This is why I abdicate an absurd job at a top VC close to become a programmer, Today was my endure day at Andreessen Horowitz.
I feel acutely advantageous to accept formed with some of the smartest humans in technology — people like Marc Andreessen, Ben Horowitz and Chris Dixon a allotment of others — and to accept abstruse so abundant from them while confined the a16z mission of allowance entrepreneurs ability their dreams.
So why am I leaving?
This isn’t the archetypal best for professionals with my background. You ability be cerebration I’m crazy, or even a little foolish. But afore you jump to any abstracts let me explain why this is a abundant move, and allotment some of the close adventure that advance me to abandon from a clue almanac of high-level accounts positions to jump headfirst into the apple of engineering.
The adventure begins with the “obvious” choices for anyone in my position, and my affidavit for not absent to accompany them.
What about business school?
After abounding conversations with HBS and GSB grads, it became axiomatic to me that business academy is beneath about the acquirements acquaintance and added about architecture a able able network. In my case, I am already advantageous abundant to accept one of the best networks around: Andreessen Horowitz.
Even if this weren’t the case, the basic botheration with business academy for me is the sectors it leads to: consulting and finance. I apperceive I don’t wish to go into consulting, so why should I absorb $200K and 2 years of my activity on an MBA if I’ve already acquired the apprenticeship and arrangement it would action me through real-world experiences?
What about job offers at a16z portfolio companies?
This catechism is a little trickier to explain away. I’ve had a few absolute absorbing opportunities appear up during my time at a16z, including roles like Arch of Growth and Arch of Biz Dev/Operations, yet I’ve angry them all down. While they were agitative roles, I was admiring to do something added technical.
The affair is, my captivation in accounts afterwards graduation in fact came about because of the befalling I got to accompany Goldman Sachs, in animosity of my amount accepting in Industrial & Systems Engineering.
Within a ages of Investment Banking, I bound accomplished that I didn’t wish to accompany that career aisle for the connected term. While fascinating, it didn’t abduction me the way engineering had during college. Regardless, accounts didn’t let me go so easily; the adventitious for a position at a16z came up, and I knew it would be a aberration to canyon up.
Fortunately, all this leads me to area I am today: at the end of a acknowledged acquaintance in accounts and assuredly accessible to get aback to engineering.
What about alum school?
I advised alum academy absolute seriously, decidedly accustomed the abounding programs in Computer Science, Abstracts Science and Apparatus Acquirements accessible at abundant schools like Stanford, UC Berkeley and MIT.
I did a lot of analysis on assorted Computer Science programs at Stanford, UC Berkeley, MIT and others. Eventually, I absitively that I didn’t accept the backbone to absorb abounding months belief for the GRE and commutual applications and afresh cat-and-mouse addition two-to-four years to get a degree. I would abundant rather use that time to apprentice these abstruse capacity through absolute apple experience. I artlessly don’t accept that a amount is the alone way to get into a new field.
Where software engineering comes in
Now, you ability be apprehensive why I wouldn’t just chase my above and go into Industrial & Systems Engineering, rather than diving into the actually new acreage of Computer Science. And honestly, if I’d accepted any bigger in academy I would accept declared a Computer Science above as anon as possible.
The acumen I didn’t is because, if I was younger, my abstraction of what a software architect does was actually outlandish. I absurd dimly-lit sweatshops abounding with abhorred nerds, abiding home to their parents’ basements afterwards a connected day of staring at screens and autograph code. I didn’t see software engineering as something for creative, amorous people. Artlessly put, it wasn’t for me.
Even my mom was adjoin me accomplishing software engineering. Like every archetypal Indian parent, her dream was for me to become a doctor.
Arriving at academy and affair absolute Computer Science acceptance actually afflicted my assumptions about software engineering. I started dabbling in Computer Science by demography a brace courses in C++, and to my abruptness I actually enjoyed them. But I was too afraid about switching majors in Junior year to accompany it head-on, and anyhow I was adequate my Industrial & Systems Engineering classes abundant to argue myself to yield the “safe road.”
Silicon Valley seals the deal
In summary, I’m not one of these programmers who’s been tinkering with computers aback she was a kid. I wasn’t “destined” for Computer Science — my adventure is a little different.
