I Am Now Doing This Thing For Real

I have recently joined the The Practical Dev (opens in a new tab) as an apprentice software developer.

Remember when I said that good things were happening? That was one of the things.

Ben reached out in a Twitter DM and it kicked off.

I filled out the required application. We had a video conference yesterday and today they made the offer.

I can’t tell you how excited I am to be joining the team ¹. This transcends just being in tech or having a career.

There is so much I would like to day, to be quite honest. There are some things I can’t or don’t want to explain but.

I have lived a miserable existence, from the day I popped out of my mom’s womb. She was an addict. I was adopted but that drug use left me with some residual side effects.

I spent my youth and teenage years in a very bad state. Emotionally I was a mess. I was a bright kid, a great student. Things came super easy to me. But because of trauma and emotional issues, I couldn’t really go to college after high school. I eventually went as a 24 year old. But, as it was, emotional issues, depression, angst. All that prevented my from being successful.

When I was 22 my grandmother died. She was my rock. She was in my corner, even when I was a little shit. She was there. She protected me.

I was in a place where I could remain safe when I was in my early 20s. I was poor and out of it. She died and I felt like I let her down; I wasn’t much of anything. I was just another listless 20 something black girl from the hood drifting in and out of placements and falling through the cracks. I always felt like I let her down. I couldn't help it, but the guilt has followed me.

I didn’t start feeling like I had something to live for until I was 28. I had been through hell and back, an emotionally violent relationship, I had been through the ringer. But something came around for me as a 28 year old young woman starting to realize that yeah, life is shit. It really is. But you literally crawled out from the jaws of death and now what are you going to do with your life?

30 Something…

I went back to school when I turned 30. I was a humanities major. I was still pretty poor. Making ends meet was hard.

I went to school, making good grades for a while. I decided that tech was where I wanted to work. As much as I liked to write, I liked tweaking my sites even more. I also knew that I would remain poor as a humanities major because I didn’t want to teach.

I got a Mac in 2014, a code editor, and I was off to the races.

I went to Pitt from 2015-2017 as a CS major. You may remember it.

https://tiffanywhite.tech/starting-the-university-of-pittsburgh/ (opens in a new tab)

Had a breakdown in the middle of those two years.

I couldn’t go back to school this year and instead dove head first into every project on my GitHub that isn’t for school.

I’ve built some pretty cool things that I am proud of and am working on even more things.

But now I get to do it for real.

Whew

I have not been eating much. That is how bad it has gotten for me. I am not complaining though. I have good friends and family. They have helped me through the rough times I have been having. I have been really coding for my life, not just for a cushy job. It means so much more to me because of that.

I have been searching for a couple months now. I was using a little Chrome extension called Streak CRM to track the process. Rejections would come in. Now, I have a CRM with an offer that I accepted.

Mom

My mom is 71. She told me she would like to stick around long enough to see me be something. She qualified that with, “Well, you are already something but. Still. You know.”

I knew what she meant. We haven’t always been on good terms. But I love her and I, too, wanted her to see this. I didn’t want another regret of letting another important woman to me see me floundering.

I bought my mom a little something from Amazon and added a note and gift bag that said:

> "Mom, I did it. From now on Xmas for you will be special. I'm grateful for your support. Love you. Tiffany"

Makes me feel good.

Thanks, Ben and Peter

I mean, really. You two have taken a chance on an old lady who doesn’t have a degree but has a fire in her belly to actually learn and grow as a developer. I can’t thank you two enough. Truly. Thank you.

Well

Everyone has a story. I am glad mine is ending up like this. I hope for happiness and success for anyone who is on the outside looking in in tech. You got this. ???

I have recently joined the The Practical Dev (opens in a new tab) as an apprentice software developer.

Remember when I said that good things were happening? That was one of the things.

Ben reached out in a Twitter DM and it kicked off.

I filled out the required application. We had a video conference yesterday and today they made the offer.

I can’t tell you how excited I am to be joining the team ¹. This transcends just being in tech or having a career.

There is so much I would like to day, to be quite honest. There are some things I can’t or don’t want to explain but.

I have lived a miserable existence, from the day I popped out of my mom’s womb. She was an addict. I was adopted but that drug use left me with some residual side effects.

I spent my youth and teenage years in a very bad state. Emotionally I was a mess. I was a bright kid, a great student. Things came super easy to me. But because of trauma and emotional issues, I couldn’t really go to college after high school. I eventually went as a 24 year old. But, as it was, emotional issues, depression, angst. All that prevented my from being successful.

When I was 22 my grandmother died. She was my rock. She was in my corner, even when I was a little shit. She was there. She protected me.

I was in a place where I could remain safe when I was in my early 20s. I was poor and out of it. She died and I felt like I let her down; I wasn’t much of anything. I was just another listless 20 something black girl from the hood drifting in and out of placements and falling through the cracks. I always felt like I let her down. I couldn't help it, but the guilt has followed me.

I didn’t start feeling like I had something to live for until I was 28. I had been through hell and back, an emotionally violent relationship, I had been through the ringer. But something came around for me as a 28 year old young woman starting to realize that yeah, life is shit. It really is. But you literally crawled out from the jaws of death and now what are you going to do with your life?

30 Something…

I went back to school when I turned 30. I was a humanities major. I was still pretty poor. Making ends meet was hard.

I went to school, making good grades for a while. I decided that tech was where I wanted to work. As much as I liked to write, I liked tweaking my sites even more. I also knew that I would remain poor as a humanities major because I didn’t want to teach.

I got a Mac in 2014, a code editor, and I was off to the races.

I went to Pitt from 2015-2017 as a CS major. You may remember it.

https://tiffanywhite.tech/starting-the-university-of-pittsburgh/ (opens in a new tab)

Had a breakdown in the middle of those two years.

I couldn’t go back to school this year and instead dove head first into every project on my GitHub that isn’t for school.

I’ve built some pretty cool things that I am proud of and am working on even more things.

But now I get to do it for real.

Whew

I have not been eating much. That is how bad it has gotten for me. I am not complaining though. I have good friends and family. They have helped me through the rough times I have been having. I have been really coding for my life, not just for a cushy job. It means so much more to me because of that.

I have been searching for a couple months now. I was using a little Chrome extension called Streak CRM to track the process. Rejections would come in. Now, I have a CRM with an offer that I accepted.

Mom

My mom is 71. She told me she would like to stick around long enough to see me be something. She qualified that with, “Well, you are already something but. Still. You know.”

I knew what she meant. We haven’t always been on good terms. But I love her and I, too, wanted her to see this. I didn’t want another regret of letting another important woman to me see me floundering.

I bought my mom a little something from Amazon and added a note and gift bag that said:

> "Mom, I did it. From now on Xmas for you will be special. I'm grateful for your support. Love you. Tiffany"

Makes me feel good.

Thanks, Ben and Peter

I mean, really. You two have taken a chance on an old lady who doesn’t have a degree but has a fire in her belly to actually learn and grow as a developer. I can’t thank you two enough. Truly. Thank you.

Well

Everyone has a story. I am glad mine is ending up like this. I hope for happiness and success for anyone who is on the outside looking in in tech. You got this. ???