With this text, we are starting a new special series of materials about interesting representatives of the IT industry: developers, evangelists, bloggers, startup founders, and many others. Our first heroine is the developer Aisa Matueva from Kalmykia. The girl graduated from the Medical University and worked as an intern surgeon, and then as a barista. She moved to Australia and after 30 years she changed her profession: she took a programming course at a three-month bootcamp and got a job as a developer at Zendesk. Aisa spoke about studying, working abroad and about her blog on programming in the text for CodeGym.
About the internship in surgery and why she left there
I'm 33 and I'm from the Republic of Kalmykia (near Astrakhan, Volgograd, Chechnya and Dagestan). At the age of 17, I entered the Peoples' Friendship University of Russia ( Peoples' Friendship University of Russia- ed.) to the Faculty of Medicine and moved to Moscow, from where at 28 she already moved to Australia (I will talk about this a little later). I studied, like all doctors, for 6 years. Having received a diploma for specialization, she entered the Department of General Surgery at the City Clinical Hospital No. 64, where she worked as an intern surgeon for several months. Since there was a lot of workload in the hospital and from the second year I worked part-time in the restaurant business either as a waiter, then as a bartender, then as a barista, I did not finish my internship and went headlong into the restaurant business and traveling around the world. Judge for yourself - after an internship, a young doctor receives 25 thousand rubles, and as a barista, I received 30-80 thousand rubles (at the beginning of my career I earned 30 thousand, and the more experience I received as a barista, the higher my salary became). Since the payment is hourly, it was possible to plow, and for 300 hours a month to get as much as doctors never dreamed of. Also, due to the flexible schedule, it was always possible to organize a mini-vacation and fly abroad for a week. In general, I enjoyed my work and lifestyle and did not think about medicine (and even more so, I did not think about programming, which for me was the lot of geniuses and “gods”).
About moving to Australia
I traveled a lot. When she arrived in Australia in 2014, she met her future husband. I got married and moved here in 2016. We did not live long and divorced quite quickly: I was left alone without family and friends in a foreign country. Since I continued to work as a barista here, I began to worry about the future, approaching my thirtieth birthday, and I began to realize that I would not last long in the restaurant business. The reasons are a lot of physical activity and little creativity in the profession. And in general, I somehow began to feel awkward surrounded by twenty-year-olds. In addition, although the barista here receives much more than in Russia, there are no overtime. With a standard five-day and eight-hour work week, it is unrealistic to work 300 hours here - the salary comes out a little higher than the minimum (you can still live normally, because you pay little taxes because of the progressive tax system). In general, if you compare this job with others, the barista profession loses quite a lot. And so I began to think...
How I got into programming
At first, I thought about returning to medicine and applied to the University of People - this is a non-profit distance learning university in the USA for a Health Science degree. Education is free, you only have to pay for exams (there are only 16 for 4 years of study) and for processing documents for $ 100 - it turns out $ 1,700 for 4 years, that is, almost for nothing. I finished the first preparatory “semester”, where they taught English, how to write an essay, how to correctly quote sources, how to avoid plagiarism, passed the exam and thought again ... Then the series “ Mr. Robot” had just come outand I became a big fan of his. And in general, I have always been attracted to the topic of programming: I installed software myself, figured out how to “quack” Word and other programs, web surfing has always taken 50% of my time. Yes, and at work there were favorite regular customers - funny devops of the Australian mail. They destroyed the stereotype of unsociable and brilliant programmers. I began to slowly learn everything about the profession: I started with a post on Facebook, where I asked for advice on programming resources, then I began to go to meetups for programmers, I didn’t understand anything, but I received a lot of valuable advice. I met a switcher girl at one of these meetups. She drove mining company trucks and worked on a rotational basis, then she got tired of such a life, she completed the bootcamp in 3 months and successfully got a job in the largest accounting office in Australia and New Zealand. This girl (and other switchers) inspired me so much that I decided it was time! At first I wanted to transfer to the University of People to study Computer Science, but they told me: “Why are you wasting your time, go to a bootcamp and then immediately get experience at work.”
What programming language did you choose and why?
