Starting over: from refugee to developer at one of Canada most successful startups

"I was shocked by reality. I didn't know what to do. I didn't know where to go. I found it hard to make friends, and keep myself motivated. I missed having a community." Nasser said, thinking back on his challenging transition from Syria to Turkey in the wake of the civil war."

Even though, Nasser had escaped from one of the world’s largest and deadliest humanitarian crises, starting over in a new country wasn’t easy.

Despite having graduated top of his class in Medical Electronics Engineering, Nasser still found it difficult to find work as a refugee without citizenship or official residency. So he started to think about what he could do next. Back in Syria, Nasser had taken several programming courses and he started to teach himself again using tutorials on YouTube,

“I found myself getting more and more excited each day as I delved into the world of websites.”

One day his friend sent an application link to Re:Coded’s Front-End Web Development Bootcamp on a Whatsapp group. Six weeks later, Nasser started a new journey learning to code with the help of instructors and a world-class curriculum.

“In the bootcamp, I finally found what I wanted; a group of friends who shared similar passions and the chance to meet people who motivated me to improve myself. My instructor in the bootcamp was a game changer. Not only did I learn a lot about coding, but I was inspired to think about what kind of developer I wanted to be. He taught us Javascript, React and data structures in such an exciting way that I started to copy his method when I began to explain topics to my friends.”

After graduating from Re:Coded’s bootcamp, Nasser was offered a remote role working for  Thinkific, one of the fastest growing edtech companies in Canada as a junior software developer.

His growth trajectory in the company has been fast and he credits the bootcamp in instilling an ability to learn how to learn, enabling him to continue to level up his skills. Today is working as an intermediate full stack engineer in Vancouver, Canada. This journey has been life changing - he is now able to financially support his entire family and he is paying it forward by spending his free time teaching other newly arrived refugees how to code.