We sat down with one of our students, Bryan Aguilera, to share more about his journey into a tech job. We wanted to give you an idea of the depth and breadth of who is in our learning community. This interview is a part of ongoing learner interviews of our Qwasar students.
Tell us a little bit about yourself, where you are from, what's your educational background?
I was born and raised in the Bay Area, California. I went to college and got a degree in Kinesiology and was on a Pre-Med track. I worked for several years in healthcare as a medical assistant and as a scribe with the goal of either going to medical school or attending a physician assistant program. As time went on and I gained experience, I learned I would rather do a physician assistant program than become a doctor. I applied to 16 physician assistant programs and I didn’t get into a single one. I think what pushed me to make a decision to change careers and join Qwasar was a desire to be in control of my life and display my skill set rather than apply it on paper.
What are you passionate about?
I am going to call it football, but it is soccer instead of the traditional American version of football. Football is my life and I have been playing since as long as I can remember. I went through a depression due to three knee surgeries in four years. One of them resulted in being bedridden for about two months. It was extremely painful and I was no longer able to run. I could only walk, but even then I couldn’t squat or sit down without some pain. Through finding myself again, I turned to football, sports, and people. I am passionate about food too, which I think all of us are. I think the biggest passion of mine is how people can be influenced by something positive.
One of the other things that makes me dream and be ambitious today in this field is that I will have more control or power to influence people if I am in this field and I can make it further. In comparison to being in the medical field where as great as it is and rewarding as it may be, there is a certain ceiling as to what I had seen for myself. And yet in tech, I don’t see a ceiling.
When you talk to mentors like Gaetan (Qwasar co-founder) and Demitrus Booker (another Qwasar learner), they make you understand that there really is no ceiling. An example to compare it to is Harry Potter in the first movie, when he has yet to discover all of his skills. Coding is something you have to keep working on. One day you will be able to manipulate your work and do what you want with what you have learned. My ambition is driven by my strong desire to help people and that strong desire to help people feeds well into this career. I see so many possibilities with this career.
Tell us a little bit about your journey to Qwasar
A friend of mine, Demitrus Booker told me about Qwasar starting up and we decided to sign up together. I got to that point in life and it just made sense to switch careers. I always had an interest in tech. I quit my job as a medical assistant and was unemployed for four months to focus on the Qwasar bootcamp and learn how to work with C programming.
Jennifer (another Qwasar co-founder) and Gaetan have always been looking out for everyone in the program. At that time, they saw a remote position here in San Mateo, which is only about an hour away from my house. I applied to Tesla for the autopilot program and accepted an employment offer. I was very thankful to Qwasar for reaching out and sharing this opportunity. But I think for them to look out for other people, I think that’s what creates the culture at Qwasar with the ease with which you want to return.
Life gets busy and things come up that prevent us from finishing the seasons in the anticipated time frame. For the last few months I haven't been able to commit as much time to coding as I hoped, until recently. Through this program, Jennifer, Gaetan, and Josh are all so kind, open-minded, motivating and supportive. They create this culture in a setting that's virtual rather than in-person.
I got a job at Tesla and worked on the autopilot program in which we performed scheming with 3D diagrams and still pictures from the vehicle and trained the car to identify certain things such as animals or pedestrians. We worked on tasks such as giving it a time lapse as to when someone crosses a crosswalk. Then we identified false positives for certain aspects to enhance the technology of the car. It was an awesome experience and I was especially proud to be a Mexican-American in a field that is not so common.
From there I worked and tried to balance Qwasar, but the return to in-person work made it tough. I was able to finish up the majority of Season one which focuses on C, with only a few items outstanding at this point. I am looking forward to moving on to Season Two of Qwasar where I will be working with Ruby.
What is it like to learn at Qwasar?
I think the journey itself is mental and it starts with learning how to think which is a difficult task. It also involves swallowing your pride and ego because the computer isn’t wrong, it’s you that’s wrong. That is something that this program really drills into your head. It’s been frustrating and it’s been difficult, but I am becoming more proficient at learning how to think. It's all about understanding that you have to be in this world and dive into it to get to know this world rather than just doing it on the surface, or else you’re not really going to learn anything. Like Gaetan says there’s a lot of people that can just code, but they don’t know what they are doing. I’ve come to understand that this journey is very deep and there's no real timeline so it comes down to a game of patience and persistence.
Tell us a little bit about any struggles you have had and how you have overcome them.
I think my biggest struggle is right now. Just a month ago I began working in a new position at a company called FullCity Consulting. I landed this position upon completion of the 7-week Claris FileMaker program. I completed the webinars for that program while still employed at Tesla but struggled to comprehend the layouts of FileMaker. Filemaker is a software for the database and its very basic simple things. Claris hosted a virtual job fair for the Qwasar students. I interviewed with 8 companies and got hired by FullCity Consulting. My career in tech has been made possible by Qwasar.
Gaetan, Jennifer and Josh (my Program Manager) have all been incredible throughout this journey. My current role is remote which allows me more time to code and balance life. I am so appreciative of the flexibility and time I get to spend at home with my dogs and do not take that for granted. The biggest challenge for me was balancing coding with my work life. For the first months of this year, I wasn’t spending time on coding and I realized I was afraid to get back to coding because of all the time I was investing in Filemaker to get better at it.
