Reached 200K TC, feeling incredible!!!!
I am a black woman and came from extreme poverty. My mom used to work as a live-in nanny and I watched the rich kids spoilt with so many nice toys and fancy clothes when all I had were old stuff my mom could get from whatever church or charity. I was raised by grandmom who had lots of health issues while my mother taking care of kids from other families. Sometimes she would take left over food home for me as a treat and I was so happy to see her and the nice food. I struggled a lot at school, dropped out several times to work and helped my family. I graduated from community college at the age of 24 and started working as a bank teller. With the money I got from the job, I enrolled in online degree in CS, I did every class with passion and graduated with 4.0 GPA . Life was not rosy with a CS degree, for months of applying I did not get any offer. With sheer luck, a classmate refered me to her boss and I got an unpaid position with promise that if I do well in 3 months then they will offer me a contract job. I ended up getting a full time offer in 1 month at 60K TC. Last month, I got 6 offers from all top Tech companies and will start as E4 Software Engineer at Facebook with TC 268K. It is surreal to suddenly making that much money. I told my mom she can retire now, bought grandma a nice wheelchair and pat myself in the back, "you made it girl! You did!"
EDIT: A lot of questions on how "I got the 200K+ offers within months". I did not! I had more than 3 years full time experience in SWE in between the 60K job and landing these offers. And no I did not have any trick, I prep as anyone else who want to get his/her foot in the door. Leetcode? Yes, there is no escape, but there are also systems design, project discussions and behavioral interview. Before getting these offers, I went through front end to back end development roles, I even got chance to lead some projects. All of these cannot be learnt in a month and would be very hard to gain without actually be on the job.
Some reporters contacted me if I could tell my story on the news. I would like to thanks for your consideration, however, I prefer to stay anonymous as I am still dealing with my life transition and don't want to overwhelm myself further. Landing the job is just the first step, I am focusing on doing well on the job and maybe some day in the future I will open myself to letting more people know about my story. Anyone who wants to share this blind post to someone you know, feel free to do so.
Last but not least, I'd like to thanks everyone for your well wishes! You guys are amazing and I love ya all!
comments
Sure everyone has flaws but that doesn't mean you can neglect this country provided with opportunities!
Also, many people here in tech come from the "slumdog millionaire" scenario, where the start point is only worse (imagine also having to face the risk of leaving the country any moment). People who were born in Indian villages without a toilet would say at least you started with citizenship, and the policies are favoring your skin color.
That's why mentioning race has tainted your otherwise awesome life story.
How the f**k you came to the conclusion that bringing race into the story taints OP's achievements is beyond me... All of your examples (Slumdog Millionaire, Pursuit of Happyness) puts race, culture, up bringing of the protagonist in center stage... Because that is part of their unique story! Just like OP's race and up bringing is part of her unique story.
People could say immigrants who come here at least have another country to fall back to, imagine your own country wants to shit on you all your life and keep you down.. that's a pretty low starting point too.
And don't tell me there's no opportunities in India, I have plenty of friends who voluntarily moved back there, and they live like kings working for Amazon with 10x the income of a typical IT worker.