I started, like everyone else, with HTML, CSS, JavaScript. Well, the truth is, how without them? Even if you set out to become a purely back-end developer, you still need some minimal front-end skill for side projects, otherwise how else can you show off in front of your friends :) In general, I probably have a commercial vein, and I cherish the idea of my application, so the frontend was a must for me. But in general, I was more inclined towards the backend, because the tasks for it are more interesting, and you don’t need to adapt to different browsers and take care of accessibility ( accessibility- ed.). Therefore, I decided that I would concentrate on JavaScript, since in the front-end you can’t do without it, and in the back-end you can use it in the guise of NodeJS. But when I went to the bootcamp, I had to switch to Ruby, since most of the time was devoted to it. At work, the main language was Golang.
About how I studied: sources, courses, bootcamp
About mentors - I had a friend who worked as a developer in the pre-Google era and then went into business. I could ask him general questions about networking, computer design, different protocols, and so on. I couldn't ask more language specific questions, but anyway it helped me incredibly. I asked language specific questions during meetups - right with a piece of paper I approached different people and asked for help. If you do not start with a request for help, but come up to chat and behave adequately, then no one refused. Programmers in general turned out to be responsive and patient people. In addition, in Australia, the Women in STEM movement is very powerful and everyone is trying to help women. I studied in periods:
"Free swimming". At the very beginning, I didn’t limit myself in anything - I “swam” across the Internet and read the stories of other switches, read articles about what’s inside a computer and how the Internet works, about startups and what professions in general are in IT. I got acquainted with the terms, wrote down sensible resources. In one of the articles it was said to go to meetups and talk with people, and I began to walk and communicate. So I realized that I need to go to a bootcamp, I found out what a good one is. They also gave me some good resources.
FreeCodeCamp and Treehouse are my two main learning resources. There are a lot of tasks that will last for a long time. I mainly wrote code in HTML, CSS, JS and I already started my first acquaintance with the API, bought my first domain, after that some funny projects started. freeCodeCamp even has its own meetups in some countries for those who take courses.
bootcamp. I ended up going to General Assembly. The duration of the bootcamp is 3 months, the cost is 15.5 thousand Australian dollars (or 12 thousand US dollars). Technology stack - JS, Ruby, Sinatra, Ruby on Rails, JQuery, Backbone, React, SQL. The bootcamp was completely offline: it’s hard to imagine such a luxury now. We were 25 people and three instructors (one main and two assistants), plus a resume and social media consultant (LinkedIn). Classes started at 9:00-9:30 and ended at 17:00-18:00 with a break for lunch, of course. During the bootcamp, we made 4 projects - two individual and two team projects. The first is tic-tac-toe with JS, the second is a barista advice exchange platform with Sinatra (Ruby framework), the third is a real estate review website with Rails and Google API, the fourth is Bitcoin Arbitrage with React. Ideas for the project could be submitted,
Preparing for an interview, polishing a portfolio. I continued to work on these four projects and decided to build a small application for the Shopify platform to calculate cost of goods ( cost of goods sold - ed.). It was a very good experience, as I had to deal with a serious and rich API for such a solid platform like Shopify.
About the study schedule and systematic teaching
Since I worked as a barista, I had quite a training schedule - I worked from 8:00-16:30 and studied from 17:00-19:00, that is, there was even time to watch a TV series or run around in the evening. On weekends, I could study all day and go somewhere to hang out, as the cards fall. I didn’t push myself too hard with learning, I was told that learning to program is like eating an elephant: a little bit every day. I was afraid that with this approach I would never learn anything - the world of programming seems so endless (and to this day such fear remains). But looking back, I see huge progress, and even if you practice two hours a day, but steadily, progress will definitely not be long in coming. At first, there was no system in my training. I just surfed the Internet and tried to understand what was happening, I talked a lot with people, wrote down her stupid questions and asked them to everyone she could catch at the meetup. That's when I started doing tasks with freeCodeCamp and Team Treehouse, then some kind of system appeared: after all, these are pretty ordered courses. The most systematic training was at the bootcamp. A clear program and a full day of study, but this, of course, is a very expensive pleasure.
