After I graduated from university back in 2006 (studying Management Science), I decided that I liked computers more than I liked Banking or Management Consulting, so I worked for a friend of a friend doing web design, and began to learn Ruby and Ruby on Rails. I read the Pragmatic Programmers books, and spent 6 months at home learning Ruby and Rails in my free time.

About a year later (summer 2007), I got a job working for a ticket search engine called Tickex, doing Rails. I was paid £9 per hour, and worked at a BBQ table and chair. It was a really enjoyable time. we were Seedcamp finalists and nearly got funding from Sequoia, but sadly the funding ran out and the business moved back to California and then shut down. Since then, I've worked at a few other startups, at a web agency called New Bamboo, at AOL, and now I work in a small business. I also had offers to interview at Square and Facebook, but a temporary lack of nationality/family circumstances meant that I couldn't move to California.

The decision to deviate from the path offered by my degree has been one of the best in my life. Before I had learnt to program, I had ideas but no ability to program, so they remained as ideas. Having learnt to program, I have the ability to have ideas and do something about them.