Hamza Mushtaq

Full Stack ROR Engineer

Life takes you down many unexpected paths, but such is life. My story begins with growing up dreaming about becoming a Civil Engineer. I scored really well in my intermediate but ended up failing the ECAT exam and hence losing the chance of getting enrolled in the engineering program in a public university.

At the time, my parents couldn’t afford a private university and that’s when my life, my goals and my plans changed completely.

After much thought and research I decided to pursue Software Engineering. I struggled in my studies because that was not my field of expertise or interest; however, dedicated to making it happen this time, I pushed through. With the effort I had put in, I was confident that I would get a good job right after graduation. But life was not done with me just yet. I struggled with finding a job and ended up doing an unpaid internship for 3 months. Hoping that it would lead to a permanent role, I was left disappointed when I was sent back home. Back to square one, with more disappointment in finding a job I had to join another unpaid internship at my friend’s organization.

But one month later, the story changed and I finally got an interview call from Cheetay and subsequent to that I received an offer letter to join as a back-end developer. That was the first proper kick-start for me but to my dismay 5 months later all those on probation including myself were among the many who were laid off due to some internal crisis. I remained jobless for another 5 months and those were the most depressing times of my life. In these 5 months I faced over 20 rejections. However, in a continua attempt to keep my spirits high during these difficult times I kept working on strengthening my skill set.

When you have purity of heart and sincerity in effort you are bound to be blessed sooner or later. Soon after, I got a job as a Software Engineer RoR at Emerald Labs and Alhamdullilah, since then I’ve been enjoying my work and cherish the friendly and fast paced learning environment this organization has offered to me.

I will just end this with a word of advice: never lose hope and keep working hard on improving your skills and leave the rest to Allah Almighty. Indeed Allah is the best planner.”

"Some people want to see you fail, disappoint them!"

Hamza Mushtaq’s life mantra