About where she got a job after training
I work for Zendesk, which is the largest helpdesk software company. Our clients include Uber, Netflix, Airbnb. In total, the company has more than a thousand engineers and more than 300 microservices. That is, it is a large company with a very specialized staff: we have our own compute, edge, foundation engineers, as well as a 24/7 “crisis” operational center that looks after its possessions. In theory, I should not have started the transition processes, nor prepared new servers for work, nor been in the position of an operational engineer, but nevertheless, life forced me. They took me to the position of associate software engineer (junior software engineer - ed.) or Zen 1, by local standards. I thought that there would be a strict supervision of me and would not be allowed to the production code, but that was not the case: already two weeks after setting up the environment and onboarding lectures, they were allowed to select Jira cards from the sprint and work on the same tasks as other engineers. Of course, there was a lot of work in pairs with other developers, and the code had to go through at least two reviews from other engineers, plus unit and integration testing to the maximum. But I was thrilled to be working on the same assignments as the experienced engineers on my team. Basically, I worked in the backend with Golang, which over time I fell in love with as my own. I managed to work quite closely with Kafka and exotic databases - BigTable and DynamoDB. Most of all I like working with metrics and investigating all sorts of alerts and bugs, it's just like a detective, it's very interesting. like other engineers. Of course, there was a lot of work in pairs with other developers, and the code had to go through at least two reviews from other engineers, plus unit and integration testing to the maximum. But I was thrilled to be working on the same assignments as the experienced engineers on my team. Basically, I worked in the backend with Golang, which over time I fell in love with as my own. I managed to work quite closely with Kafka and exotic databases - BigTable and DynamoDB. Most of all I like working with metrics and investigating all sorts of alerts and bugs, it's just like a detective, it's very interesting. like other engineers. Of course, there was a lot of work in pairs with other developers, and the code had to go through at least two reviews from other engineers, plus unit and integration testing to the maximum. But I was thrilled to be working on the same assignments as the experienced engineers on my team. Basically, I worked in the backend with Golang, which over time I fell in love with as my own. I managed to work quite closely with Kafka and exotic databases - BigTable and DynamoDB. Most of all I like working with metrics and investigating all sorts of alerts and bugs, it's just like a detective, it's very interesting. But I was thrilled to be working on the same assignments as the experienced engineers on my team. Basically, I worked in the backend with Golang, which over time I fell in love with as my own. I managed to work quite closely with Kafka and exotic databases - BigTable and DynamoDB. Most of all I like working with metrics and investigating all sorts of alerts and bugs, it's just like a detective, it's very interesting. But I was thrilled to be working on the same assignments as the experienced engineers on my team. Basically, I worked in the backend with Golang, which over time I fell in love with as my own. I managed to work quite closely with Kafka and exotic databases - BigTable and DynamoDB. Most of all I like working with metrics and investigating all sorts of alerts and bugs, it's just like a detective, it's very interesting.
We have our own gradation of developer levels in the company (not the fact that I remember everything correctly):
Zen 0 (intern),
Zen 1 (associate software engineer),
Zen 2 (software engineer),
Zen 3 (senior software engineer),
Zen 4 (staff engineer),
Zen 5 (senior staff engineer),
Zen 6 (principal engineer),
Zen 7 (architect).
I’ve been working for three years, I started with Zen 1, and after a year they upgraded me to Zen 2. Now I’m striving for senior, but it’s already more difficult here: you need not only to be able to break complex tasks into small tasks, but also spend a lot of time training junior engineers, sharing knowledge with the team. Since I have always been the most junior engineer on the team with the least amount of experience, this is difficult for me. And plus I have severe impostor syndrome, but I try to grow anyway!
On the features of corporate culture
The only strict rule about hiring employees in our office is we don't hire assholes. That is, if you behave like an asshole, then no matter how senior you are, you will never be hired, and if they are hired and people complain, they will easily be fired. We constantly conduct mandatory anti-harassment trainings and the elimination of illiteracy on issues of LGBTQIA and various national minorities. The coolest one is empathy circles — when almost the entire office gathers online and shares positive and negative experiences that certain minorities experienced in everyday life. When you hear how your colleagues were hurt by certain statements that seemed quite innocent to you, you will definitely not make such mistakes, but will think about what you say. I know, that many in the post-Soviet space consider such political correctness to be absurd and something beyond measure, but having lived as a representative of a national minority in Moscow, I can say for sure that in Russia such trainings and obligations would definitely not hurt. In general, I think it's cool that people are trying to increase their level of social awareness and understand other people.
