From Art School Drop-out to Microsoft Engineer with Shashi Lo [Podcast #170]

On this week's episode of the podcast, I interview 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 ...

May 2, 2025 - 23:20
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From Art School Drop-out to Microsoft Engineer with Shashi Lo [Podcast #170]

On this week's episode of the podcast, I interview 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 de

    a085d2f5-6ab7-4b3a-9209-0e16b7d7539a

    veloper agencies

You can watch the interview on YouTube:

Or you can listen to the podcast in Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app. Be sure to follow the freeCodeCamp Podcast there so you'll get new episodes each Friday.

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Links we talk about during our conversation: