembered how in high school I used to replace broken iPhone screens with colored ones to make some extra change with my cousin. The thoughts of when I had Cydia jailbreaks in high school and my freshman year of college started to rush to my head. Thoughts about how my cousin and I spent a summer making beats on the computer and hacking an Xbox stopped being so fuzzy. Lastly, how I cherished my first iPod (the one that was like a stick of gum!). It smacked me in the face and things began to get clear as day.

Honing in on iOS

I wanted to tinker. I wanted to think. I wanted to be in Tech. I spent the next two months learning the basics of programming and dove into the tech scene. I quickly learned about pitching to investors, startups, funding, acquisitions, and exits. I swiftly learned that this was a very dope and lively space to be in. This only drove me to continue down the path of programming. I then started following along with tutorials on youtube and building super small tasks. Then, I knew for certain this was something I wanted to pursue.

The following summer one of my old friends got in contact with me and asked me how things were going. Humbly, I told him about how I actually dropped out and I was on the path of learning iOS development. Later on in the conversation, I learned that he built websites in his free time and was looking to start learning how to build apps for iOS. Seeing as we had similar interests we started hanging out more and ended up working on our first real iOS project together. We worked relentlessly through the summer to get as much as possible done given our busy schedules and we ended up launching the app the following September.

At this point, I’ve gained some confidence in building/tinkering with tech and could see a future in it for me. So I started looking ahead. Knowing it was the end of the summer, I could clearly see the internship interview window opening up for companies in the fall to hire people into the summer of 2018. I knew this was my shot. If not. I’d be stuck back at my mall job. Hating every day going in for yet, another year.

Dive in — My 50+ Attempts

I tried and didn’t give up. Most days were hard. I got rejection after rejection. Sometimes I got the coding challenges correctly and still wasn’t chosen. I decided to put this together to give you a good list of companies to apply too. I also provided the dates I applied for internships for the majority of companies. And (surprise, surprise) I was rejected a lot- sometimes, multiple times a day.

The (long) list of companies that I applied to:

Bottle Rocket — Sep 17, 2017 Spotify — Oct 10, 2017 Nest — Oct 13, 2017 Mozilla — Oct 13, 2017 Finalist — Oct 28, 2017 BMW — Nov 2, 2017 Pandora — Nov 6, 2017 Quicken Loans — Nov 6, 2017 HoneyWell- Nov 6th, 2017 Square — Nov 6th, 2017 Foursquare — Nov 14, 2017 Twitter- Nov 21, 2017 HackNY — Dec 6, 2017 Limebike — Dec 7th, 2017 Google — Dec 18, 2017 Spotify — Dec 20, 2017 Medium — December 21st, 2017 Snapchat — Jan 3rd, 2018 Airbnb — Jan 7th, 2018 Lyft — Jan 7th, 2018 Goldman Sachs — Jan 11th Box — Jan 14, 2018 Udacity — Jan 17th, 2018 Dropbox — Feb 3rd, 2018 Mango Feb 6th, 2018 ProjectYX Feb7th, 2018 Bloomberg Feb 8th, 2018 Groupon — March 23, 2018 GM — March 26th, 2018 Rocket HQ — April 11, 2018 Starbucks — June 26th, 2018 Apartment List Autodesk Brigade Carbon Five CircleCI Clover Health GitHub Handshake Trello Intrepid Pursuits NerdWallet Nextdoor Nylas Panafold Remix Workday Slack Strava Stripe SurveyMonkey Zillow Jane Street

So what was interviewing like?

If you’re looking to get your first internship, this early in your career, you should probably avoid being picky. Especially if you barely have any projects to show off or haven’t attended any hackathons. If you only apply to internships that really interest you, you’re reducing your chances of being successful. You’re unlikely to be selected because more times than not, those same companies are top targets for other more equipped applicants as well. Play the numbers game. I suggest applying to at least 50+ companies. Some of them might not even look your way. It happened to me. No big deal, they’re missing out.

