Future Focus: this London coder loves his job in theatre
Sang Song has always loved the theatre—a self-described "theatre geek, he grew up passionate about the West End, but never thought he could work in the field. A Londoner, Sang studied politics and history at Uni before starting a career in marketing and analytics at a variety of companies. Sang was always interested in tech—and […]
Sang Song has always loved the theatre—a self-described "theatre geek, he grew up passionate about the West End, but never thought he could work in the field. A Londoner, Sang studied politics and history at Uni before starting a career in marketing and analytics at a variety of companies.
Sang was always interested in tech—and although highly analytical, he wasn't very strong in math. He assumed this meant he could never work as a software engineer. Working in London, he noticed the rise of bootcamps across the city and sought out Flatiron School as a way to break into the industry.
After being accepted to Flatiron School immersive software engineering course, Sang learned to code, graduated, and secured a position as a product engineer at Ambassador Theatre Group, a international theatre company responsible for Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, among other plays.
Today, he does work he enjoys, with good colleagues, in an industry he loves—which is hard to beat. As part of our Future Focus series, we chatted with Sang (video below!) about his work at Ambassador Theatre Group, and his hopes for the future.
How did you first become interested in tech? What brought you to Flatiron School? Where are you today?
I was always interested in tech from an early age, and initially a lot of that interest was in consumer electronics (TVs, phones, DVD players etc.) and as I grew older I started getting more and more interested in the forces that drive tech innovation. But for the longest time I thought that being part of that community that drives the innovation was out of the question for me as I wasn't any good in maths and I thought maths was essential to be part of the tech community. I saw the rise of bootcamps and when I heard about Flatiron opening in London I was immediately intrigued by it and decided to take a change on it as a Hail Mary attempt in getting my foot across the door.
How has your life changed since graduation from Flatiron School ?
Since Flatiron School, my life has had more focus and drive and I've been enjoying the work I do everyday. I don't think I could imagine a life where I'm not a developer anymore, and the sense of accomplishment I get every time I fix a bug or release a feature is something that is quite addictive and I can never get enough.
What excites you most about the next decade in tech?
Foldable displays and dual-screen devices. Several companies are releasing phones and laptops with foldable displays, as well as, dual-screens—and I think that' gonna be a big game changer in how people perceive their everyday devices. The way we work and consume digital information has great potential to change in the same way that the release of the original iPhone was a game changer. As a web developer who's at the forefront of user interaction with digital media, I'm quite excited as to how these new form factors can be used to augment current digital experiences.
What do you hope to accomplish in your career in the next 10 years? What does 2030 look like for you?
I hope that by then I'm still primarily coding but would love to have some more mentoring and leadership tasks as well. My goal over the next few years is to start giving back to the community by contributing to open source projects and hopefully I may even get the pleasure of starting or maintaining my own open source project at some point in the future.
What are you focused on in the year ahead?
For me this year is all about getting my self out there, going to more conferences, writing and blogging more, giving my first talk and hopefully many more to follow. I've ended 2019 by making small contributions to a couple of open source projects and I would like to continue that and keep giving back to the community through the skills I learned, as well as, encouraging and helping others to get into the tech community.
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