How I Got My First Dev Job

To see out 2021 we will hear from three bright young South Africans as they tell us about how they got into tech. Join us on Wednesday 8 December at 19:30 (come 30 minutes early to chat!) to be inspired as your write your own tech story.

Agenda

19:00 Networking & tech check
19:30 Welcome
19:40 Talk
20:20 Q&A
20:45 Giveaways
20:55 Close

Talk

The talk will be an interview format.

Sponsors

We're pleased to welcome Decode Development as speaker gift sponsors \o/ https://www.decodedev.co.za

And we welcome back the trusty support of:

OfferZen: swagilicious swag – https://www.offerzen.com

JetBrains: epic software – https://www.jetbrains.com

Quaffee Roastery: #transparentcoffee vouchers – https://www.quaffee.com/coffee-transparency

Humanstate: zoom room – https://www.humanstate.com

Speakers

Sarah Jones, Junior Software Engineer, Coil

Sarah learnt how to approach technology at a young age. Upon confidently entering her first Grade R computer lesson she was met with a ferocious scene of T-Rex dinosaurs ripping the screen apart. She panicked, believing the computer must have a virus, which was surely a result of something she had done terribly wrong. Seven-year-old Sarah did not know about screensavers. That lesson was learnt the hard way.

After that, she spent the next almost 20 years with a healthy skepticism of technology as a borderline technophobe. That is until 2017 when she unexpectedly embarked on a degree in Computer Science which culminated in a Junior Software Engineering position at the beginning of this year. She's now busy developing and maintaining a WordPress plugin working primarily with PHP, JavaScript and CSS.

Yanga Kandeni, Junior Perl Developer, Humanstate

Yanga was born in the Eastern Cape but grew up in Cape Town in a township called Philippi. After finishing school, he studied Chemical Engineering at the Cape Peninsula University of Technology. After graduating, he worked for various companies (such as Rheinmetall, AirLiquide SA and Kooltron) within the engineering space.

In 2015, he was diagnosed with chronic kidney failure and subsequently resigned to undergo dialysis. It was then that he found an online English teaching opportunity which allowed him to attend dialysis during the day and work during the night (00:00am - 09:00am).

In 2017 he received a kidney transplant and immediately knew that he needed to use this gift of life to the max.

Toward the end of 2019 he started taking online courses in Computer Science (from FreeCodeCamp, Havard's CS50 and MIT OCW, to name a few). One thing led to the next and he was lucky enough to find an opportunity as a Junior Perl Developer with Humanstate which is where he is currently employed.

When he’s not coding, he likes going out with friends, listening to music and watching a good movie or series.

Marlon Demas, Intermediate Developer, Specno

Marlon is a Cape Town-based software engineer with experience in full-stack web development. He currently works as an Intermediate Developer at Specno, a Silicon Valley-inspired tech startup, building tech startups.

He learnt to write code at a Web Development Bootcamp run by Salesian Life Choices and, at the time, CodeSpace. He is pragmatic with a very positive attitude and always looking to learn and be challenged. He has the ability to learn concepts quickly and thrives in a fast-paced environment. He is easy to talk to, fun to work with and very reliable and focused.