My adventure started afterwards admission academy and affective to Silicon Valley, the tech basic of the world, area I begin myself amidst by some of the best engineers in the business. I started to apprentice about the things they formed on and the problems they solved, and it blew my mind. I became absorbed by Computer Science capacity like Apparatus Learning, Computer Vision, AI, Robotics, and Knowledge Representation, and was account aggregate I could to apprentice added about them. I accomplished out to software engineers, abstracts scientists and apparatus acquirements advisers to aces their accuracy and apprentice added about what they do day-to-day, and what I abstruse was all abundantly exciting, and gave me immense account and account for them in the process.
It was alone accustomed that afore connected I capital to become one of them.
First attempts
How does a computer abridge code? How does a programming accent get created in the aboriginal place? How do you body apparatus acquirements algorithms? What makes a “good” systems architecture adjoin a “bad” one? How do abundant agenda articles get built? I began my adventure into Computer Science with an amaranthine amount of questions like these. Along with these questions came the charge to apprentice code. So I went for it.
I audibly bethink the aboriginal time I fabricated an attack to “learn code.” It was winter of 2013 and I was home with my parents and ancestors for Christmas. My aboriginal footfall was a day spent researching what accent to alpha with. Afterwards barrier through lots of forums and blog posts, I acclimatized on Python. I best up “Learn Python the Harder Way” by Zed Shaw and started practicing. Sadly, the acquaintance alone lasted two weeks. It was hard, afflictive and arresting and I gave up too early.
“Who brand this getting anyway?” I anticipation to myself.
Exactly a year afterwards my absorption in acquirements to cipher reappeared. I assertive myself to accord it addition try, and this time my boldness lasted alert as long: one month. Unfortunately, I had just started a new job and was disturbing to acquisition a adequate work-life balance. Coding is clashing acrimonious up a new hobby, like dancing or yoga, that can be acquired casually. Few humans acquisition themselves adage “I’m traveling to cipher and yield my apperception off work.” I hadn’t yet accomplished a top abundant abundance akin with the basics for the nitty-gritty aspects of coding to become fun. Already afresh I set it aside.
“I’ll do it afterwards on if I’m added acclimatized in at work,” I anticipation to myself.
Self-doubt
I wasn’t just disturbing to ability my goal — I was failing. Coding backward on the aback burner for addition year while I struggled with negativity, assertive the alone affair I could excel at was black my animosity of self-hate. Yes, self-hate. I was ashamed. If 18 actor humans (according to IDC) in this apple can do it, what the heck was amiss with me? Why couldn’t I? Humans acquaint me I’m acute all the time, but I was assertive they were wrong.
I started to become appetent of every programmer in the world, anxious of anyone who knew how to “speak code.” I even cried to my admirer about how I admired I could advice him cipher the app we’d been absent up together. This went on until one day the admiration to apprentice to cipher was artlessly unbearable.
“Hello world”
In the end, it took extensive the affecting breaking point to get me over the antecedent hurdles that had exhausted me before. It was 5am and I’d been active on the treadmill for an hour, axis over new approaches to my coding bind in my head. Suddenly I had an epiphany: activity bad about coding was authoritative me miserable, but activity accusable about it wasn’t alteration anything. I had to just either do it or overlook about it.
I absitively I’d break home from plan that day and hit the books. This time the drive took hold, and afterwards one anniversary of ceaseless tutorials and online courses like CodeSchool and TreeHouse I created my aboriginal website with HTML/CSS.
Next I took on the fundamentals of JavaScript and started a ancillary activity to put aggregate I’d abstruse over the accomplished two weeks into context. Addition anniversary later, I accomplished a alive (but incomplete) adaptation of my aboriginal front-end coding project.
Looking aback at it now, the artefact seems rough, harder to advance and amend and the spaghetti cipher is embarrassing. I admit how abundant added modular, arguable and bigger structured it could be accounting if I were to re-build it from blemish today (I do plan to carbon this as one of my weekend projects). However, the point isn’t what I congenital in that one week, or even how able-bodied I congenital it. The point was to in fact accomplish something appliance code.
And I admired it.
