How to move from hard physical work into tech

One student's story. He came to America with his family, wanting to build a startup, find investors and make good money. He settled straight in Silicon Valley, to be near the investors and at the centre of the world's tech capital. He rented an apartment. He took physical work to feed his family and pay the bills. Money was always short, the stress and strain constant, every hour going into simple manual labour just to earn. He came to us to learn programming and understand how developers work, so that he could build his startup later — or start a career in tech and earn enough to cover the bills. But there was no time to study. He still had not got through JS Syntax. There was no energy left to learn after a hard day of physical work. No clarity about what to do next. Despair. Several years in the Valley and he was no closer to his goal of building a startup and meeting investors.

He called. We talked. The conversation stayed with us. It is a very common story — you may recognise yourself or someone you know in it. It reminds me of my own start. We first arrived in Sacramento, precisely to save on rent, knowing our costs in the Valley would be several times higher. There was physical work there too. And there was the same despair that nothing was working and no sense of when it would.

The situation changed completely when Viktor finally got a developer offer and joined a company in the Valley. The time he had put into preparing and sitting interviews paid off. It took a great deal of time and effort. To break out of the usual cycle you have to start doing something new. Take the first step. Start moving, and results will come.