I became a SOFTWARE ENGINEER at 30 • fresh start at microsoft

how to get through a tree a little bit, but without breathing first without first looking deep for any of that Accumulate signals I know I was advised to let my interviewer know that I don't have all this knowledge yet and that I will just do the best I can with the knowledge that I have and we'll do our best, that's all I can do and if you're studying for interviews or if you're just

start

ing out in computer science and you're feeling discouraged or you're feeling dumb because God knows I feel dumb, AF, right? , it's the most common thing in the world, we'll get through it, just keep going, keep pushing, keep studying, make a plan.

I am not going to lie. I feel a little discouraged about having to do it. All of this in itself is a lot of work, having to do it in quarantine, in isolation, in not the best of circumstances and feeling very deprived of life and things, and normally, ideally, I would love to do this with other people who are going through this. That's why I'm accessing the Internet. I need all your support and I'm here to support you in any way I can because I know how hard it is right now, mentally exhausting, how emotionally draining it is.

It's a lot, a lot, a lot. a lot of work and it makes you question a lot what kind of sucks but that's how we grow that's how we get better we get better and we'll make it happen we'll keep going we'll keep studying this is what I want What I'm going to do now and it will happen, sooner or later we'll get that job. I got the offer around December for Internet at Microsoft as an Explorer intern, which means you get to experience the PM role as well as the

software

engineer

ing role. Spring semester passes and my devices

start

ed arriving in the mail.

I was scheduled to do a remote internship because that's the state of the world at the time. I did a successful internship. I could see what the role of PM is. and what the

software

engineer

ing role is like. I never fully considered PM. I really always knew I wanted to do software engineering, but I took that internship to really consider it and the way I did it was I just suspended my belief that I wanted to. being a software engineer and I said, "Okay, if I go into this with no expectations, no such decision and give them both a fair chance to really understand what they are because PM had no idea what it was like, the rule varies a lot." So I thought: what does a PM really mean?

So I went in and gave them both a chance. I interviewed a lot of PMs and a lot of software engineers to understand what the role was and what they were doing today and their impact was that my project itself involved a PM part, so I got that experience there and it really solidified the fact that I wanted do software engineering and that was the path I took. My first internship concluded successfully and I received a return offer for Summer 2022 now, this is where things get fun, interesting and cool because it was an in-person internship. I worked on the Visual Studio team and was able to work on my own feature.

It was an incredible moment. I have very funny memories. That summer, my role launched when I returned full time and I was able to see the feature presented at the Skills Summit because it was the accessibility checker for Visual Studio which made the whole experience extremely crazy. I was able to have such a profound impact in such a short time and as an intern I had never felt this way before, I had never experienced anything like this, such rapid change and at one of the largest technology companies in the world it was crazy. I feel like I don't know that it was a unique experience.

I am incredibly grateful for that experience. I had a great team. I had an amazing mentor who was also very interested in accessibility. I had a PM who had worked for so long. really come up with this feature and turn it into something that's useful and valuable and he had been advocating for it for years, so the fact that an intern comes in and says there's work that's so beautiful and impactful and that can help so many people and We want you to be a part of it and we want you to work on this and with your guidance and support I was able to do it like I don't know why I'm getting so emotional. but it was fantastic and other than that, the in-person events were great.

I have a lot of friends from school who ended up at Microsoft too. It was a very fun moment because the internship also ended successfully and I got a return. I volunteered as a full-time software engineer for a year, so I flew back to Miami. I finished my last semester and graduated in December. On December 17th. I don't think I walked on December 15th and then on December 17th I was on the flight to Seattle and that was another amazing experience. It's now September, it's been 9 months since I started. I started on January 2nd, I think or yes, I'm pretty sure it was January 2nd, so it's been a long time, but also a very short time, and that's really the Whirlwind story of how this madness. baluda somehow ended up at one of the biggest tech companies in the world as a software engineer when she never thought she would do math or science or anything else that wasn't artistic, it's just a testament to the fact that people change, Dreams change, uh, you discover it. you yourself learn a lot more about what you really want and what works for you and how you work best and how you want to work and so I can also talk about that later about what I didn't like about graphic design and fashion design and What I liked it because it had a lot to do with my personality, but I don't want to continue rambling on about this.

My battery died because I talked for too long, but I just wanted to come back with a new battery to say. thanks for watching I hope you enjoyed this and let me know in the comments if you want me to talk about any other topics I mentioned here or something else. I hope hearing my experience has helped you, inspired you and given you perspective on anything you may be going through. I know it's helped me a lot to hear other people's stories so I hope it's valuable, see you next time