Driven by the activity of the mini-project, I formed through backward nights and abrupt challenges, yet it never already acquainted like “work.” I admired every minute — breaking up the activity into chunks, cerebration about how to architecture the project, addition out what accoutrement and libraries to use — and best of all, I admired that my academician would aching as I approved to amount out how to get the cipher to plan in the way I capital it to. I assuredly accepted why humans become so amorous about coding. Programming lets you be a creator, and it’s an art as abundant as it’s a science. I had been accomplishing it all amiss this accomplished time — I was abutting programming as something I bare to learn, and a skillset I bare to have, which fabricated it feel like a task. But this activity helped me apprehend that programming is not just about alive how to code, but rather about creating something you affliction about and something that you wish the apple to see. Programming is liberating and empowering, and it enables you to create. The blaze were aerial and I was fascinated.
I connected to apprentice on nights and weekends. Anon enough, the alone affair I could anticipate about was code. Aggregate abroad acquainted like a distraction. I would authority assimilate coding problems that I got ashore on the night afore in my arch and analyze it during the day. Afresh I’d blitz home from plan and cipher a few added hours at night again. This lasted a few weeks afore I assuredly said to myself, “What if I could just do this all day?”
Where I am today
It was at this point that I absitively to stop dabbling and accomplish myself full-time to coding, and it was the toughest accommodation I’ve anytime had to make. Andreessen Horowitz is an absurd abode to be and I knew I was abrogation a lot behind.
Needless to say, my mom is actually adjoin it. She thinks I’m actually basics for abrogation an amazing job and appliance up all of my accumulation to do something that I accept so little accurate acquaintance with about. I’ve even had a few humans with added acquaintance in the industry acquaint me it’ll be boxy to get a job at Google or Facebook after a CS degree.
Sure, I don’t accept a CS amount from Stanford or MIT. Sure, I ability not get a job at Google or Facebook. But whether or not I get into Facebook or Google is not the point of why I wish to do this. My ambition is to absolutely learn. The alley map I accept in apperception looks like this:
Figure out what I like developing on the most: Front-end vs. Back-end, Mobile vs. Web, and what appliance areas I acquisition a lot of interesting: Apparatus Learning, Artificial Intelligence, Robotics, Computer Vision, etc.
Get actually acceptable at it
Use those abilities to change the world. That could beggarly architecture a world-changing aggregation or something abroad entirely.
So yes, I ability not accept the CS amount from Stanford, but I will as plan harder as humanly accessible to supplement the amount I don’t accept by accepting real-world acquaintance architecture real-world products. I apprehend that as I’m starting out some recruiters and hiring managers will still apathy me for not accepting a CS degree, but that’s OK. I’m assured that I will acquisition at atomic one getting who is accommodating to assurance me by giving me a adventitious to prove myself, and auspiciously that’s generally all you charge in the tech world. I’m accommodating to alpha from the basal and plan my way up, just as I did in finance.
As next steps, I’ve alleged to accompany a 12-week coding bootcamp in San Francisco alleged Hack Reactor. This will advance my acquirements and advice body a able foundation, and aswell acquiesce me to get a few projects beneath my belt, at which point I’ll go out and recruit for a developer role.
I apperceive this will be a boxy battle. The amusement appearance of “learning to code” is over. I’m accepting into abysmal computer science capacity like algorithms and abstracts structures and it’s alone accepting harder. Hitting walls as I apprentice new things is afflictive and frustrating, and I generally feel actually lost. Sometimes it takes hours for the walls to appear down, sometimes days, added times weeks. I lose aplomb and catechism my competence.
But this time, I adulation all these animosity because they beggarly I’m growing, acquirements and accepting stronger. With abundant persistence, I will get bigger at managing them. I will abound blubbery derma and apprentice to adore the attempt even more. As connected as I accumulate blame at these walls, they will eventually accord way to me. Afterwards all, this isn’t Rocket Science, even if it feels like it sometimes.
Looking forward
The craziest allotment of all this is that I apperceive there’s a adventitious I ability end up not even affection software engineering in the connected run — or that I ability not ability the top akin accomplishment set I desire — or worse, that I ability end up not affection it and accepting a bad software engineer. Candidly though, I don’t accede any of these outcomes as “failing.” In my mind, I’m just demography addition adventitious in life, demography one footfall afterpiece to alteration the world.
So, here’s to demography addition adventitious in activity and extensive for more. I can’t affiance you that I’ll end up accepting the best software engineer, but I canpromise you that I’ll apprentice a ton and be bigger than what I am today. I can affiance you that I won’t “fail” — I won’t let that happen.
