My name is Noah, and I’m a self-taught developer who has worked in the tech industry for over a decade. My journey started in college when I teamed up with a group of friends to launch a startup. We built a templating app for a music company, but unfortunately, the business failed because we didn’t have any business experience.
Despite this setback, I continued to pursue my passion for programming and built a few demo apps in PHP. This led to my first job, which turned out to be a crazy work environment. On my first day, my boss’s boss was talking about what to do in case of a shooting. Although I gained valuable experience, I eventually burnt out because of the 80 hour work weeks and eating myself into an early grave.
After that, I got a job at a sports media company where we did a major rewrite. This experience allowed me to learn a lot about sprints, PHP frameworks, and security. Along the way, I also learned how to tell bad jokes. However, my ego got the best of me, and I got burnt out again. It was during this time that I realized the importance of work-life balance and not taking yourself or the code too seriously.
My next move was to San Francisco, where I landed a job at a dating company. This turned out to be the best work experience of my life. I learned about payments, how to keep a cool head, and how to deal with environments that need to scale, as well as how to deal with legacy code. After the company got merged, we played magic the gathering for two months, which added a little goofiness to the environment. But overall, I came away from the experience with valuable skills.
Next, I worked at a startup called Aloft. This turned out to be one of the most challenging and rewarding experiences of my life. I built things from scratch and learned how to migrate bad data into a good database. The drone industry is super cool!
Thanks to the strong relationship I built with my former boss, he recommended me for a job at DocuSign, where I currently work. Here, I’m learning how to work in a process-driven environment. I had a lot of crazy experiences in tech, and I understand the struggles of being a self-taught developer.
Throughout my journey, I’ve had the opportunity to teach kids and adults how to code at various makerspaces, museums, libraries, and tutoring centers. I taught a wide range of topics, including JavaScript, Scratch, Roblox, Svelte, Swift, Arduino, and much more. I love helping people with code and being able to pass on my knowledge and passion to others has been one of the most rewarding experiences of my life.
If you’re looking to break into the tech industry, sign up for a free 30-minute session with me, and together we’ll come up with a game plan to help you achieve your goals.