How I Got Into Tech

Hey, My past is not common for many developers. I know a lot of geeks have issues of their own and might not be the same issues that I went through. But I've always told myself that I might be in a place where I kinda feel hopeless and feel like I am not where I wanna be, could be because of mental issues, depression or addiction, Anxiety, financial situations, but I can overcome anything. All I needed to do is perseverance and passion and keep pushing myself.

Ok, let me shoot. Basically, I grew up in EASTERN CAPE at one of the smallest towns known as Flagstaff, If ever heard of “Inquza Hill Local Municipality” within the jurisdiction of the OR Tambo District Municipality of the EASTERN CAPE, that’s where I was born and bred. I then moved to Durban(KZN) after high school. My Mother has been working in Durban Ever since I was a kid, So I would sometimes visit on school holidays but not often. I didn’t grow up with the money. But we weren’t that poor I would say. I never went to a private school. Most people think I was one of the richest kids that went to private schools and started coding at the age of 9 to 13. That’s the wrong assumption about me. I’m not one of the people to say

I grew up playing with computers and my dad hired a private tutor to teach me how to write code.

I couldn't even play computer games, not that I couldn’t afford them. My mother was working a cool-paying job and my father was a principal in high school but wasn’t married. So I would say it could be because of some complicated relationship stories that I can’t really tell. I feel like I did not get the support I needed as a kid. That’s a story for another channel.

So, basically you know, I also grew up a very shy kid and I had social anxiety, which I still have today but thanks to Tech. Being in the Tech space with all the live presentations and stuff. And got to be on international news, interviewed on different radio stations, TV..Things really changed around me. I'm no longer that shy kid anymore or let me say I try.

Okay, about my education, after matric, I moved to Durban to study Civil Engineering at the Mangosuthu University of Technology. And by then I had a kid and my family decided to stop supporting me financially because they felt I was a man. And that kinda hit at me knowing that now I have a person depending on me, I decided to take some part-time jobs around Durban while doing my Civil Engineering course. Not that I wanted to take care of the kid, my mother did take care of my daughter and she still does today. .. So yeah.. I always had a thing for Tech though even though I never did anything with it. I had a zero scope. In high school, I was a math and physics nerd so I used to hear them say that people who are good at maths do programming stuff even though I didn’t even know what was that is because I hardly got access to the internet.

So it was after my Civil course, My Geek friend suggested I watch a series(movie) called Silicon valley The series has a group of programmers dropping from varsity and starting their own Tech startup company and I was sold. I got so interested. I loved the look of the colors on screen, the text editors that looked really cool. Something about seeing code on screen really attracted me. And also the offices and the lifestyle seeing that there’s a lot of opportunities. But Something about it really drew me there.

In 2017, I decided to register at the University of Zululand for Bsc Applied Mathematics And Computer Science. In my first year, I did not learn much, it was a lot of theory-based stuff, nothing practical. But it did get me to kinda do things on my own and self-teaching. I taught myself javascript and HTML, web development, and all other cool Technologies that they don’t teach at varsity. After learning software engineering in my second year second semester I decide to teach myself javascript and python frameworks (Django) and all the cool stuff called mern stack today. That's when I then Attended a dev jam mern stack( Javascript, React, Mongo, Express, Node js) international hackathon and reached the top 10. I was so sure about winning the hack but school kinda got into my ways and I decided to quickly after 5 weeks of hacking. I then took the solution I developed during the hack and helped people with it, to generate their resumes which I still do today.

I have helped close to 5000 people to get jobs using my resume builder app. And I will continue doing that. I love the feel of “Hey, Snaye, thanks very much I got that job”.

I passed my final year machine learning project at varsity with a distinction. I used a data set from a company called Roboflow AI in the United States. I sent them my video presentation and they were sold and sent me gifts. I also got an offer to be in their community membership.

Oh yeah, that’s a glimpse of my story. I will never finish. Thanks for the read!