Nobody is trying to stop you

Late in 2015, I was sitting on the couch at my ambulance’s station in Renton, WA during some downtime on a 24-hour shift. I kept circling the same thought I had been circling for months: could I get a job as a software engineer?

I spent the first half of my twenties working as an EMT in South King County, WA. Depending on the shift, we’d usually get three or four hours of downtime at the station. That was where I’d experiment with different ideas, and it was also where I first learned to code.

After a while, the delta between the life I had and the life I wanted really started to bother me. I wanted to be a software engineer. I wanted to create things and find novel solutions to problems (or at the very least, find useful solutions to problems).

But every time I thought seriously about pursuing it, I’d disqualify myself before anyone else had the chance.

I hadn’t gone to college and I had no professional experience. I read stories every week about computer science graduates who couldn’t find jobs, and every supposedly entry-level position required “2-3 years of experience”.

If people with degrees couldn’t even get hired, what defuckity hope was there for me?

Then one day as I was sitting on that couch, a thought popped into my head:

Nobody is waking up in the morning thinking, “Today I’m going to put all my effort into making sure Vince doesn’t succeed.”

The barriers were real, but nobody had made stopping me their personal mission in life. I was, in fact, the only person actively making sure I never got a job as an engineer. I felt immediate relief from the realization that nobody gave a shit about me, for better or worse.

Second half to that thought… Generally, when I’ve put sustained energy toward something in my life, the eventual outcome has lined up with my intention. Maybe not the first time or immediately, but when I keep putting energy in a direction, my life ultimately tends to move in that direction.

Third half to that thought (cause fuck math): what did I really have to lose?

Trying isn’t an event, it’s a state. An individual attempt might fail, but trying doesn’t stop until you either give up or die. Usually, the only thing trying costs me is some time/effort. That and the ostensible realization that all my pangs of inadequacy were valid all along and I was right to disqualify myself… but that’s just another bullshit lie our brains tell us in the interim/pre-success state.

So I put together an admittedly padded, projects-heavy resume and started applying.

My first software engineering interview was for a contract position at T-Mobile. It scared the shit out of me. They asked me questions about SQL HAVING clauses and how MapReduce worked that I had no idea how to answer. I was honest about what I didn’t know, but they seemed to be more impressed with how I thought through the problems instead.

I also interviewed at a Seattle startup called Convoy. I went through five rounds with the founding engineers, most of whom had come from Amazon. It was a classic whiteboard coding interview and I definitely struggled. In particular, I remember being given this variation of the coin change problem and finding it particularly challenging.

A week later, though, I got both job offers. I ended up accepting the offer at Convoy, and my life changed overnight.

It’s been eleven years since I had that realization while sitting on the couch at my station. And I think I’m typing this out because right now is when I most need to remember it. Nobody was trying to stop me then and nobody is trying to stop me now.