Rohan Sterling: From Uber Driver to Software Engineer

My name is Rohan Sterling. I am a Pursuit Fellow from the 8.1 class, and now I am a software engineer on the Provider Actions team at Thirty Madison.

The Pursuit arrow really describes my life. I’ve had a lot of twists and turns to get to where I am today.

I’m an immigrant from Jamaica. I grew up in a single-parent household with my older sister and my mother. As a child, we moved around a lot… from house to house, from Borough to Borough, and of course the biggest move, from Jamaica to America.

Rohan & His Mother

It was hard for me to go to college because it was expensive. I chose to work so that I could save money and eventually pay for school. But like so many other people, you take some time off, and you never go back. I’ve realized that I’ve spoken to so many other black males that wanted to try to do the same thing and ended up in this same cycle. Some people make it out but most people don’t.

I ended up working many different jobs which was difficult because a lot of them were really low-paying jobs. I became an electrician. I worked as a technician for the Dish Network. I eventually joined the military and worked as a medic (technically this was the lowest wage job that I ever had).

In the last year of my military service, I decided to try to go to college again. But I was hit with tons of new barriers. I learned that I didn't qualify for the GI bill because I wasn’t a citizen. I needed a 6-year contract vs my three year contract to be eligible. And so many other challenges.

During this time, I was also working as an Uber driver. One day, I got a ping through the app about Pursuit.

Rohan in the military

"What’s funny is that consistently in the background, I had been trying to learn to code the whole time. But learning coding on my own was very difficult. I was just writing functions, not knowing why. And I needed to be part of a community. I got that and so much more at Pursuit."

-Rohan on his journey to Pursuit

At Pursuit, I was focused on succeeding.

When that weekly survey circled around asking how many hours did you code outside of class this week? I could confidently answer well over 50 hours. After completing core, I prepared myself for interviews by doing an unhealthy amount of coding challenges.

All this hard work landed me three interviews with the USV portfolio companies. I was really excited about Thirty Madison because of their great values such as Patient First, One Team and Dare to Be Better. But what stood out to me the most was when my interviewer told me Thirty Madison has a low ego work environment.

This is my first job as a software engineer and I am determined to keep working hard and learning.

I want to thank my manager Rahul, my teammates Kunal, Marina, Amadosi, Derek and Emily, my mentors Nazifa and Annamarie and everyone at Thirty Madison for welcoming me here.

A special thank you to Pursuit Fellows and my Thirty Madison co-workers Uduakabasi and Doug for being there for me. And thank you to everyone at Pursuit who helped me realize my potential. Thank you to my instructors, the other Fellows, the employment and Commit teams, including Caroline Kang, Jordan, Billy, Tim, and Will for continuing to support me on my journey.

Thank you to everyone here for letting me share my story. With that, I’m going to ring the Gong.