“Working remotely has taught me a lot and opened doors. Overall I think Microverse was one of the best decisions I’ve made in my life.” - Trésor Bireke
Microverse students work incredibly hard to become professional software developers and we’re so proud of all our students and the work they put in. From making sacrifices to be able to support themselves throughout the program, to spending thousands of hours learning, they’re committed to improving their lives. Our alums have landed jobs around the world, earning an average of 3x more than what they made before — without paying Microverse anything until they’re employed.
We are delighted to highlight another one of our alum, who landed an amazing software development job. Trésor Bireke is based in Rwanda and landed a job as a Full Stack Software Developer at European based EpicCoders in August 2020. He shares his experience learning to code, his journey at Microverse, and how life has changed since he landed a full-time developer job.
Trésor grew up in the Democratic Republic of the Congo before moving to Rwanda to study civil engineering in university. He first learned about coding from friends that were studying computer science there. After seeing his friends coding for quite a while, he became curious and started learning HTML and CSS as well as working on simple web pages. In 2019 Trésor wrote his first line of code. He was learning for fun and enjoying it, but shortly thereafter stopped in order to focus on his civil engineering studies.
It wasn’t until months later when he spoke with someone who was doing a coding interview for a local tech startup that he was re-inspired. He said,
“That was when I realized that I could make a career out of coding, something that I had done just for fun. And that I realized I could do something I really loved doing.”
So he started coding again, mostly using HackerRank, and within a month he was invited to be a facilitator for a local tech competition. There he met other facilitators, one of whom introduced him to Microverse.
“The first time I heard of Microverse, I didn’t believe I could really be a part of it - it seemed to be something I had just been dreaming of. I decided to apply, and within about a month I was accepted.”
Trésor was just 18 years old when he began studying at Microverse, and was still trying to balance his civil engineering studies with Microverse. He soon realized that he wanted to dedicate all his time to becoming a software developer. He mentioned, “The hardest part was telling my parents that I wanted to stop going to university, they didn’t understand it. In May 2020, when the pandemic hit hard and school was shut down, I put all my effort into Microverse and finishing the program.”
“One of the things that inspired me when starting Microverse, was the story of Microverse alum Juan, as he was 18 when he started learning as well. My goal was to start working at 18 years old as a software developer. Thanks to the support of Microverse, my coding partner, standup team, and my coaches, I was able to achieve this goal. I was able to start working as a software developer two months before I turned 19. "
"That was one of the greatest moments in my life because I really felt like I accomplished something I really loved and really deserved.”
“A really memorable moment was when I got my first coding partner. It was such an amazing experience, she was from Cameroon and had a lot of experience so I was learning a lot from her.” Tresor also enjoyed working with his standup team, people from varying backgrounds. He felt he was the most beginner but was constantly learning from them and they were very supportive. “We spent lots of time sharing what we were working on and helping each other. They were all more experienced than me so I learned a lot, very quickly.”
“One of the most useful things I learned at Microverse is communication skills. Being able to communicate with your partner or others has been super helpful. I’ve used those skills consistently in my current role, and I’m always in communication with my manager. Collaboration is also incredibly important.”
“Another thing is to always look for feedback. The Microverse code reviews were very helpful for me, getting feedback on code and applying the recommendations is important. At my current role, that has been incredibly helpful for me.”
“Working with Microverse helped me improve my non-technical skills a lot. When I was mentoring students at Microverse, I got a lot of questions asking about my experience and from people looking for guidance. Again, communication is really important and being able to handle the unexpected. It also helped me improve my English, working in English every day definitely helped a lot.”
Trésor said he didn’t start applying for jobs until he was going through the Career Preparation part of the Microverse curriculum. He applied to jobs a few times a week through LinkedIn, then had the interviews through Skype.
“It was great as all the questions I was asked during interviews were questions I had already seen in the Microverse curriculum so I was very prepared. For instance, they asked me about salary. I was unemployed but had seen advice on how to answer that in the Microverse curriculum, so I knew how to answer.”
In his current role, Trésor is a full stack developer. He’s mainly working with Rails applications and backend services right now, but in the future will work with frontend frameworks like React and Vue. He’s also writing articles for his company blog. That’s a skill he learned at Microverse and said he is really glad to have and to be able to apply to his work now.
“Microverse changed a lot in my life. Before Microverse I was interested in computers but didn’t know what I wanted to do.
During Microverse, I spent all day working with coding partners, and most of my friends didn’t know what I was doing.
After though, we talked and I shared that I was earning more and doing better than I could have with the local market, and I have a lot more opportunities now.
Working remotely has taught me a lot and opened doors. Overall I think Microverse was one of the best decisions I’ve made in my life.”
“Advice I’d give to someone going through Microverse is ‘stay consistent’. That’s something Microverse helps with is showing up everyday, staying consistent and working through challenges with your partner.”
“Don’t lose time applying to different roles while you’re still in the curriculum. You can lose time applying to different roles too early. In my experience, I recommend focusing more on making sure you understand everything in the curriculum, then start applying. That way you will be way more prepared when you start applying and won’t lose time applying to too many roles. I also recommend focusing on one platform for your job applications as that worked for me - LinkedIn was the best platform for me.”
His final piece of advice;
“Stick with the program, stay focused. Don’t rush while you’re applying for roles. In the end, it pays off.”
With a lot of focus, hard work and full-time dedication, Trésor completed Microverse and landed a job as a remote full stack software developer in the summer of 2020. Microverse has enrolled full-time students from 100+ countries in it's full-time online program, and helped students from around the world land life-changing jobs. If you’re ready to change your life by becoming a remote software developer, get started below.
Meesen is the Head of Marketing at Microverse. She enjoys exploring ideas around the future of work, education and sustainability.
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