About changing profession
I am very satisfied with my profession. It seems to me that it was the most difficult, but the most successful decision in my life. I can’t say that I’m happy every day and everything goes like clockwork for me, because sometimes there are long periods of nervousness and self-doubt. I am quite an ambitious and proud person and being constantly the youngest employee in a team when you have 3 years of experience, and the rest from 5 to infinity (plus a degree in Computer Science) is quite difficult - it constantly hits self-esteem. Well, the constantly changing technology stack does not let you get bored: I am constantly learning something outside of working hours. This is categorically not encouraged in a company where work-life balance is put above all else, but otherwise my conscience torments me that I have been sitting with a task for a week now and everything is slowly moving forward. Work takes up a lot of free time. There was not a single weekend when I didn’t listen to at least some programming podcast. I try to dedicate at least half an hour, but every day, to studying something new or repeating the old. And there is always a feeling that the more I learn something, the more I realize how much remains incomprehensible and unexplored. This sometimes starts a real panic, but everything is decided by talking with other team members and the team leader. But you never get bored and always work on something new and interesting. This sometimes starts a real panic, but everything is decided by talking with other team members and the team leader. But you never get bored and always work on something new and interesting. This sometimes starts a real panic, but everything is decided by talking with other team members and the team leader. But you never get bored and always work on something new and interesting.
About the level of English
Before moving to Australia, I had plans to study English for IELTS, but in the end, IELTS was not needed for my visa and I did not go to study. But I passed the preliminary test with the result - then I had an Upper intermediate level. I would like to believe that after 5 years in Australia I am now Advanced, but this is not certain. Due to the huge number of specialized English terms in IT, you still have to google a lot of new words, so at first it was very difficult. In addition to technical terms, there is also business English, and the specific terminology of Agile, Kanban, and some kind of internal corporate slang. For the first time, I sat at meetings and understood 10 percent of what was discussed. We encourage questions of any subject during meetings and no one will say a word to you (well, they will think: “Here you are a teapot”, but this does not bother me). On the contrary: they will always explain and paraphrase. I either asked something on the spot, or wrote down something for myself, and when there were one-to-one meetings with the team leader (my cool immediate boss) or my managing engineer (a very cool woman), I asked them what that she could not google and understand. In general, it was difficult, but since I had a fire team, all difficulties were quickly resolved and there were no problems with communication. But I was stressed at first, of course, a lot. all difficulties were quickly resolved and there were no problems with communication. But I was stressed at first, of course, a lot. all difficulties were quickly resolved and there were no problems with communication. But I was stressed at first, of course, a lot.
What can you advise future switchers
It seems to me that many people cannot understand in any way whether programming will work or not. They are afraid to start, and they are marking time in one place in doubt. But I don’t understand such emotional rushes: to start studying a profession, you don’t need any investments, except for free time. There are a lot of free resources on the Internet: at least in English. As they say, take it and do it. You don’t need to quit your job or cut money from the budget - just a couple of hours in the evenings will be enough to eventually understand whether you like it or not, whether there is progress or not. And even if at the beginning you cannot adequately assess the speed of progress, then it is quite possible to understand whether you like this business. But this is the main thing: if you sit for a couple of hours and get up with a “cotton” head and a feeling of your own insignificance, but my eyes are burning and I want to continue tomorrow - this is an indicator of success in the profession. As a last resort - if you don't like it - you will be a more technically savvy person, and in our era of the Internet and technology, this is certainly not superfluous!
About my YouTube development blog
I have a YouTube blog called Aisa. Just about programming ”, in which I talk about my experience: how I studied, how I was looking for a job. I started with a beauty blog, I have two channels. There was an idea for a startup in the world of beauty, and I decided to develop a test audience for myself. Plus, Melbourne had one of the toughest and longest lockdowns in the world and there was a lot of free time. I also posted a video about programming on the channel and got a pretty big response to it, and I realized that many people are interested and like it, that I try to explain everything in simple language.
I don’t have any goal to grow an audience and start selling training courses or advertising: I don’t think that I have enough knowledge and teaching skills for this. But it warms my heart that even if I helped a couple of people learn something new or motivated them to move on.
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