Knowing I didn’t have the computer science background that the college kids I was going up against had I knew I had to find some way to learn similar material. I studied algorithms and data structures relentlessly. I watched Youtube videos of well-known algorithms. My buddy Marc Brown and I would practice code fights. I bought super cheap Udemy courses Jordan Coin Jackson had mentioned and practiced on paper. Rodney ”RJ” Gainous Jr recommended tasks on HackerRank and Leet code and kept positive words in my head.

Like I said previously I had been rejected multiple times, sometimes twice in one day. I’ll assure you that the best thing you can do after getting a rejection is asking for feedback. Some companies will provide feedback some won’t. Never hurts to ask. The application/interviewing stage of the internship-process is mentally and emotionally taxing. Put the effort into maintaining a positive attitude and staying organized. Make sure to keep in mind that this won’t last forever, then this will become a period that you’ll look back on fondly as a period that was necessary for you to get a leg-up into your dream career. At this point just getting in is important. Luckily, I didn’t care where the internship was, what company I’d be working for, or anything else for that matter- just as long as I got my foot in the door somewhere, I’d be happy.

And the internship?

Soft skills that you’ll need throughout the process.

The sad fact is that you could be among the most skilled developers/software programmers out there, and still have trouble getting to the top of your field, securing a long-term position, or even an internship. You want to be able to navigate both technical and non-technical spaces. Here are a few tips that should help you to ensure that your soft skills don’t let you down:

Eye contact

Eye contact is one of the most important factors in deciding how strong your initial connection is with someone. If you don’t give your interviewer, or co-workers enough eye contact, they might think you’re standoffish or unfriendly- neither of which is a good impression to leave them with.

2. Ask questions

Asking your co-workers questions about themselves and their work shows that you take an interest in them, and can help you to build meaningful bridges with people who could help to further your career or you may be in a position to help them. Moreover, it is just as important to ask your interviewer questions- it shows them that you’re confident, enthusiastic about, and interested in, the company.

3. Be tenacious, enthusiastic and energetic- but know when to take it down a notch

When you’ve secured your internship, and its crunch time, go into your workplace earlier and stay in later- your boss will take notice, and be more likely to hire you full-time after your internship contract ends, since you’ll be seen as someone that can be relied on.

On the other hand, when things are more relaxed, show your employer that you aren’t just blindly hardworking for no good reason, and know when to give yourself a break, by turning your tenacity down proportionally.

Networking

During your internship, you should aim to make as many connections as possible, both in the workplace and out of it. I used LinkedIn a lot, some might say too much. I sent 30+ messages to people I wanted to connect with, and who I thought could benefit my career. I went to engineer meet-ups and connected with other engineers.

The thing is, 9 times out of 10, employers want to hire someone they already know and get along with, so connections are critical, whatever career you’re pursuing.

If you’re a joy to have in the workplace, the company you’re interning for are going to be reluctant to let you go, and even if you want to leave the company for bigger and better things, at the very least, you’ll have secured yourself a shining reference which can help to secure future opportunities.

What happened next?

After my internship, I was able to secure a full-time position. I believe my driving forces were displaying a tenacity to learn, showing interest in multiple sides of the company and the ability to solve non-technical problems on the team. I also was able to contribute significantly to key features of our MVP, while being able to learn on the fly. Attributes like these are key to being a successful team member.

Motivation Piece.

Oh yeah, by the way, I bombed my first interview. Completely froze. I couldn’t write anything that was being asked of me, I couldn’t remember what the technical terms meant and I was looking are the interviewer like a deer in headlights. It’s okay. What matters is how you get up after you’ve looked clueless, been knocked down and had the lowest luck. I’ve expressed how many companies I’ve applied too with no prior experience. 53 Companies. The truth is I applied to more than that and I know I’ve missed a few. So, what are you waiting for? With hard work, tenacity and lots of practice and lots of applications, you can transform your life, just like I did, and secure that full-time position.