BENLIGHTEN GRADUATE STORIES – Robert, WEB DEVELOPER

Hey ROBERT, thank you for participating in our BENLIGHTEN Graduate Series! Could you tell us a little bit about yourself?

Hi, my name is ROBERT! I am a 38-year-old father of six boys, living in Norrköping, Sweden. For a big part of my professional life I worked as a lawyer. A couple of years ago I decided that it was time for me to change my career path to something I really enjoyed and want to spend the rest of my professional life doing. After doing some research I found Software Engineering and I fell in love with the discipline. I’ve been coding every single day since then!

Wow, that’s awesome! So what made you want to join BENLIGHTEN Academy?

I spent around 18 months learning web development by myself through various resources on the Internet. This was a great learning experience for me. However, it was quite a lonely journey to say the least. Eventually I reached a point where self-learning no longer felt like an efficient strategy to become a great developer. I soon realised that if I wanted to reach the goals that I had set up for myself, I would need to receive professional guidance from more experienced developers. Since my efforts had been really intense since day one, I searched for a bootcamp that could match my intensity. Luckily, I found BENLIGHTEN Academy.

What did you experience being the most challenging but rewarding thing about BENLIGHTEN Academy?

I would say that the most challenging part about BENLIGHTEN Academy was that I was taken out of my comfort zone, since my ideas were often nurtured but challenged at the same time. This made me understand two important things; Firstly, you can solve a software problem in many different ways and my solution is not always the best solution. Secondly, as a software developer you have to be prepared to be flexible. It’s quite rare to find a company that works with the exact tech stack that you’d prefer or does things in the exact way you’d do it. Understanding this has helped me tremendously as a software engineer.

Thank you for sharing! How do you feel about BENLIGHTEN’s instructors and student support?

The instructors and Career Coaches at BENLIGHTEN Academy are experts and unbelievably passionate about what they do. They continuously exceeded my expectations in several areas, and they made sure that the education, curriculum and coaching was tailored according to my needs and goals.

That’s fantastic to hear. So what job did you secure upon graduation from BENLIGHTEN Academy?

Even before graduating BENLIGHTEN Academy I landed a job as a Software Engineer at a great proptech company in Germany.

From there I moved on to working for a Swiss fintech company called SwissBorg that specialises in crypto wealth management.

Could you tell us where you see yourself in 5 years from now?

I hope that in 5 years from now I will be a senior Software Engineer with expert-level knowledge within the fields of web development and blockchain technologies!

Cool! Now, what kind of advice would you give someone who wants to start coding?

Do what you enjoy the most! It is very difficult to outwork a person that loves what he or she does. As the famous writer, E.M Foster once wrote:

“One person with passion is better than forty people merely interested.”

Thank you ROBERT for sharing your developer story with us! If you got excited by ROBERT’s story, the application is already open for the Full Stack Academy. Leave your application and our Talent Recruiter will be in touch with you in no time!

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