Ever had a passion that you were afraid to follow?
The uncharted and unknown can be scary, but sometimes mustering up the courage to take charge of your own path brings a rewarding goal that you can be proud of.
This is the story of someone who pursued his passion with an intensity, and is now an integral part of iD Tech’s engineering team.
Meet Brian
Brian Huynh realized his love for coding when he was a middle schooler. Coding classes for kids weren’t offered at many schools, so he took to an online community where he meticulously watched YouTube tutorials and read forums on Stack Overflow.
He spent a lot of time online and learning from others.
Before long, Brian’s siblings were getting involved and following in his footsteps, and together, they started to innovate ideas for apps, video games, and more. After some time, Brian also started to pick up game development, teaching himself Unity 3D, C#, and JavaScript while creating his own game.
At that point, Brian was in high school and taking an entrepreneurial class which provided his first opportunity to use his passion for coding in a school setting. He was placed in a group and had to compete with fellow classmates to come up with a business plan, then sell the idea to the class.
After brainstorming for a bit, the group recognized there was a need for a new learning platform within schools, so they started to create their own education management platform.
The whole semester was dedicated to this project, with countless hours spent creating a mock-up of what the platform would look like. Brian’s team was excited to pitch their idea.
Unfortunately, that excitement didn’t translate to success, and Brian’s group came up short. It was a tough hit for Brian given how much he invested in the project, but he didn’t let that stop him.
Rather than letting the loss derail his passion for coding, Brian knew he could take the skillset he’d cultivated and develop it even further. So, after high school, he started working on business ideas with his brother and even began pitching their ideas to investors.
It was another great and valuable experience, but Brian was left without funding when all was said and done.
It was then that Brian enrolled full-time in De Anza College, and soon found himself really enjoying and excelling in his classes. And he was growing his network—a connection he met introduced him to Year Up, a non-profit organization that runs an intensive training program that challenges students to reach their full potential. Brian completed six months of training and then landed an internship at eBay doing web development for the business intelligence team.
At eBay, Brian was part of a two-person development team, and found himself becoming a bit overwhelmed, not fully ready to tackle the experience. He tried to connect with the other developer to solicit advice, but it was to no avail.
After about two months, Brian’s manager had a check-in with him to see how he was doing, and it was then that Brian realized how much he had at stake with his contract not being guaranteed for any length of time. Brian knew that the only way he could keep the position was by proving himself and really making a noticeable difference. Brian stayed up night after night learning all he could in order to bring his newly-acquired knowledge back to work each day, and eventually began excelling.
As luck would have it, the other member on his team left, and Brian saw it as a perfect opportunity to make a move. He completely took over the responsibilities from the other developer, and proceeded to handle everything from there on out. He ended up revamping the back-end of the website, scraping thousands of lines of code, and taking on more and more ownership from there.
Eventually, Brian came to the end of his contract and left eBay, opening the door for him to explore other opportunities—leading him here to iD Tech.
Brian started working with us towards the end of last year, and has already made tremendous contributions to the team.
When asked what he is enjoying the most about working here, he responded:
“I deeply enjoy the culture here—I’m super happy about being around really intelligent people who share their knowledge and also want to hear what I think and what I know. My team and managers are really supportive, open, and caring. I never really experienced that before. Here at iD Tech, we work together for the same mission and cause. Our work matters, and my work is very important.”
Here at iD, we are all about opportunity… not only seizing it, but providing it to driven individuals like Brian. No dream or passion is too small. Will it be easy? No, and Brian’s journey illustrates just that.
But will it be worth it? YES!
It’s because of incredible people like Brian that we focus on social impact and help bridge the gaps between passion, skill, and opportunity.
We hope that through Brian’s story, more children will be motivated to pursue careers in STEM, even when it seems like the odds are against them.
Who knows...maybe one day they will join iD Tech’s engineering team!