The First Time My Code Ran By Itself, I Knew This Was Real

The browser opened by itself. The cursor moved on its own. Fields filled in, buttons clicked, pages loaded -- all without anyone touching the keyboard. Husna sat there watching her Selenium code run for the first time and felt something she had never felt in any of her other attempts at a career.

This was interesting. This was fun. This was real.

"When I first time riding the Selenium code, I feel like wow, this is very very interesting thing to me."

Before that moment, Husna had tried everything. Babysitting. Amazon FBA. Renting out cars. She had a business administration degree and no idea what to do with it. Nothing stuck. Nothing made her want to sit down and keep working after the day was over. Then she wrote a few lines of Java, watched a browser move on its own, and realized she had been looking in all the wrong places.

Trying Everything, Finding Nothing

Husna lives in Orlando with her husband. She came to the United States on a J-1 visa as a student. After school, she did what a lot of people do when they are trying to figure things out -- she tried whatever was in front of her.

She babysat. She launched an Amazon FBA business. She rented out cars through a service like Turo. People told her these things had potential, that she could make money from them. And maybe some people can. But for Husna, none of it worked. None of it clicked. She was busy, but she was not building anything.

She had a degree in business administration, but she could not figure out what she actually wanted to do with it. The degree gave her a piece of paper but not a direction.

Her brother was a developer. He had a computer science degree. He knew programming languages. He had a real career in tech. Husna watched him and thought that world was not for her. You had to be a certain kind of person to do that. You needed a CS degree. You needed to be naturally good at math and logic. She never believed she could do it.

"My brother, he's the developer. He's known a lot of so many programming languages. He graduates from the Computer Sciences, but I don't believe myself that I can do this."

That belief kept her out of tech for years.

Her Husband Told Her to Go Somewhere Else

Husna's husband is a QA -- a quality assurance engineer. He works in tech. But he did not graduate from CYDEO. He went through a different program.

This is the part that says something about the training: her husband, who was already a working QA, told her not to go to his program. He told her to go to CYDEO instead.

Why? Because his program did not have the things that make the difference. No mentoring. No group work. No close-knit team structure. He saw what his friends who had graduated from CYDEO knew, and he could see the gap. They had more knowledge. They had better support. They worked together in ways his program never offered.

"Even he not graduated from CYDEO, he's like you should take this course because they have mentoring, they have very close and they're working as a group team, which is -- his course didn't have these sections."

So Husna signed up. She dedicated herself for seven months. She stopped hanging out with friends. She said no to weekends. She made the program her full-time life.

"It's a Scam"

The pushback came from everywhere.

Most people in her life did not believe it. Seven months of training and you get a six-figure job? That sounded impossible. Her family did not buy it. Her brother -- the developer with the CS degree -- did not buy it either. If he could not make that kind of money with a four-year degree, how could his sister do it in seven months?

Friends said the word outright: scam.

"Most of people didn't believe me. How do the seven months, just a period of time, gonna turn you to get a six-figure job? It's kind of scam."

Husna did not let it stop her. She had proof. She knew people who had graduated from the program and gotten jobs. Not one or two people. Thousands. She held onto that when the doubt got loud.

Java Is Fun

This is where Husna's story becomes different from most career change stories. A lot of people learn to code because they have to. It is a means to an end -- a better salary, a remote job, a way out of a bad situation. They get through the material. They pass the tests. They get hired. But they never fall in love with the work itself.

Husna fell in love with it.

She describes coding as fun. Not "tolerable" or "manageable" or "worth it for the paycheck." Fun. She could study day and night without getting bored. She wanted to find solutions. She wanted to write code. She wanted to figure things out.

"Java is fun. Coding is fun. I found myself doing the fun thing. I'm not bored. I can study day and night."

The first month focused on Java fundamentals. Kuzzat taught the foundations -- what code is, how it runs, the very basics. Husna had no idea what a line of code even looked like. But the way the material was structured, starting simple and building step by step, gave her a foundation she could stand on.

Then came the moment everything changed. The automation kicked in. She wrote Selenium code and watched the browser do things by itself. Clicking. Typing. Navigating dropdown menus. All automatic.

"You see it's click by itself. It's putting dropdown. It's run by itself. This is so cool. I have no idea that how it actually is so simple, so easy. Everybody can do it."

That was when she knew. This was not just a paycheck. This was what she was supposed to be doing.

Amazon FBA Made Her a Better QA

Here is something nobody expects: Husna's failed business ventures actually made her better at her job.

