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The average worker in Britain considers a career change roughly ten times a year, but how often do we actually take the plunge? I made the big decision to veer away from a career teaching Mathematics to embrace something totally different: a career in tech. And I’m here to tell you that you can do it too.
Don’t get me wrong — teaching is a hugely rewarding career path and gives you the opportunity to change lives. For me, it’s been a long and winding journey to the software engineer summit, stopping at university and secondary school teaching, with entrepreneurship en route. But a few strokes of serendipity saw me swap trigonometry for tech, and I wouldn’t change a thing.
How it started
Initially, I attended Leicester University with the hopes of becoming an actuary by studying Mathematics and Actuarial Science. But a year of battling with Calculus wasn’t cutting it for me, so I decided to switch to an Economics degree. Fast-forward a couple of years, an unexpected gap year which led to some inspirational travels and a handy trip to a major international job fair, and I managed to secure two job offers to work as a Maths teacher in Abu Dhabi. Finally, my plans were materialising!
Getting these offers was all the motivation I needed to put my head down and work incredibly hard. But there was just one problem. The harder I worked, the harder things got. After many back-breaking days and sleepless nights, I thought very long and hard about whether teaching was the right career choice for me. Once my contract ended, I took the hard decision to turn down my Abu Dhabi offers and take a step back to rethink my career choice. What was I truly passionate about and naturally good at?
A shot at entrepreneurship
After my brief and exhausting career in teaching, the only thing that I knew for sure was that I needed a little break from employment. Since I was unsure of the next career move that I wanted to make, I decided to start a distribution business, supplying shops around London with FMCG products.
The business was doing better than I expected. But although I had complete autonomy over my time, I still felt overworked and unable to execute the business in the way that I had imagined, partly due to financial constraints. Besides, it just wasn’t engaging my brain enough and something had to change.
I started to think more realistically about what I wanted my future (and my day-to-day) to look like. I didn’t want to spend my days meeting with decision-makers and persuading them to buy products. I wanted to maximise my skillset, use my brain to its fullest capacity, and be able to plan for a stable and sustainable future.
At the time, I was well aware of the many success stories of women in technology killing it! Especially women who looked just like me. This was all the evidence I needed to take that leap of faith and challenge myself to act on this ‘eureka’ moment.
A leap of faith into technology
Although I had some experience with building websites, I had only ever used Wix, Wordpress and Shopify, and always avoided coding because — naively — I felt that coding was reserved for those who studied Computer Science or IT at school (and I hadn’t done any of those things).
I bought my first Udemy course in December 2020 and started learning the basics of building a responsive website using HTML, CSS and Javascript. I also worked through exercises on FreeCodeCamp to further improve my coding skills. I then started building websites for family and friends with my newfound responsive web design skills. For example, I built a memorial website and a media and communications one. This was a great learning experience for me and I really enjoyed playing around with different design styles and customising code.
Although being self-taught was cool, I knew that I still had a lot to learn. I was longing for some guidance so I could understand the best practices in the industry, and perhaps get some feedback on my progress, so I started looking for communities to join.
Team work makes the dream work
My first discovery was Coding Black Females, which was the best decision that I made. From here, I applied for my very first bootcamp called Black Codher bootcamp, which lasted for 30 weeks and taught the MERN (MongoDB, Express ReactJS and NodeJS) stack.
The Black Codher bootcamp served as an amazing opportunity to network with other women, create valuable bonds with students and supporters, and receive the necessary quality assurance on my journey of learning to code through completing projects such as my Personal Portfolio, which was created using HTML, CSS and a little bit of Javascript. I definitely made some friends for life on this bootcamp and one of my highlights was learning about version control, which has been really useful in the work that I do today at Beamery.
While I had found the type of community that I was looking for with Coding Black Females, I didn’t stop there. I decided to join a number of other communities such as Code First Girls, Black Girls in Tech and Black Valley. These were great communities to join and where I found my tribe, who kept me encouraged and motivated on my journey.
After attending a number of events and being an active community member, I ended up applying to a few more bootcamps that I stumbled across. Thankfully, I was accepted onto another bootcamp — the Nanodegree by Code First Girls (sponsored by Goldman Sachs) — and completed this in January 2022. On the Black Valley programme — an 8-week intensive mentorship programme — I got a Data Science mentor who worked at FlyWire.’
A foot in the door
Instead of waiting to finish my bootcamps before applying for jobs. I felt that I would take a chance at throwing myself in at the deep end with some interviews, because…what’s the worst that could happen?
I applied to several apprenticeships and internships, but I kept receiving the same puzzling feedback, that I was “overqualified” for these roles, since they were designed for school-leavers and those not considering further education. Despite this feedback, I actually felt under-qualified for these apprenticeship positions, given that I had practically zero industry experience. I decided to change my strategy and began applying for graduate and junior positions, which had a much better outcome.
During my job quest, I came across an opportunity at Beamery offering an accelerator programme — a unique 15-week programme designed to take you from a Trainee Engineering role to an Associate Software Engineering role within a few months!
I was even more excited to see that they had an affiliation with Coding Black Females — the very first community I had joined. This definitely gave me an extra confidence boost. Maybe this was the opportunity I had been hoping, praying and working for.
Without hesitation, I applied for the role and was pleased to be invited for an interview. This was followed by a few assessment days, before I was invited for a final interview with the CTO. Finally, I was one of the lucky few people who were offered a place on the accelerator programme.
Discovering my passion
The seven of us who got an offer from Beamery were placed on a training programme with the company’s partners, Academy. This was a unique opportunity to complete yet another bootcamp which taught the PERN (PostgreSQL, Express, ReactJS and NodeJS) stack, with an emphasis on Beamery scholars completing projects using Typescript instead of Javascript, since this is one the primary languages used at Beamery.
I didn’t expect to make so many deep and meaningful connections with other members of the cohort. When the 17 weeks were finally up and I was transitioning into an Associate Software Engineer at Beamery, it was very emotional. It was a bittersweet moment because although I knew I would miss members of the cohort and faculty who had been so supportive on this journey, I was also very excited and proud of myself. I had reached the end of such an intensive bootcamp, wound up my other two bootcamps, and officially launched my career as an Associate Software Engineer.
I am now 5 months into being an Associate Software Engineer and needless to say, I’m enjoying every minute so far. I have joined one of the best full-stack teams in Beamery and I’m learning something new every single day. I feel grateful, blessed, and can truly say that I’m finally content with my career choice. I’m able to plan ahead, and can envision a bright and colourful future within the industry, and at Beamery.
Interested in joining our Engineering, Product & Design Teams?
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