Now it’s your turn. Acquisition the affair on your aback burner that’s abashing you and yield the aboriginal step.
I feel acutely advantageous to accept formed with some of the smartest humans in technology — people like Marc Andreessen, Ben Horowitz and Chris Dixon a allotment of others — and to accept abstruse so abundant from them while confined the a16z mission of allowance entrepreneurs ability their dreams.
So why am I leaving?
The adventure begins with the “obvious” choices for anyone in my position, and my affidavit for not absent to accompany them.
What about business school?
After abounding conversations with HBS and GSB grads, it became axiomatic to me that business academy is beneath about the acquirements acquaintance and added about architecture a able able network. In my case, I am already advantageous abundant to accept one of the best networks around: Andreessen Horowitz.
Even if this weren’t the case, the basic botheration with business academy for me is the sectors it leads to: consulting and finance. I apperceive I don’t wish to go into consulting, so why should I absorb $200K and 2 years of my activity on an MBA if I’ve already acquired the apprenticeship and arrangement it would action me through real-world experiences?
What about job offers at a16z portfolio companies?
This catechism is a little trickier to explain away. I’ve had a few absolute absorbing opportunities appear up during my time at a16z, including roles like Arch of Growth and Arch of Biz Dev/Operations, yet I’ve angry them all down. While they were agitative roles, I was admiring to do something added technical.
The affair is, my captivation in accounts afterwards graduation in fact came about because of the befalling I got to accompany Goldman Sachs, in animosity of my amount accepting in Industrial & Systems Engineering.
Within a ages of Investment Banking, I bound accomplished that I didn’t wish to accompany that career aisle for the connected term. While fascinating, it didn’t abduction me the way engineering had during college. Regardless, accounts didn’t let me go so easily; the adventitious for a position at a16z came up, and I knew it would be a aberration to canyon up.
Fortunately, all this leads me to area I am today: at the end of a acknowledged acquaintance in accounts and assuredly accessible to get aback to engineering.
What about alum school?
I advised alum academy absolute seriously, decidedly accustomed the abounding programs in Computer Science, Abstracts Science and Apparatus Acquirements accessible at abundant schools like Stanford, UC Berkeley and MIT.
I did a lot of analysis on assorted Computer Science programs at Stanford, UC Berkeley, MIT and others. Eventually, I absitively that I didn’t accept the backbone to absorb abounding months belief for the GRE and commutual applications and afresh cat-and-mouse addition two-to-four years to get a degree. I would abundant rather use that time to apprentice these abstruse capacity through absolute apple experience. I artlessly don’t accept that a amount is the alone way to get into a new field.
Where software engineering comes in
Now, you ability be apprehensive why I wouldn’t just chase my above and go into Industrial & Systems Engineering, rather than diving into the actually new acreage of Computer Science. And honestly, if I’d accepted any bigger in academy I would accept declared a Computer Science above as anon as possible.
The acumen I didn’t is because, if I was younger, my abstraction of what a software architect does was actually outlandish. I absurd dimly-lit sweatshops abounding with abhorred nerds, abiding home to their parents’ basements afterwards a connected day of staring at screens and autograph code. I didn’t see software engineering as something for creative, amorous people. Artlessly put, it wasn’t for me.
Even my mom was adjoin me accomplishing software engineering. Like every archetypal Indian parent, her dream was for me to become a doctor.
Arriving at academy and affair absolute Computer Science acceptance actually afflicted my assumptions about software engineering. I started dabbling in Computer Science by demography a brace courses in C++, and to my abruptness I actually enjoyed them. But I was too afraid about switching majors in Junior year to accompany it head-on, and anyhow I was adequate my Industrial & Systems Engineering classes abundant to argue myself to yield the “safe road.”
Silicon Valley seals the deal
In summary, I’m not one of these programmers who’s been tinkering with computers aback she was a kid. I wasn’t “destined” for Computer Science — my adventure is a little different.
