Breaking In: My Journey to a Software Engineering Role at Slack Without a Degree

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Jeremiah Peoples, a 28-year-old staff developer advocate at Slack in Austin. It’s been edited for length and clarity.

I work in software engineering as a staff developer advocate without a college degree. After my first semester in Butler University’s computer science program, I dropped out and joined the military in May 2016.

While in the military, I taught myself how to code. In February 2020, I started a six-month temporary duty assignment, similar to an apprenticeship, to build satellite applications.

I was immediately reminded of how little I knew. After work, I felt terrible because I felt inadequate and thought they had made a mistake by hiring me.

I ended my enlistment in the military in May 2022 and started at Slack that same month. I’ve overcome that impostor syndrome.

My job in the military was as an intelligence analyst

I assessed dangers around the world in real time, trying to provide value that could be helpful to the US and military operations.

I enjoyed progressing in rank, the camaraderie, and the structure. In 2019, I volunteered to deploy to the Middle East, where I worked 12-hour shifts, seven days a week, in a war zone.

While in the Middle East, I realized this wasn’t how I wanted to spend the best years of my life.

I needed a change

I started to make a plan and research other careers on YouTube. I saw a few creators who became software engineers without going to college.

I reverse-engineered what they did. I decided to study their videos, essentially do what they did, and hopefully try to achieve the same success.

I started with learning Python from a book, but after a month of working with it, I realized it wasn’t the type of coding I wanted to do. I switched from learning Python to JavaScript, HTML, and CSS through an online course that I bought.

Learning to code was tough but really exciting

After my 12-hour shifts, there wasn’t much to do besides work out or study. I studied every single day for three hours. I was having a good time and making progress.

I blended my background as an intelligence analyst with my ability to write code, which is how I started working on some technical coding projects in my intelligence job.

After that, I used it to land my temporary duty assignment with Section 31, an Air Force unit in Southern California tasked with creating applications for the Space Force. I was simultaneously an intelligence analyst and a software engineer.

My doubt lasted for over half of the apprenticeship

The feeling of doubt lasted for around three and a half months. It eventually clicked for me that I wasn’t supposed to get it that quickly.

I grew up playing sports, and I thought of learning to code as learning sports. I had only been learning to code for about a year, and I was working alongside people who had been working in the industry for longer.

I had to realize that’s OK. They’re not expecting me to be a professional coder, but they want me to learn and grow. That’s when I finally started to turn a corner and realize that I need to increase my reps, study, and practice like I would a sport.

Having a mentor really helped me

When I got a mentor, he streamlined everything I learned, helped me apply it, and told me what I didn’t need to learn. Finding a mentor I was comfortable with and someone who had already achieved success where I wanted to achieve success was probably the most important part of my learning.

When I returned home from Iraq, I had two mentors. One was in the Air Force, a senior engineer in my squadron, and I just attached myself to him and asked him so many questions. He was so patient with me. I had another mentor who was a civilian.

I have some mentors now at Slack who are able to challenge me and help me grow.

There’s not a single thing I would do differently

I’m extremely grateful and blessed to be in the position I’m in today.

In the Space Force apprenticeship, I did pair programming, which means you sit with another engineer and go back and forth. One writes the technical test, and the other writes the code to make that test pass.

Every time I heard a phrase that I didn’t know in a meeting or saw a line of code that I didn’t understand, I made note of it. Then, for 30 minutes every single day, I would talk to my mentor and just try to get better.

If you’re feeling impostor syndrome, look in the mirror and tell yourself that the people who hired you are smart people, and they hired you for a reason.

As a staff developer advocate now, it’s my job to know how to create custom applications in Slack and then teach them to all of our customers around the world with content via on-site workshops, presentations, keynotes, and virtual content.

In 2020, I started a YouTube channel

I documented my process and created content about software engineering. When I was separating from the Air Force in 2022, I put out a little teaser video on Twitter saying that I was open to work. That post went pretty viral, and I got messages about job opportunities at Google, Amazon, and Slack, where I ended up.

I don’t have impostor syndrome anymore because I understand what it is. The only way to get through it is by being confident in your abilities.

I’m now confident in my abilities and what I can offer my employer and my community.

Did you land a job without a college degree? Reach out to this reporter at mhoff@businessinsider.com.