The speaker, who has been coding for 10 years, shares their journey from being a high school robotics club member to a software engineer, touching on various roles and experiences along the way. They started by programming a robot's brain using a simplified language called Robot C, and later, in college, took a course called "Designing Functional Programs" where they learned about recursion.
In 2013, they became a finance wannabe and started a side project, building a trading bot. They also interned at Scotiabank, where they automated option pricing. After university, they worked at Citadel, where they had to build web servers from scratch in C++.
In 2015, they interned at LinkedIn, but their code was criticized and they left. They then worked at Facebook as a data scientist, and later joined their video creator team. They also started their own YouTube channel, which grew significantly.
In 2019, they took a break and decided to become a software engineer again, but experienced burnout. They applied to two big companies and got both offers, but didn't work as a software engineer full-time.
In 2021, their YouTube channel became big, and they enjoyed the experience. They concluded that success is defined differently for everyone, and it's important to pursue projects and opportunities that allow for growth. The more you work on yourself, the more the dice are weighted to your advantage.
1. The speaker has been coding for exactly 10 years, from 2012 to 2022.
2. In 2012, the speaker joined the robotics club in school and began programming the robot's brain, using a simplified language called robot c.
3. In 2013, the speaker became a finance wannabe and started working at McDonald's, where they handled concurrent microtransactions in a fast-paced environment.
4. In 2013, the speaker also built a trading bot that handled concurrent transactions in a high-speed environment.
5. In 2014, the speaker started taking university courses like data structures and data management, and object-oriented programming.
6. In 2015, the speaker landed an internship at LinkedIn, where they wrote some C code that never got deployed.
7. After the internship at LinkedIn, the speaker decided to do research assistant work for their favorite operating system professor.
8. In 2016, the speaker interned at Facebook, where they learned SQL and how to make pretty graphs.
9. In 2016, the speaker also interned at Microsoft, where they prototyped Windows server security products using PowerShell.
10. In 2017, the speaker decided to become a YouTuber and worked at BuzzFeed as a data scientist.
11. In 2017, the speaker joined Facebook's video creator team, which led to their YouTube channel blowing up.
12. In 2018, the speaker experienced burnout due to their split focus between working at Facebook and growing their YouTube channel.
13. In 2019, the speaker chose to be a software engineer and applied to two big companies, eventually getting both offers.
14. In 2020, the speaker worked as a software engineer full-time, mostly working in C++ and doing a lot of infra work and analysis.
15. In 2021, the speaker's YouTube channel became pretty big and they started loving it more than ever before.
16. The speaker believes that there are many ways to be successful and that success is defined differently for everyone.