Today's interview is with Ahmad, who changed career from electrical engineering to software development. This led to him accepting a job in the UK and moving from his home country of Pakistan. He talks about his income has improved from learning programming, how he learned to code and lots more!
Hey, so can you introduce yourself?
Hi, I am Ahmad, originally from Pakistan and have recently moved to Cambridge in the UK. I am a Cloud Software Engineer by profession and an OpenSource technology enthusiast by heart. I am currently working at a large UK based Bioinformatics and Disease research organisation where I play a key role managing the cloud infrastructure and automating the software stacks to make the lives of scientists easy.
Before my current role, I have had the pleasure of working with Canonical, one of the biggest open source software companies and the makers of the world’s most popular open source linux operating system, Ubuntu. I have helped build cloud platforms based on open source software stacks and have also contributed heavily to the cutting-edge open source software technologies such as OpenStack, Kubernetes and Linux. I have designed cloud infrastructures for Telco organisations across the EU and UK that are shaping the future of communication networks.
Why did you learn to code?
After completing my masters in Electrical Engineering back in 2018, I started my first job in a telecommunications company where I used to visit people's houses to troubleshoot and resolve broadband network issues. It was not something I wanted to do for the rest of my life as the job was repetitive, not very rewarding and was not challenging me to evolve as an engineer.
After trying to kickstart my career in the electrical engineering industry for a while, and thankfully failing at it, I eventually came to realise that this was not a flourishing industry for building a career. I could see that the world was transitioning towards a future where automation and cloud will play a significant role.
I started learning Python, Computer Networking and Linux, which led me to land my first job as a Cloud Engineer back in Pakistan. This provided me with a huge opportunity to learn more and I started delving into open source cloud platforms and software defined networks. I have never looked back since and have been fortunate enough to have worked with tech giants like DELL and Canonical during my journey.
How did you learn coding?
Originally, I started to learn Python and Computer Networking on my own by using free online resources like YouTube and coding websites. This provided me with just enough knowledge to create a good impression during technical interviews and helped me land my first role. However, the real growth happened after I started my career and got to learn from some of the very best and talented engineers in the industry.
I had taken a keen interest in open source software and was actively trying to contribute to open source projects. This led me to collaborate with veteran software engineers around the globe. Having the guidance of these amazing software engineers during my open source journey really helped me hone my skills and shaped me as the Cloud Software Engineer that I am today.
For anyone trying to learn to code with limited resources and guidance, I really recommend taking advantage of the huge amount of freely available resources over the internet and trying to contribute to some open source projects.
