#170 From Art School Drop-out to Microsoft Engineer with Shashi Lo
The freeCodeCamp Podcast
Quincy Larson
5.0 • 549 Ratings
🗓️ 2 May 2025
⏱️ 84 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
On this week's episode of the podcast, freeCodeCamp founder Quincy Larson interviews Shashi Lo. He's a software engineer at Microsoft. He grew up the child of refugees. He wanted to start earning money and build his family so he abandoned his art school degree and taught himself how to program.
He immediately hustled to land freelance development clients – something he still does today on top of his full time job and raising his 4 kids.
We talk about:
- Making ends meet doing freelance work
- How to bootstrap your reputation toward getting a job in big tech
- Mistakes he sees careers changers make
- The pros and cons of working in big tech VS working at developer agencies
Support for this podcast comes from a grant from Wix Studio. Wix Studio provides developers tools to rapidly build websites with everything out-of-the-box, then extend, replace, and break boundaries with code. Learn more at https://wixstudio.com.
Support also comes from the 11,384 kind folks who support freeCodeCamp through a monthly donation. You can join these chill human beings and help our charity's mission by going to donate.freecodecamp.org
Links we talk about during our conversation:
- Shashi's conference talks and other podcast interviews: https://bento.me/shashilo
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | If you're not getting callbacks or you feel like, you know, like you're just not growing, |
| 0:05.4 | then honestly, you need to find like a support group or a mentor that you can trust that's like |
| 0:10.7 | the experience in the industry that can help understand where you're at and guide you further along. |
| 0:17.5 | Because there are skills and things that you just don't know that you need or there are |
| 0:23.7 | improvements that you need to make that only somebody that is very experienced can come in |
| 0:28.7 | and help hone you to get you to that position. |
| 0:31.8 | Welcome back to the Free Code Camp podcast, your source for raw, unedited interviews |
| 0:37.0 | with developers. Today we're talking with Shashi Lowe. |
| 0:40.4 | He's a software engineer at Microsoft who grew up in a family of refugees. Shashi abandoned his art school |
| 0:46.8 | program and taught himself how to program so he could start saving money earlier. He was able to land, |
| 0:53.3 | freelance clients, and still freelances today on top of his full-time job and He was able to land freelance clients and still freelances today |
| 0:55.6 | on top of his full-time job and raising his four kids. Support for this podcast comes from a grant |
| 1:02.7 | from Wix Studio. Wix Studio provides developers with tools to rapidly build websites with everything |
| 1:08.1 | out of the box, then extend, replace, and break batteries with code. |
| 1:11.9 | Learn more at wickstudio.com. |
| 1:14.1 | Support also comes from the 11,384 kind folks who support FreeCodeCamp through a monthly |
| 1:20.8 | donation. |
| 1:21.8 | You can join these chill human beings and help our charity's mission by going to donate. |
| 1:26.1 | org for this week's musical intro with yours truly on drums, guitar, basing and help our charity's mission by going to donate.freycotecamp.org. |
| 1:31.9 | For this week's musical intro with yours truly on drums, guitar, bass, and keys, |
| 1:37.4 | we're going back to 1990 with the Metal Gear 2 Solid Snake theme. Music I'm I'm I'm |
| 1:45.0 | I'm |
... |
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