4 ms·

Dude from Germany here. Without a proper school education I was unable to get a apprenticeship in an IT profession, although I started profesional coding with a

by Mave83 8y ago

Dude from Germany here. Without a proper school education I was unable to get a apprenticeship in an IT profession, although I started profesional coding with age of 11 and general IT with 6-7 years (~1989). I ended up learning mechanics and after finishing my apprenticeship I founded my first company (~2000). After 18 hard working years of entrepreneurship I managed to start and exited 2 successfull companies with 8 figures volume. I can only suggest to start your own business if you are dedicated. Don't think it is easy, or that you will have a lot of spare time. But I won't miss a day of my journey so far. And yes, I don't need to work anymore, but can't stop!

lalwanivikas 8y ago
Are you in Berlin by any chance? :-)
- Mave83 8y ago
  Sorry, I'm not "arm aber sexy", therfore I'm from Munich where we are "reich und sexy" oder "reich und hässlich" but never "arm", the greatest city of Germany. :)
rblion 8y ago
Thanks for sharing. My story is very similar to yours but I am in the middle of it still at age 28. I've been at this since I was 11 as well when my older brother taught me about HTML, Dreamweaver, Visual Basic, OOP. The ABCs of this industry as we know it today. I dropped out of college at 20. Worked a few jobs in cafes and then in sales and finally as a technician. First technician job was fixing ATM machines, second was building high-end gaming computers for an Amazon merchant. I studied FreeCodeCamp after work and got into a coding bootcamp that I thought would help me get into the industry. I moved to Utah and got kicked out of it midway through for smoking weed. I lived out of AirBnb for a month and a half before getting a job on my own at startup. The school gave me a refund though because I guess they felt bad for me and wanted to help. Good on them, still grateful for that. That job was for an MLM startup and I had to leave because it was not a good dev environment. I got hired by Bluehost and I learned all about DNS, email, popular CMSs, SEO, and all kinds of problems that everyday non-tech people run into with computers and with the Internet. It was a great learning opportunity for me. Then they laid me off along with 900 other people...they were bought out and this was common procedure for their acquisitions. I did not know that when they hired me :/ I decided to start my own agency/consultancy since I had a few friends who needed sites made. It's been miraculous how each of them always sends me new work through their network. Now I have a pipeline of clients always coming in and I just have to keep shipping work every day and money will keep coming in. :) I've started working on ideas that I've drawn out and lost sleep over with some friends of mine who are engineers and investors. Maybe I can start a 2nd income stream too and eventually buy some real estate too!
S4M 8y ago
> I started profesional coding with age of 11 and general IT with 6-7 years (~1989). That's really interesting, can you provide more details about it? I'm really curious how a kid could make money from coding in the early 90's.
- wuschel 8y ago
  Writing printer drivers, for example.
- Mave83 8y ago
  I learned borland turbo pascal by Siemens (thanks to my bigger sister). First projects where in the company of my dad, optimizing their business tasks.

by Mave83 8y ago

lalwanivikas 8y ago

Are you in Berlin by any chance? :-)

Mave83 8y ago
Sorry, I'm not "arm aber sexy", therfore I'm from Munich where we are "reich und sexy" oder "reich und hässlich" but never "arm", the greatest city of Germany. :)

rblion 8y ago

Thanks for sharing. My story is very similar to yours but I am in the middle of it still at age 28. I've been at this since I was 11 as well when my older brother taught me about HTML, Dreamweaver, Visual Basic, OOP. The ABCs of this industry as we know it today. I dropped out of college at 20. Worked a few jobs in cafes and then in sales and finally as a technician. First technician job was fixing ATM machines, second was building high-end gaming computers for an Amazon merchant. I studied FreeCodeCamp after work and got into a coding bootcamp that I thought would help me get into the industry. I moved to Utah and got kicked out of it midway through for smoking weed. I lived out of AirBnb for a month and a half before getting a job on my own at startup. The school gave me a refund though because I guess they felt bad for me and wanted to help. Good on them, still grateful for that. That job was for an MLM startup and I had to leave because it was not a good dev environment. I got hired by Bluehost and I learned all about DNS, email, popular CMSs, SEO, and all kinds of problems that everyday non-tech people run into with computers and with the Internet. It was a great learning opportunity for me. Then they laid me off along with 900 other people...they were bought out and this was common procedure for their acquisitions. I did not know that when they hired me :/ I decided to start my own agency/consultancy since I had a few friends who needed sites made. It's been miraculous how each of them always sends me new work through their network. Now I have a pipeline of clients always coming in and I just have to keep shipping work every day and money will keep coming in. :) I've started working on ideas that I've drawn out and lost sleep over with some friends of mine who are engineers and investors. Maybe I can start a 2nd income stream too and eventually buy some real estate too!

S4M 8y ago

> I started profesional coding with age of 11 and general IT with 6-7 years (~1989). That's really interesting, can you provide more details about it? I'm really curious how a kid could make money from coding in the early 90's.

wuschel 8y ago
Writing printer drivers, for example.
Mave83 8y ago
I learned borland turbo pascal by Siemens (thanks to my bigger sister). First projects where in the company of my dad, optimizing their business tasks.