"Tell Me About Yourself": My Journey To 2,058 Applications

The Foundational Years

My early life was defined by isolation, anxiety, and imagination, which resulted in a quiet disposition that was often appreciated as "good behavior" by the adults around me and later showed itself to be a mental framework for my future in tech. I was raised by a single mother who worked odd jobs and overnights to make ends meet, which I'm sure contributed to her alcoholism. I had a father who loved me, but for various reasons, he was absent. I also had two much older sisters from a different father. All of these factors contributed to our family's disconnected nature. I spent many quiet hours alone, but they weren't empty, they were filled with a deep mental exploration, where my internal reality became the primary tool for constructing and deconstructing the world around me.

Around age six, an unfortunate eye injury left me unable to see for a period of time, as the stitches holding my cornea in place caused me to keep my eyes closed while healing. During that process, I learned to further navigate my mind, my thoughts, and my imagination. What I saw in my head became just as real as what I saw with my eyes. That focus later revealed itself to be a valuable tool for solving problems and visualizing steps and processes in the physical world.

Years later, I developed a fascination with taking things apart to figure them out, like furniture, tools, and machines. This curiosity guided me to the end of the '90s, when my family relocated to a new city, I changed schools, and my mom bought me a computer. Soon after learning how to use this IBM PC and the internet, I began to see websites as a magical curtain and felt a need to see what was behind them. I made my first websites on Angelfire.com and tried to hustle for freelance work in AOL chatrooms. I was also an early user of Monster.com, but being a teenager with no work experience and no social skills, I did not land a job that way. I was also banned from AOL, as soliciting work in chatrooms was a violation of their spam policy. Those setbacks fueled an interest in digital security and piracy. Meanwhile, I was still in high school training to be an ASE automotive mechanic, which was also when I began experimenting with alcohol abuse.

The Music Years

Soon after discovering the internet, my world expanded as I was exposed to new types of music. It was a passion that was further ignited by magazines my father sent me from prison. He didn't send them to me directly, instead, he filled out subscription cards so that the music company would send magazines to me, bypassing the cost of stamps and prison security measures. Soon after, my family made another move, this time to a small town where the quiet became a familiar friend and my desire to build musical skill helped me stay sober. For the next decade, music was my only interest and obsession. It was a pursuit that demanded discipline and resilience. I moved out of my parents' house and supported myself with a series of grueling jobs: ironworker, butcher, barista. I lived in various industrial warehouses in Oakland and San Francisco and learned to survive on grit and creativity. This is also where alcohol came back into my life. I eventually moved to Los Angeles to turn music into a job, seeing the city as a place of great opportunity.

I remember the day that I determined music was not sustaining me. By that time, I had upgraded from living in warehouses to living in a minivan and knew that I needed more money to make my dreams come true. Relentless self-improvement seemed to be the only way forward. While still living in that minivan, I enrolled in Santa Monica City College to study Computer Science and Business. As a plan B, I also learned physical fitness by reading books like the 'National Council on Strength and Fitness' and having talks with personal trainers at the gym where I worked. All of this learning and freelance work gave me a good reason to get sober again.

A major turning point came at the intersection of many overlapping events. I was in college, working like crazy and still not satisfied with living in the van. I asked my math teacher his opinion, and he very poetically suggested that college might not be the solution for me. I decided to leave college and work even more hours, three jobs filled my seven days a week while I was still learning JavaScript basics during lunch breaks. Around this time, my grandmother passed away, leaving me $5,000. I also caught wind of a coding bootcamp developed for people on the autism spectrum, and having just been diagnosed, I invested every dollar I had into modernizing my tech knowledge by joining the bootcamp. I quit all of my jobs except one. For three months, I studied the MERN stack and Python for 50 hours a week while holding down a 20-hour-a-week job as a click-bot. I put all the chips on the table.

The QA Career

After graduating from the tech bootcamp, I aimed for engineering roles, but my anxiety often sabotaged interviews, where I might forget basic concepts or something as basic as my own age. After a few failed interviews, I realized I needed a path with less friction and fewer personal obstacles. QA seemed to be a viable gateway to an engineering role.

My QA career began at an autism-focused company where I learned Java on the job, doing manual and automated work for various clients. I did great at my $15-per-hour Java automation position until that chapter ended.

From there, I was hired at a Real Estate Investment Company, doing Ruby and Cypress automation, which I also learned on the job. I did well, eventually took on engineering tasks, and I was one week away from joining the Software Engineering Team when layoffs came and my time there came to a premature end.

Because of my performance and connections at the Real Estate Investment Company, I was offered a position at a major bank, where I did well as a Senior Automation Engineer, this time content with staying on the QA path due to the potential upside of the position, until one day, layoffs came for me again.

At each step, I learned to perform, build frameworks, mentor colleagues, and drive quality. But at each step, adversity eventually came, cutting promising chapters short.

2,058 Applications Later

After the last layoff, I believed my extensive portfolio and non-stop work on my projects would quickly land me a new role. But one year and 2,058 applications later, I am still searching. For the third time in my life, I am preparing to live in my car, moving my stuff into a storage unit, and bracing for what comes next. I have been here before, and I know what to expect.

Even with this unfortunate situation looming, I refuse to stop building, and I feel a certain relief every time a new idea or project is released into the world and comes to life.

The challenges I faced didn't create limits, they defined my approach. The isolation taught me to think from first principles. The odd jobs taught me discipline. The endless schedule taught me determination. Living off the grid taught me resourcefulness. Every chapter has been a lesson in turning scarcity into strength.

That's the story of how I got here and where I am now, eager to contribute, to build, and to solve problems. I invite you to see the work that this journey has made possible.

My Projects: petermsouzajr.com/portfolio
My Blog: petermsouzajr.com/blog
My Handbook for QA in the Age of AI: The Souza Method, H.U.M.N.