The journey of a thousand miles begins with one step, or so the saying goes.

For many of us, learning to become a developer from scratch does feel like you’re embarking on a thousand-mile journey, if not 10 times more.

For Ryan, his journey began with a dream that still fuels his decisions to this day. That dream and goal is ultimately to migrate to another country to lead a better way of life, for his mental health. Speaking over the phone, he shared about how he has been through tough seasons of inner battles, that he hopes to share from his experiences and ultimately manifest wisdom to others.

Before getting ahead of ourselves, we asked Ryan to give a quick introduction.

RT: Hi! I'm Ryan, currently a Full Stack Web Developer at Accenture Singapore.

We clearly don’t need to dig further, but outside of coding, Ryan also loves cooking for others, taking pride in cooking one of his best dishes, a beef wellington.
Ryan started out with undertaking his Higher NITEC in IT, following his interest in computers and tech and then making a turn towards audio engineering during his National Service.

RT: ITE was definitely a change of pace in terms of the curriculum and what I was used to, as it was very practical with lots of hands-on work and assignments. Going into audio engineering after was rather unexpected. Music was a hobby and passion I had for as long as I could remember, and it somehow transitioned into producing and orchestrating Film and Video game soundtracks as a career.

In those early years, he also saw the tech industry as a thriving market, an opportunity for good capital to be earned in funding his dream, but with the standard pathways taking too much time for his liking, he looked to other alternatives.

RT: When the pandemic hit, I knew I wanted to make the most of my time by picking up tech again. By chance,I came across an MRT advert that was promoting tech workshops hosted by a few schools. I reached out to them and Trent Global happened to be the first one that responded.

Ultimately, it had exactly what I was looking for, a diploma at the end of the programme which helped in scaling my education and learning. But the best thing about it? They provided many resources for job hunting after the course. It relieved some of the stress when they helped with sending my CV to companies for consideration, both MNCs and SMEs. In short, the course itself is what I would expect from a course of this intensity. But I can say it covered what I needed to be just about prepared for the working world.

Though Ryan prepared himself for a challenge in the course, he still found himself overwhelmed by the work ahead of him.

RT: I expected it to take quite a bit of my time and losing sleep over it, but I still wasn’t ready for how tough it was. As a creatively motivated person, I prefer to see immediate results from my work, so writing long blocks of code in the back-end of my website and not having any visual representation absolutely wrecked my brain. I remember every night, I would set aside an hour to properly manage my tasks for the next day. It was crucial especially for my assignments, in order for me to stay on track with the programme.

However, one of the key moments was on my first project, I came up with the idea of it during my time in ITE, but back then, I couldn't do it justice. This time, I was able to execute the idea properly and it felt good to create something that wasn’t just above the minimum standards.

Through his labor and long nights, Ryan graduated successfully in May 2021 and within a month he managed to land a spot as a full stack developer at Accenture. Ryan shared his thoughts on how he got prepared.

RT: Throughout the course, we really focused on building a strong foundation to make sure we had our fundamentals down. Once we got through the programme, Trent set up several mock-up technical interviews with industry experts, giving us a first-hand experience in a technical interview. I have to say, these were very useful, especially during my own technical interviews. I knew what to expect and do, even if they threw in curve ball questions. Shout out to Neelima from Facebook, who gave us great advice on what to be vocal for during the interviews.

Now at Accenture, Ryan continues to build himself up towards achieving his goal. We asked if Ryan could share any tips or advice, for those who may be looking to begin their journey in coding.

Know what you are looking for and where you want to go in your career.

Do what you must to make it worth your effort and time. Education is not something to be rushed, ironically. Everybody learns at a different rate, and it’s not a competition until you actually enter into the industry. Lastly, prioritize your mental health, the moment you neglect it for the sake of grades or anything else for that matter, is where it starts to become detrimental.

We have definitely not heard the last from Ryan, and look forward to seeing him reaching great heights and achieving his goals.

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