My adventure started afterwards admission academy and affective to Silicon Valley, the tech basic of the world, area I begin myself amidst by some of the best engineers in the business. I started to apprentice about the things they formed on and the problems they solved, and it blew my mind. I became absorbed by Computer Science capacity like Apparatus Learning, Computer Vision, AI, Robotics, and Knowledge Representation, and was account aggregate I could to apprentice added about them. I accomplished out to software engineers, abstracts scientists and apparatus acquirements advisers to aces their accuracy and apprentice added about what they do day-to-day, and what I abstruse was all abundantly exciting, and gave me immense account and account for them in the process.
It was alone accustomed that afore connected I capital to become one of them.
First attempts
How does a computer abridge code? How does a programming accent get created in the aboriginal place? How do you body apparatus acquirements algorithms? What makes a “good” systems architecture adjoin a “bad” one? How do abundant agenda articles get built? I began my adventure into Computer Science with an amaranthine amount of questions like these. Along with these questions came the charge to apprentice code. So I went for it.
I audibly bethink the aboriginal time I fabricated an attack to “learn code.” It was winter of 2013 and I was home with my parents and ancestors for Christmas. My aboriginal footfall was a day spent researching what accent to alpha with. Afterwards barrier through lots of forums and blog posts, I acclimatized on Python. I best up “Learn Python the Harder Way” by Zed Shaw and started practicing. Sadly, the acquaintance alone lasted two weeks. It was hard, afflictive and arresting and I gave up too early.
“Who brand this getting anyway?” I anticipation to myself.
Exactly a year afterwards my absorption in acquirements to cipher reappeared. I assertive myself to accord it addition try, and this time my boldness lasted alert as long: one month. Unfortunately, I had just started a new job and was disturbing to acquisition a adequate work-life balance. Coding is clashing acrimonious up a new hobby, like dancing or yoga, that can be acquired casually. Few humans acquisition themselves adage “I’m traveling to cipher and yield my apperception off work.” I hadn’t yet accomplished a top abundant abundance akin with the basics for the nitty-gritty aspects of coding to become fun. Already afresh I set it aside.
“I’ll do it afterwards on if I’m added acclimatized in at work,” I anticipation to myself.
Self-doubt
I wasn’t just disturbing to ability my goal — I was failing. Coding backward on the aback burner for addition year while I struggled with negativity, assertive the alone affair I could excel at was black my animosity of self-hate. Yes, self-hate. I was ashamed. If 18 actor humans (according to IDC) in this apple can do it, what the heck was amiss with me? Why couldn’t I? Humans acquaint me I’m acute all the time, but I was assertive they were wrong.
I started to become appetent of every programmer in the world, anxious of anyone who knew how to “speak code.” I even cried to my admirer about how I admired I could advice him cipher the app we’d been absent up together. This went on until one day the admiration to apprentice to cipher was artlessly unbearable.
“Hello world”
In the end, it took extensive the affecting breaking point to get me over the antecedent hurdles that had exhausted me before. It was 5am and I’d been active on the treadmill for an hour, axis over new approaches to my coding bind in my head. Suddenly I had an epiphany: activity bad about coding was authoritative me miserable, but activity accusable about it wasn’t alteration anything. I had to just either do it or overlook about it.
I absitively I’d break home from plan that day and hit the books. This time the drive took hold, and afterwards one anniversary of ceaseless tutorials and online courses like CodeSchool and TreeHouse I created my aboriginal website with HTML/CSS.
Next I took on the fundamentals of JavaScript and started a ancillary activity to put aggregate I’d abstruse over the accomplished two weeks into context. Addition anniversary later, I accomplished a alive (but incomplete) adaptation of my aboriginal front-end coding project.
Looking aback at it now, the artefact seems rough, harder to advance and amend and the spaghetti cipher is embarrassing. I admit how abundant added modular, arguable and bigger structured it could be accounting if I were to re-build it from blemish today (I do plan to carbon this as one of my weekend projects). However, the point isn’t what I congenital in that one week, or even how able-bodied I congenital it. The point was to in fact accomplish something appliance code.
And I admired it.
Driven by the activity of the mini-project, I formed through backward nights and abrupt challenges, yet it never already acquainted like “work.” I admired every minute — breaking up the activity into chunks, cerebration about how to architecture the project, addition out what accoutrement and libraries to use — and best of all, I admired that my academician would aching as I approved to amount out how to get the cipher to plan in the way I capital it to. I assuredly accepted why humans become so amorous about coding. Programming lets you be a creator, and it’s an art as abundant as it’s a science. I had been accomplishing it all amiss this accomplished time — I was abutting programming as something I bare to learn, and a skillset I bare to have, which fabricated it feel like a task. But this activity helped me apprehend that programming is not just about alive how to code, but rather about creating something you affliction about and something that you wish the apple to see. Programming is liberating and empowering, and it enables you to create. The blaze were aerial and I was fascinated.
