How Saying Yes More Landed Me a Top Tech Job | by Georgia Haddock

For me, becoming a software engineer was not necessarily a job I planned for. I wasn’t building Raspberry Pis at age 8 or hacking my school’s internal systems. As a kid, I thought I would grow up to be an artist, a mathematician, maybe a chef. I didn’t really know. I just knew I wanted to do something fun. 

Options, options, options

At the age of 18, I did the default thing and went to university. I got myself a degree in Maths and French, and then… I panicked. The real world was a big place, and I had no clue what to do in it. I felt scared, and my biggest fear was making the wrong decision and ending up stuck in a career I hated for the rest of my life. I spent a very long summer after my graduation dragging my feet, unenthusiastically scrolling job adverts and feeling more and more lost by the day. Fortunately, after a few months, one day I woke up and asked myself, “What if I just do… anything I fancy?”.

Zipping forward in time, I went on to start a business in sustainable fashion and became a textile artist and sewing teacher for 3 years. Interlaced amongst these years were 8 months in a charity job and a couple of stints living abroad in Spain and France as an English teacher. My main issue, if you could call it that, is that I have had so many interests to distract me. The idea of setting my sights on a single career has always felt like way too much of a commitment. I have always said yes to everything, often for better and sometimes for worse. But in honesty, I have had an awful lot of fun in my 20s; I’ve seen the world, met people from so many walks of life, and given myself permission to explore more than one passion.

While the career path I have chosen has been winding with varied terrain, sometimes even a little rocky, it has certainly been colourful. Whilst some people might view it as chaotic and even risky, having a variety of experiences as an adult has been really fun, and in spite of my untraditional choices, I even managed to bag a job at a top tech company a few years down the line…

Landing on coding

After several years of ignoring the feeling that I had left behind the maths I had loved so much in school and at university, I decided to take a coding course in Java. I shipped out a load of job applications. A year later, I am 9 months into an apprenticeship at none other than Meta, currently working within WhatsApp as a full stack engineer(!).

What might surprise people is that I actually put my success in getting the job down to my mixed bag of experiences. I would encourage anyone to consider weird and wonderful avenues, particularly at the start of their working lives. Ensuring that the work I find myself in is explorative, diverse and curious is, in my eyes, a must. We are so lucky to live in a time when a one-track career is no longer the only option. With every new opportunity, it is all too easy to ask yourself, “Am I closing more doors than the one I am opening?”, but often, any experience allows you to grow as a person and affords you the chance to see the world through a new set of eyes.

The lens through which I am inviting you to look through is one that puts the notion of talent and outstanding experience to one side for a moment (I claim to have neither). Instead, let’s take a look at the less tangible qualities that everyone has, and that can be so powerfully anchored to get what we want out of life.

The challenges of… new challenges

Starting my new job at Meta, as it would be at any company, was a healthy combination of exciting and nerve-racking. With every new adventure, the most common fear I have encountered time and time again has been that of stepping into a room and being the least experienced person there.

What I have swiftly come to realise in Software Engineering is that you are so often thrown into the abyss of the unknown. Having a core understanding of systems architecture, what ‘recursive’ means or how to write a for-loop is one thing, but with the ever-expanding universe of languages, frameworks and possibilities that lay at our fingertips, it really is impossible to know everything. Particularly at Meta, engineers are constantly battling with this, given the huge codebase and mass of tools that make up one of the biggest pieces of technology in the world. But perhaps ‘battle with’ is where we are going wrong here. In fact, I would prefer to think of it as ‘submitting to the unknown’, or even with a bit of practice, ‘falling into the wondrous world of discovery of newfound knowledge’. Glamorise it further if you need to. Sometimes I like to imagine that I am Rami Malek in Mr Robot, saving the world one CLI command at a time…

Getting comfortable with new challenges

Back to those less tangible qualities. Calling soft skills ‘soft’, does them a huge disservice. Communication, adaptability, problem-solving, emotional intelligence, creativity, conflict resolution and resilience are often not listed on job adverts, but my goodness do companies want them. I would actually argue that a good basis in these skills could foundationally get you any job if, alongside it, you are willing to push yourself and learn.

Landing an apprenticeship is a great example of this. You’ve most likely been hired on the basis of a handful of concrete skills, but primarily: an awful lot of potential. I think it’s really key to anchor yourself in those skills over the course of an apprenticeship. For example, when faced with a tricky task, instead of asking yourself “Why don’t I understand this?”, ask yourself “What tools do I have at my disposal to learn this new concept?”. Because the skills you actually need are things like: 

• Communication with your colleagues
• Asking questions effectively
• Conducting self-led research
• Creative problem solving

Keeping soft skills in mind has really helped me to feel empowered in my work, even when I’m all too aware that I am the least experienced person in the room.

Believe in yourself, say yes to new opportunities and think creatively about how to get what you want out of life! It’s a little bit corny but it really has worked a treat for me.

Georgia Haddock is a Software Engineer Apprentice at Meta base in London, UK.