A Bit About Me

My Journey Before Starting Boot Camp

• I was born in a small town of Weyburn Saskatchewan and moved to B.C when I was 4 years old because my dad had got a job there. While living in B.C my dad made friends with a mechanic named Eric. He helped my dad out with looking after our vehicles and was a very friendly guy. When I was 9 he would start to teach me about cars and how they worked and how to fix them. I fell in love with the intricacies of engines and other vehicle systems. As I grew older Eric would continue to teach me and spark my interest in learning more about cars. Anytime he would come over to work on our cars I would always be out there helping him. He then asked my dad if it was ok for me to work some side jobs with him and help him out and in exchange he would pay me and I would get to learn more, win win for everybody. My dad had no problem with it so I started to go with Eric on the weekends and fix cars with him. In mechanics there are times that a car computer fails or needs to be reprogrammed in order to work, this was an area that Eric did not have a ton of depth in but he would still do his best to explain to me. I found it very fascinating but felt like if Eric couldn’t fully understand it I would never be able to.

Building My Automotive Career

• My high school did offer a computer science course but at that time I felt like there was no way that I could learn it or be proficient in it. You make a career plan in high school and as I already had some experience in working on cars, I thought it would only be natural to move into it as a career. Right out of high school I took my first year of automotive at our local community college, after I graded I began looking for a job. I was first hired at a dodge dealership but they were only looking for a seasonal guy so after 3 months I was laid off. A friend from my automotive class was working at Kal-Tire at the time and offered to get me a job there, I happily accepted his offer and spent the next 3 years there. During that time my jobs mainly focused around brakes, suspension jobs and general maintenance. I took my second year of automotive school during that time as well. I was a hard worker and dedicated to learning everything I could and I ended up catching the attention of a local engine rebuilding shop in town. They offer me a job at their shop helping them rebuild classic cars and fixing more complicated issues then I was being challenged with at Kal. I accepted their offer and said good bye to the team I was working with at Kal, they were sad to see me go but understood that the position I was going to was much better for my continued growth. During my time at the rebuild shop I would run into some more car computer issues, this further peaked my interest into programming but again felt it was way to over my head to even begin digging into. At the shop I ended up completing my third year of automotive so I only had one more year to go before I could challenge the red seal test and become a journey man. While I was in third year I entered a schooling competition which I ended going all the way to finals and winning. This was a huge boost to my confidence within mechanics and also brought me to the attention of some shops in my town. When I returned from school the engine rebuild shop had slowed down and there was not enough work to keep all the mechanics busy, being the newest guy I was laid off.

Main Life Experience

• Being laid off was not the end of the world though because after winning the competition I was already offered a few job within my town and even some in other cities. I ended up accepting a job at a local shop that had been in business in my town for a very long time and was always owned by the same family. They were excited to have me onboard and very much enjoyed my work ethic and drive for more knowledge, they set me up with any extra work shop class I wanted to attend. They also wanted me to complete my fourth year as soon as possible, so I headed back for my final year and passed my red seal test and was now a full fledged journey man mechanic. When I returned to the shop, I continued to grow my knowledge and grasp more and more concepts within automotive. As time went on the head mechanic ended up leaving the shop and I took over his position. Now I had apprentices learning from me, it was a crazy feeling because I still felt like I had so much to learn and that I did not have enough knowledge in my head to teach anyone. They were super happy though and always said that my teaching style plus knowledge was helpful and sound. It was at this time that I started to get more computer issues. Most times it was removing the computer to be replaced or sent to the dealership to be reprogrammed, I grew a relationship with one of the dealerships and started to learn about the reprogramming side of repairs. In the shop its pretty simple as you mainly just hook it up to a computer which handles updating the software to the newest version. Most of the guys at the dealership were fine with that being all they needed to know. I however wanted to know more, for example why would they need to update the software wouldn’t they test all these thing before and why are they not thinking about colder climates when programming the computer. Questions like these kept me up at night I wanted to understand why but again was afraid of being overwhelmed or taking space in my brain away from automotive knowledge which at the end of the day was what I really need to know.

The First Taste Of Coding

• During my time at the local shop I also took in side jobs. One of my customers was a software engineer, he was always interested in learning like me. Anytime I would do a job for him he would always ask if it was ok for him to come watch what I was doing to see if he could learn something. I happily obliged and always tried my best to explain what I was doing and how it worked, he was always thankful and said he wanted to return the favor. He said I will teach you about coding and I honestly laughed and told him “I am a mechanic, there is no way my brain will be able to comprehend anything you teach me on that computer. I would love to learn but I think you might be wasting your time trying to teach me“ He did not accept this answer and told me that he had no background in anything mechanical but with my teaching felt like he could change his own tires and do his own brakes now and that the same would be true for me learning coding. He started with just basics, but surprisingly things started to click. As I learnt about this world I once thought was way over my head I started to realize it actually might be something I could comprehend. My knowledge was still very base level but the more I learned the more my passion for coding took over. I decided that if I was going to make a change that now was the time to do it so at 30 years old I decided to take a coding boot camp.

8 Weeks Into Boot Camp

• I decided to take the chance and plunged into Flatirons software engineering online boot camp. It has been an intense journey with a lot of knowledge coming at you. Filled with lots of head scratching and then eureka moments after solving a problem. The teachers and staff are very friendly and accommodating, and really feel like they want you to learn and succeed. They have a great community as well and really try and foster a group feel in the classes. I am only 8 weeks into the program now but have already learned a great deal and am excited to continue on this path of knowledge growth on a subject I never felt like I would understand. I will write another Blog on my full experience once I have completed the program, but I hope that hearing this story might inspire others to challenge themselves to either grow their knowledge on subjects they know or to even expand into something they may have felt was impossible for them to learn before.