<|Crafty Codr Inc.

Hi Trevor,

 

My name is Ella Nikolich, from Israel, I'm a 29 years old single mother to a beautiful 2 years baby boy.

I am writing to you to share my story with you and let you know how much you influenced my life.

After the military service here (girls also must serve, 2 years), in the middle of my Physics degree studies, I have been diagnosed with cancer.

I tried to continue my studies but it was too difficult to concentrate in the class after being administered with high dozes of chemotherapy, so eventually I dropped out of the university.

Then came the loans I had to return, my father got sick and needed help, so after few months of waitressing I found a job as QA tester. I finished with the chemotherapy and the doctors proclaimed me as cancer-free and healthy.

I must admit I was good at doing QA and I have a profound appreciation to the high-tech branch it belongs to. I advanced quickly and from year to year from job to job I reached higher level positions such as team leader, QA leader and eventually VP of qaulity. 

But my heart belonged somewhere else - in development. Having no degree in computer science, I was always limited to QA positions, and was exposed to R&D people being arrogant and rude to fellows "like me". And being a developer or software engineer as they called it seemed impossible (also due to the fact that almost all companies in Israel will filter your CV out automatically on this technicality).

But I insisted to teach myself the latest technologies, to improve myself on my own as much as possible (I couldn't leave work for studying) and prove to those arogants that anyone with a decent mind and enough will can make it.

I got pregnant, was left alone, and now there were new financial considerations to think of.

And all of a sudden, a drastic change occured in my company - a collective decision to switch our infrastructure from .Net to Java!

Oh boy how pleased I was, I read several 600-pages-books on java and now there were tons of positions open for Java developers. 

I applied for a developer position and was rejected immediately. "You are not ready" was their polite answer.

That was the moment I found your Java podcasts. Eventhough the rejection made the future look grim, every morning to work and every evening back home I listened to you. I had the feeling that you are my co-driver and that everything will be ok. You connected all the dots from all the books into one universal sense.

Every day I would come with a new burning question and idea to my boss about Java and how we can improve our code base and infrastructure. 

And eventually I insisted on "trial by combat" interview. Your interviews with self-made developers gave me perspective and courage to do so. Eventually they decided to accept the challenge. They put me in a room with 6 "java masters" just to prove me wrong. And guess what - I nailed it!!! They were amazed and appologized. 

I have been promoted to Java Software Engineer :) 

My baby was born few months later and all was good. Now I was in my happy place, doing finally what I love and providing for my family.

Then, a month ago, I have been informed that there is an urgent need for client developer (JavaScript and angularJS) and since I'm new they have the liberty to change my position as they please.

I was a bit intimidated, taken out of my comfort zone, as this was completely new to me but I accepted the challenge.

And here you are again, after more than a year of silence, emailing me about new javascript tutorials - just in time as always.

You have a gift of teaching and you are making the world truely a better place, and for me individually - you helped my life-dream come true and my baby boy being provided with all the best he can get.

So from the bottom of my heart - THANK YOU!

 

Best regards,

Ella