I connected to apprentice on nights and weekends. Anon enough, the alone affair I could anticipate about was code. Aggregate abroad acquainted like a distraction. I would authority assimilate coding problems that I got ashore on the night afore in my arch and analyze it during the day. Afresh I’d blitz home from plan and cipher a few added hours at night again. This lasted a few weeks afore I assuredly said to myself, “What if I could just do this all day?”
Where I am today
It was at this point that I absitively to stop dabbling and accomplish myself full-time to coding, and it was the toughest accommodation I’ve anytime had to make. Andreessen Horowitz is an absurd abode to be and I knew I was abrogation a lot behind.
Needless to say, my mom is actually adjoin it. She thinks I’m actually basics for abrogation an amazing job and appliance up all of my accumulation to do something that I accept so little accurate acquaintance with about. I’ve even had a few humans with added acquaintance in the industry acquaint me it’ll be boxy to get a job at Google or Facebook after a CS degree.
Sure, I don’t accept a CS amount from Stanford or MIT. Sure, I ability not get a job at Google or Facebook. But whether or not I get into Facebook or Google is not the point of why I wish to do this. My ambition is to absolutely learn. The alley map I accept in apperception looks like this:
Figure out what I like developing on the most: Front-end vs. Back-end, Mobile vs. Web, and what appliance areas I acquisition a lot of interesting: Apparatus Learning, Artificial Intelligence, Robotics, Computer Vision, etc.
Get actually acceptable at it
Use those abilities to change the world. That could beggarly architecture a world-changing aggregation or something abroad entirely.
So yes, I ability not accept the CS amount from Stanford, but I will as plan harder as humanly accessible to supplement the amount I don’t accept by accepting real-world acquaintance architecture real-world products. I apprehend that as I’m starting out some recruiters and hiring managers will still apathy me for not accepting a CS degree, but that’s OK. I’m assured that I will acquisition at atomic one getting who is accommodating to assurance me by giving me a adventitious to prove myself, and auspiciously that’s generally all you charge in the tech world. I’m accommodating to alpha from the basal and plan my way up, just as I did in finance.
As next steps, I’ve alleged to accompany a 12-week coding bootcamp in San Francisco alleged Hack Reactor. This will advance my acquirements and advice body a able foundation, and aswell acquiesce me to get a few projects beneath my belt, at which point I’ll go out and recruit for a developer role.
I apperceive this will be a boxy battle. The amusement appearance of “learning to code” is over. I’m accepting into abysmal computer science capacity like algorithms and abstracts structures and it’s alone accepting harder. Hitting walls as I apprentice new things is afflictive and frustrating, and I generally feel actually lost. Sometimes it takes hours for the walls to appear down, sometimes days, added times weeks. I lose aplomb and catechism my competence.
But this time, I adulation all these animosity because they beggarly I’m growing, acquirements and accepting stronger. With abundant persistence, I will get bigger at managing them. I will abound blubbery derma and apprentice to adore the attempt even more. As connected as I accumulate blame at these walls, they will eventually accord way to me. Afterwards all, this isn’t Rocket Science, even if it feels like it sometimes.
Looking forward
The craziest allotment of all this is that I apperceive there’s a adventitious I ability end up not even affection software engineering in the connected run — or that I ability not ability the top akin accomplishment set I desire — or worse, that I ability end up not affection it and accepting a bad software engineer. Candidly though, I don’t accede any of these outcomes as “failing.” In my mind, I’m just demography addition adventitious in life, demography one footfall afterpiece to alteration the world.
So, here’s to demography addition adventitious in activity and extensive for more. I can’t affiance you that I’ll end up accepting the best software engineer, but I canpromise you that I’ll apprentice a ton and be bigger than what I am today. I can affiance you that I won’t “fail” — I won’t let that happen.
Now it’s your turn. Acquisition the affair on your aback burner that’s abashing you and yield the aboriginal step.
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