My fear of coding stems from the fear of being successful. It’s a daunting task to write a program like myprintf. Myprintf was a big project at Qwasar and I could not have done it without my colleague Colin Jackson. We worked together on myprintf and learned a lot together. The biggest challenge was resuming coding after some time away. Throughout this journey I have had to remind myself that I am human and there are natural ebbs and flows. Sometimes things in life are not in my control but the important thing is to hold yourself accountable and be realistic about getting back into coding and not giving up.
What have you learned about yourself while at Qwasar?
I have learned that I am stubborn and can get upset when the computer, or terminal, or program doesn’t produce what I thought it should produce, or what should happen doesn’t happen. I’ll never forget the words Gaetan always says, “The computer is not wrong, you’re wrong.” That’s the biggest thing. You learn about your personality. You learn about the way you think and really you have to learn about your own ego. You learn a big deal about how to tackle these challenges and how to be honest with yourself.
I have also learned that this experience is very humbling since there hasn’t been a single program that I have coded without the help of Google, whether it is a concept or function or even a way to approach a problem. I am currently reading a textbook on coding to further my knowledge. I have been humbled by learning that it's impossible to know the answers to everything and it will take time to learn it. You learn to be patient too.
What has been your favorite project so far at Qwasar?
'My bouncing box' has been one of my favorite projects. It was one of the only ones that I was able to code using just logic in my head and producing it. This project requires you to enter the dimension of a box and the terminal will print out the image of that box, with dashes, pipes, O and the corner. This was my favorite because at the time I got to it, I was more independent and could think of something myself.
Because of this project, I am more capable today, but prior to My Bouncing Box, it was so difficult to think of something without relying on anything else. I succeeded so well in this project because it was the first time I sat down and tried to pseudo-code, tried to understand what I was trying to do, and looping through that. There were a million ideas running through my mind but I was able to accomplish it in the end. It was such a rewarding feeling and I look forward to replicating that feeling with each future project.
Tell us about one of your biggest successes while learning to code.
One of my biggest successes was being able to learn how to read code. When I reflect back on college, I realize that it doesn’t make someone smarter than anyone else, which is a concept many people struggle with. College teaches you an important lesson in life and it’s that you have the ability to look at a long-term goal and accomplish it. And that it teaches people how to read. Many times people will overlook the details and just read the title or headline of the subject. But you have to learn how to read. That can also be applied in computer science. I learned that I have to learn how to actually read code. You cannot just put functions down and expect them all to work. There’s a certain order in which they have to go and terminology that you have to understand. You can’t use something that hasn't been declared yet. You have to learn the order of operations, which is a law of science and a law of life. Now I can look at other examples of code and I can read it.
Another colleague in the Qwasar program, Jairo Guzman, hosts an additional meeting on Saturdays in which he refers to coding as a metaphor for life. He would say that coding is just life applied to computers, which I had never thought about before. When you get to view things in that fashion, it's a very experienced state of mind and a huge success. When I first started, I didn't know what I was looking at when I saw different colors, ifs and parentheses. Now, I can read and comprehend these things. From there on out it was all about reaching new goals with positive encouragement from everyone in the Qwasar community. I want to keep in contact with all of my colleagues and continue working towards completion. I never feel alone in this program which is amazing.
What are some of the recent projects you have worked on in your job?
I just finished a project for a client with my coworker's assistance on keeping track of donations going to a church through many different campaigns. I had to write some code, they call it low code, ifs, and a lot of if statements through Filemaker. I also was tasked with manipulating the statements with some settings to get this project off the ground. That project got deployed and I’m just waiting on the client to provide feedback. I am very proud of the first project and I presented it to the client, which felt great. It was a great experience being able to present and use the appropriate verbiage, and I wasn’t expecting to enjoy it so much. Also, just today I deployed another project with the help of a coworker to keep track of clients that are paying for a service. It has been very fulfilling to start small with these two projects and go from there.
What encouragement would you have for others starting out their coding journeys and careers?
From the start of this program, the motto has always been: “Just Don’t Give Up”. That is absolutely right and I will add that you shouldn’t rush. This is not something you can rush. You have to learn when you learn and how you learn. There is no benefit to doing a bootcamp if you’re just going to be rushed through it and unable to retain the information. You need to learn the science behind the concepts and all the smaller things about coding. You need time to fall in love with it. You need to ask questions and not feel embarrassed or that you are burdening anyone. No one reached their goals alone, so you will need help too. This is another thing that I learned about myself while at Qwasar. There is no way in the world that you are going to be a great programmer if you don’t ask for help and look for other approaches. My advice is to ask questions, nerd-out about it, dive into it, get what you can whenever you can.
Anything else to add?
No, I just wanted to shout out to my friend Tony who is also in Qwasar, he is in Nigeria, studying through a Qwasar partner program. He was a lawyer in Nigeria and was struggling to get a job offer. He decided to learn programming and is now working for law offices. He recently landed a remote position for a company based in California. He provides great advice every time we get in touch. This is a testament to the culture that Qwasar builds with their programs. The people I have met in this program have been supportive, patient, and positive. If you look at this opportunity through a positive scope and lens, then it's only bound to give you amazing results. I just want to add that I am appreciative to everyone at Qwasar and even appreciative for this interview. Even on this blog if I could put my Hollywood stars of fame, I would put all of those people there. They have just been amazing and supportive and I cannot thank them enough. They have really impacted my life so thanks to them.
We are thankful for Bryan's time in developing this interview and sharing his insights and journey. We are looking forward to sharing more student interviews in the upcoming months.
