“I believe that the time will come when I will code somewhere in the Maldives and drink cocktails in a hotel with a view of the ocean.” Confession of a serviceman who learned to code between combat missions and has been combining service and work in IT for 2.5 years

Hi, I’m a military man and I want to tell you about my interesting path in IT. I decided to try front-end development back in 2019. I found a course and went to learn Java, but it turned out that I learned Java Script and became a front-end developer.

But no, this is too perfect a story… I only completed half of the course because I was a soldier. And combining training with constant business trips and field trips was very difficult. So I quickly fell behind the course and later simply did not understand what they were talking about. But that did not stop me. The motivation to become an independent non-military person was stronger than fatigue and lack of time. Therefore, I regularly made efforts to independently study the material: various videos, literature, documentation, etc. Then I hired a personal tutor. He taught me Js and initiated me into the magical world of React.

And finally my contract ended. Finding my first job in IT was extremely difficult and took a lot of time, so I took a taxi and continued my education.

And here is this day — February 24, 2022… On February 25, I voluntarily returned to my unit, and on March 10, we were defending Kyiv.

But I clearly decided that my IT life did not stop, but was temporarily on pause. I had a tablet in my military backpack, on which, in my free time from military tasks, I began to come up with tasks for myself so as not to forget how to code. There was no Internet, so I did everything from memory. I even wrote a calculator.

That was how it was for half a year. Then I realized that the war would last not 2-3 weeks, but a little longer… I managed to transfer to another unit that had fewer trips, and I started looking for a job that could give me experience… I understood that the war would end sooner or later, and who would need an old June who had fallen out of life? Then I managed to find a project on React Native with a part-time schedule. And from that time on, I started writing code in my free time. There were times when I even had days off when everything was burning.

Currently, my path in IT continues. I have been working at this pace for 2.5 years. Recently, a recruiter asked me: «How is your mental health?» And I never even thought about it. Family, coding, and the army are like three lives that are difficult to synchronize. But you try your best not to live them in vain.

But I believe that the time will come and I will be like wealthy bloggers, coding somewhere in the Maldives and drinking cocktails in a hotel with an ocean view. For now, I’m plowing.

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