My life in five minutes

My parents, and later a few books, taught me that where you start doesn’t decide where you end up.

They were born in Reşadiye, a small village in Turkey. They left with almost nothing and built a life in Nancy, France, where I was born and raised. They have been my biggest motivation. They still are.

Every year since I was born, we go back to the village. Ninety percent of my family still lives up there. It’s the place that reminds me where I come from.

I grew up in my bedroom with a PlayStation, the family computer, and Turkish music playing in the background. One of the first games I ever played was Prince of Persia, sitting next to my dad. You’d find video games at the top of my wish list every year. I didn’t know it at the time, but I was spending my childhood in front of the machines I’d later build software for.

By high school, I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life. Then a Turkish teacher showed me what it actually meant to read a book. Not for a grade. Seriously, with curiosity. I bought my first book: Think and Grow Rich.

Something switched on inside me that year. It hasn’t switched off since.

Sam Ovens became my virtual mentor. His videos had a huge impact on me. I started reading everything I could find about sales, copywriting, and human psychology. Most teenagers weren’t reading books on copywriting. I had unlimited free time and a lot of questions.

Then COVID hit. Stuck at home, I wanted to make something new. I love music, but I have a terrible voice, so I figured: why not make beats? My mom bought me FL Studio and a mini piano. I spent months learning it, intensely.

Other things pulled me in, mostly marketing. I started an agency on my own: Facebook ads to bring leads to construction companies. I was studying economics at IAE Nancy at the same time. The agency failed. I passed my first year, then left. Sitting in a lecture hall for four or five hours bored me to death.

I spent the next year working at a very famous fast food chain. I was searching for myself. My girlfriend at the time supported me through it, and I’m grateful she did. I made a bit of money, and by pure chance, I found freeCodeCamp.

I learned HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, then followed Colt Steele’s bootcamp, which teaches you to build a CRUD app. My first real project was CampCalm. Then another one. Then another.

Beats and marketing had been fun, but this was different. Building something from zero, that didn’t exist the day before, excited me in a way nothing else had. I put the music aside and went all in.

The marketing years weren’t wasted, though. Everything I read about sales and psychology as a teenager is what I use today to sell myself, and my work.

I joined Epitech to go deeper. I learned C, then Python, then Rust. I’m now in my third year, with several internships behind me and more ahead. Next year, I’ll spend six months at ITU in Istanbul, back in the country my parents left.

In between, I launched DatabaseStory, where I interview the best engineers working on databases. Every conversation teaches me something I couldn’t have learned in a classroom.

There’s still a lot to do. I’m excited for the next decade, and I want to make my parents proud.

I didn’t plan any of this. But I’m damn proud of the path. I’m incredibly grateful to my parents, to a Turkish teacher who handed me a book, and to those strangers on the internet who showed me I could build anything.