Abubaker Nazir is a MigraCode student who joined the program in July 2022. Since he’s still studying, his experience does not fall into the graduate success stories yet. However, his experience shows that the positives of MigraCode are already very much in evidence during the program.
Changing jobs, dealing with a pandemic, and moving to a new country can be challenging
Abubaker graduated successfully in 2019 as a software engineer in Pakistan. However, despite his efforts, he was struggling to find a stable job. Since he needed to support his family, the only solution he had at that time was to reinvent himself. Thanks to this decision, he eventually found a job as a digital marketing specialist.
A couple of months after being employed, the Covid-19 pandemic broke out. Abubaker found himself forced to reinvent himself again and decided to move to another city to find new opportunities, as his job had become uncertain. Having some experience in website development he partly maintained himself by working as a freelancer.
In August 2020, he managed to find another job, which allowed him to work between the technical and marketing teams. An opportunity that renewed in him the desire to find a job more suited to his background. For this reason, in 2021 he decided to move to Barcelona, where his father had already lived for about 15 years. Here, he could look for better opportunities to support his family and develop his personal and professional skills.
Beginning a new life in Barcelona has not been the easiest:
“At the start, it has been very tough to live here, mostly due to the language barriers and cultural differences. I faced a lot of difficulties. I didn’t know how to apply for jobs, or where to start”.
After a few months, Abubaker managed to find a job as a marketing specialist in Spain. In the same company, he met Alfonso, a graduate of MigraCode who was working there as a developer. Alfonso was the first one to tell him about the MigraCode, Abubakar explains. He recommended the program because Abubaker had often told him about his desire to refresh and employ his technical skills. A couple of months later, Abubaker applied to MigraCode and entered the program. Finally, he was able to go back to the tech sector.
What have been the unexpected benefits of MigraCode?
MigraCode has proved to Abubaker to be much more than a good opportunity to return to its field of interest. When he started, he felt very stressed as he had to drop out of his full-time job, and he felt that that was a risky situation. But then, he soon started to see the benefits beyond learning new tech skills
During the interview, Abubaker describes MigraCode as a “full package”. Besides the emphasis on learning, there is a strong focus on the human element in MigraCode. For this reason, it’s common to see an environment of mutual support among the students.
“I feel so lucky to be in MigraCode and what I appreciate is that the program is taught by volunteers that want us to study. They don’t just give us a class and then leave. They want us to learn and to grow, and I have always felt this, since the beginning of the course. Everyone is so supportive”.
As Abubaker explained, the best thing that he learned from MigraCode is how to build a connection and be more confident.
“I was very shy before MigraCode, and I had issues with talking to new people. Being a student in MigraCode helped me a lot in this. I met a lot of people from different backgrounds, and everyone was genuinely interested in getting to know each other and helping each other.”
In MigraCode, sometimes you come to the point in which you feel it is too intense. Thanks to the support of a code buddy – an initiative that consists of pairing a student with a volunteer buddy for extra support – and of the MigraCode team he got the inspiration to continue. After two months of starting MigraCode, Abubaker got a job offer from a company. As he explained, both the soft and the hard skills that he got from MigraCode played an important role in landing the job.
The following months have not been the easiest. Studying while working requires a lot of effort, but it’s not impossible if your dream is to build a career in tech.
Looking at the future
For his future, Abubaker dreams to work another two to three years while learning new skills and then starting his own web development company. Soon he will start to prepare the final project of the course. His aim is to collaborate with his classmates also in the future to keep developing the projects they like.
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