My Journey to Becoming a Software Engineer
How it all began:
My tech journey began four years ago. I landed a job as the first community manager at Autocode. The engineering team was building the Node.js API platform and editor to power different business needs.
Node? Javascript? APIs? It was all very foreign to me then. But, it was exactly what I was looking for — a challenging and exciting opportunity to learn about business development, marketing, finance, and more so that I could successfully launch my family’s business one day. I learned everything I wanted and more.
From community manager to developer advocate at Autocode
I loved my role as the Community Manager at Autocode. I enjoyed building relationships with ambitious and inspiring makers and software engineers from all over the world who were using Autocode to leverage APIs for their business needs. I connected with amazing makers and creative technologists like Matthew Lal, who helped me cofound Maker.Dev — a community that brings developers and makers together to share and learn from one another.
My role quickly evolved from Community Manager to Developer Advocate. I was gathering customer feedback and advocating for product features based on user requests. And while I was known as a Developer Advocate in the community, I often felt inadequate using that title because I didn’t have formal education in software engineering or advanced technical skills. I hadn’t learned computer science, data structures, design, or languages in school, but I did have a love for learning and a passion for helping others. Those two qualities allowed me to challenge myself to stick it through and learn while on the job.
I would spend countless hours trying to decipher API docs, writing tutorials to help the community navigate Autocode’s platform. But after 2 years, I reached a plateau in my self-taught learning. I couldn’t continue going down the google rabbit hole every time I searched for a coding solution. I needed a structured way to continue growing and learning.
In June 2020, many factors influenced my decision to pause my work in tech at Autocode and help launch my family’s business.
I dedicated all of my time and energy during the following months to help my family launch Cocina De Ledezma — a Food Truck in San Diego. I led my family in building a business plan that included profit margins, menus, branding, marketing, and more. We opened our service window in August 2020 in the middle of the pandemic, and it was a hit from day one!
I attribute a large part of our business success to the many skills I acquired during my time working with the team at Autocode. I had learned about branding, marketing, launching campaigns, Facebook and Twitter ads, and so much more.
After six months of operating our family business on the weekends, I began missing tech, the team, the thrill of innovation, learning from developers and makers, and helping others learn. I decided that I would return to tech, but this time as a well-rounded Software Engineer/Developer Advocate — competent enough to help makers and developers build with the tools they love and use. I knew that a more structured environment would be the best way for me to learn to code. So I decided to find a coding Bootcamp that fit my needs.
General Assembly
I applied to General Assembly’s three-month Software Engineering Immersive Program and began my journey on April 12, 2021!
We mastered terminal commands, Git, and Github and learned HTML/CSS/JS in the first three weeks. In the fourth week, we built our first project — a game! I chose to recreate one of my childhood favorites — Tetris. I am very excited to release a step-by-step tutorial in the upcoming weeks.
As I finish writing this first blog, I am about to start my sixth week at General Assembly. We will be diving deeper into building with Node, Express, APIs, and Databases — I’m stoked and eager to absorb it all and share my journey along the way. Stay tuned!
Thank You!
If you’ve made it this far, thank you for reading! Feel welcome to email me at ledezmajane@berkeley.edu if you have any questions about anything I mentioned in the article. I’d be happy to share more!
Thank you to the team at Autocode for introducing me to the world of code and inspiring me to become a software engineer.
