How Sara Made the Jump from Business Development to Receiving Two Junior Software Developer Job Offers.
From a beginner to A Full-Stack Developer
In the month of July, 2022 Sara Issa has received two job offers from two different tech companies, Sifalo which focuses on financial & cloud solutions and SomDigital Solutions a prominent software development and consultancy studio which is also a member of Fikrcamp’s hiring partners.
Sara a full-stack software engineer and a Fikrcamp first cohort alumni who is leaning towards front-end development never thought she would end up in tech or be doing software development.
Up until high school Sara did not know what her passion was “I never had an answer growing up when the teachers or my parents ask me what I wanted to be when I grow up.” She was always on the lookout for a specific interest in the basic fields but never had a clear path of where she wanted to end up professionally.
Computer Programing Passion
Her passion for software development came in her senior year at high school after realizing her favorite character from the TV show she was binging was a coder, she saw her regarded and respected among her peers “I saw her typing away code into a black screen and that was enough to spiral up the curious cat inside me—I felt like it was a powerful thing, but was an exclusive thing for smart people” Sara said in an interview with Fikrcamp’s community manager.
She went home and spent the whole evening looking up what computer programming is, programming languages, and how can one get started with software development. She then got trapped in misleading articles, blogs, YouTube videos and ended up surfing the web for some useless pieces of info that did not really guide her. Few weeks later she got the hang of it and that is when she learning HTML and CSS.
“it was really cool, the first time I wrote ‘Hello World’ in a code editor using HTML felt amazing and got me even more curious and interested, I felt in love with programing ever since, I wrote a syntax on a dark screen and it popped up on a browser window.”
Sara then had the desire and passion to do more, she kept learning more HTML and CSS until she moved to try out actual programming languages but never had luck grabbling up fully with the concepts.
First Drawback and Fikrcamp Bootcamp
In 2021 she stopped learning for a while because she felt stuck and focused on taking care of her Turtle pets 🐢 and plants, online studying was not going to help her propel her learnings without guidance “I didn’t get proper explanations from Google and YouTube and needed an actual instructor or a mentor or even a fellow students to learn things with.”
That is when she had joined Fikrcamp through luck, her younger brother was suppose to join but then she went ahead and applied for the program herself and fortunately she got in. “I was a bit nervous—I started classes, it was nice at the beginning the material we were going through the first three weeks were things I was already familiar with, down the line I felt bit discouraged.”
The reason for this was her fellow students had prior experience, they had degrees in ICT or Computer Science or were current university students and had a good idea of the basics. She felt out of place and started doubting her abilities of being on the same level of her fellow students.
“I was failing to keep up and be on the same pace of the students, the main instructor of the program Abdulladif Roble has helped me a lot and gave me a fresh perspective on things his encouragement and beliefin me really propelled me forward” She went ahead and tried other places to grabble with the basics, learntabout debugging forums.
After two months, Sara got the hang of it, the learning process got easier with time. She also needed to develop the discipline to sit down to code and put in the hours but later started to enjoy the process of writing code, debugging and learning. “My epiphany came when I realized my programming became seamless, and I just fixed a bug without looking for help from a forum, documentation or previous projects.”
Sara mastered the learning mindset of a professional programmer, mentality shift in the pursuit of knowledge, networking and the ability to focus on specific areas of development. As well as the importance of interpersonal, communication and effective careers navigation skills.
Stumbling Blocks and Obstacles
Sara has remarked on some of the challenges she had faced during the Fikrcamp bootcamp program and is still battling with some including the cripple feeling of imposter syndrome which many developers battle with from time to time. During the program she has also, learned the importance of networking to thrive in the tech industry.
“I was always an introvert and never thought I could join networking events, speak with people and create meaningful connections, but i had to leave my comfort zone to push my limits and pushed myself towards learning how to properly communicate and foster meaningful relationships with people in my industry and domain.”
Projects, Current Abilities and Next Steps
Sara stated that she can code better than people who have went to universities to learn computer programming, and feels that going to a coding bootcamp is much more efficent in mastering specific skills in the programming world.
After the program Sara did not feel that confident to pursue a career as a junior or entry level role, she went back and focused on learning more in depth front-end and API skills and joined the 21-Day Coding Challenge online on Twitter and that has pushed her to daily coding habit.
She has worked on a remote freelance project with Ahmed Fuad Mire who is the main mentor of Fikrcmap coding bootcamp a Shopify website for a company that sells wholesale foods online, later she has worked on a local freelance project for Sagal General Trading company in Hargeisa, Somaliland.
Sara has now two full-time job offers from two prominent tech companies and is willing to end up in back-end development, “I still love building user interfaces and playing with front-end, but I am loving the problem solving part that comes with the back-end development”