Learning to code so that you can land a job in tech can feel daunting. That’s why we’re sharing inspiring stories from Codecademy’s community — to show how people like you (yes, you!) can embark on a learning journey and end up with a totally new career. We hope these stories serve as a reminder that there’s no single path to a more fulfilling work life.

Today’s story is from Joseph Daniel Gollapalli, a 24-year-old Software Engineer II at Codecademy, living in Hyderabad, India. Read more stories from Codecademy learners here — and be sure to share your story here.

Why I chose to learn to code

“Back in 2013, I dropped out of high school. I was in a pretty bad mental state, and I was exploring a lot of stuff, like graphic design with Photoshop and I wanted to build websites.  

In February 2013, Code.org launched a video where they had a whole bunch of tech founders explaining how coding is cool and everything. Codecademy was featured in some way, so by the end of March, I joined Codecademy. I went through the Python courses and HTML courses. 

They had this gamification thing that was really addictive, so I used to go through courses and earn those little badges — I still have all my Codecademy badges in my profile.”

Joseph’s extensive collection of Codecademy Achievements.

How I made time to learn

“I was basically a teenager who was not in school, so I was completely free. What else would I be doing? I was just relaxing and enjoying — half of the time I was gaming and half the time I was coding. I just wanted to learn what I was actually interested in, rather than really grind through school coursework and just enter the rat race.” 

How long it took me to land a job

“In 2014, I started to pick up game development for a bit. There was this open-source game server called Piqueserver, and I was a user first and then became a maintainer for it. I started out small with a one-line contribution and then that snowballed into refactors.

This was a very pivotal moment for me, since it taught me a lot of things that you do in regular professional development. We would have code reviews, we would write unit tests, and we would set up CI CD [Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery]. The project taught me how to collaborate with people and introduced me to new concepts, and had a giant impact on my career.

And then in 2015, I  started to look into web development. I got an internship at a mobile analytics startup. The CEO was like, ‘Dude, you have to complete your high school education, and then you can have a proper internship.’ During my internship, I finished high school through homeschooling. The first 8 months I was a part-time intern, then I got hired full-time around November 2019. I really learned a lot on the job. Working at fast-paced startups help you learn things much faster, especially in your early career.”

How I got in the door

“I was just looking on LinkedIn and I randomly saw a Codecademy job that was listed for Hyderabad, India, which I found really surprising. The years of experience and the tech stacks they were looking for matched mine. I was like, let’s give it a shot!” 

How I nailed the interview

“The interview process was pretty long and dense, but the people were really nice. I think it gives every type of engineer a fair chance. And the end result is decided by a panel of six people, which greatly reduces bias. Codecademy has this thing where they give out coding assignments for you to do. For example, if you do a back-end assignment, you’d have a front-end live coding round.

I was more of a back-end person than a front-end person, so I was nervous for my front-end coding rounds. I knew React, but I wasn’t super proficient with it. After the take home review, my front-end interview round was right after — there was only a 10-15-minute gap, so I was pretty nervous. 

I had a great interview with a Staff Engineer named Ahmed, and we both went through an assignment that I did. Ahmed helped me calm down.” 

How I evaluated the offer

“I had multiple offers, but I looked for better work-life balance and team culture.” 

How day one and beyond went

“The first week was all about getting set up. I had an onboarding, and then it took some time to get access to everything. The next week I did actual work: I got a couple of tickets, and I had KT [knowledge transfer] sessions, so I could understand what they were building and why they were building it. It’s been a pretty good week!” 

What I wish I knew before I started learning

“Building a lot more projects is one thing I would have done differently. I’ve learned a lot more by doing projects on my own and having my own motivation to build a project — rather than, say, following a tutorial that teaches you how to build a basic calculator app or something like that.
I also think having mentors is really valuable, so I would have probably reached out to them much quicker, because I was sort of struggling on my own.”

Not sure where to start? Check out our personality quiz! We’ll help you find the best programming language to learn based on your strengths and interests.

Want to share your Codecademy learner story? Drop us a line here. And don’t forget to join the discussions in our community.