As a QA, your job is to think like a customer. You test software by asking: what could go wrong? What would a real person do? What would break this? You have to imagine every scenario before the product reaches someone who is paying for it.

Husna's time doing Amazon FBA taught her exactly that. She had read customer reviews. She had thought about what makes a product good or bad from the buyer's perspective. She understood the business side of quality.

"What I learned in the Amazon FBA -- I was thinking, if I am in the business position, what should I do as the QA to deliver the high quality product? The background in the past is teaching me how to become a good QA."

Nothing she had done before was wasted. It just had not found the right home yet.

Brainstorming Like It Is the Real Job

One thing Husna keeps coming back to is the group work. CYDEO puts students into teams. They study together. They solve problems together. And when they get stuck, they do exactly what working engineers do -- they brainstorm.

Five people around a problem. Nobody knows the answer. So they Google it. They open ChatGPT. They search for resources outside the classroom. They try different approaches until something works.

"Five people brainstorming -- we cannot solve the problem. Doesn't make us curious? We go Google it. We not limit our knowledge to just only CYDEO. We go Google it, we even open the ChatGPT."

Husna says this is exactly what happens on the job too. Real QA engineers do not have all the answers memorized. They research. They experiment. They ask each other. The fact that she practiced this during training meant she was not shocked when she started working and her team did the same thing.

The Offer Did Not Make Her Happy

This is the most honest part of Husna's story.

She got multiple job offers. She even got an interview from a company in Thailand -- they interviewed her in English and offered her the position. Her husband did not want her to move overseas, so she stayed and took a US-based role. But the offers came.

And she did not feel happy.

Not because something was wrong. But because it did not feel real yet. She had never had a job like this. She had no real experience in the field. She kept waiting for the other shoe to drop. What if she could not actually do the work? What if they figured out she was new?

"When I got job I'm not feeling that happy. I just don't know how exactly it was gonna be because I don't actually have the real experience."

The happiness came later. It came when she saw her first paycheck.

That was the moment everything became real. Not the offer letter. Not the congratulations. The direct deposit.

"When I see my check, I feel like -- oh, I cannot believe myself. I can do it."

She stared at that number and finally believed what she had been telling herself for seven months. She could do this. She had done this. The money was proof.

Daily Stand-Ups and Walking Breaks

Husna describes her work days now and they sound exactly like what she was taught to expect. Morning meeting -- a daily stand-up, same as what CYDEO practiced in class. If she has blockers, she tells the team. They solve it together. Then she works on her tasks.

She makes a point about working from home that a lot of people overlook: you have to move. She stands up. She switches rooms. She walks around. Sitting in one spot all day will freeze your body. So she mixes it up, takes walks, and stays active.

At the end of the day, she walks to refresh herself. She loves her routine. She loves what she does.

Her first day was nervous -- she woke up early, her mind was racing. But the company was welcoming. They had onboarding. They had training. Everybody was supportive. The fear faded quickly once she realized the daily stand-ups and team structure were exactly what she had practiced for seven months.

The Friends You Lose, the Life You Gain

Husna is honest about the cost. During those seven months, she lost touch with friends. She did not go out on weekends. She did not hang out much. There were events she skipped, invitations she turned down, free time she gave up.

She was lucky -- her husband supported her financially, so she could study full-time. She knows not everyone has that. Some of her classmates had three kids and part-time jobs and still made it through. They supported each other. They studied as a group. They taught each other, and she says teaching someone else is when you really learn something deeply.

"You will find like you will lose some friends when you are studying hard in that seven months. You don't go hang out with your friends much."

Seven months of sacrifice. Then a career, a paycheck, and a life she actually wants.

What You Can Take From Husna's Story

• Your failed attempts are not wasted. Husna tried babysitting, Amazon FBA, and car rentals before finding QA. Each one taught her something -- especially the customer perspective from Amazon FBA that made her a better tester. If your past ventures did not work out, they still gave you skills you have not applied yet.
• You do not need a CS degree to code. Husna's brother is a developer with a computer science degree. She had a business administration degree and zero tech background. She still learned Java, built Selenium frameworks, and got hired. The degree is not the barrier. The willingness to learn is.
• The paycheck makes it real. Getting a job offer can feel abstract, especially when you have no experience in the field. If you feel numb or scared after getting an offer, that is normal. The confidence comes after you start working and prove to yourself that you belong there.
• Study with other people. Husna credits the group brainstorming sessions as a turning point. Five people stuck on a problem will solve it faster than one person staring at a screen alone. Find study partners. Teach each other. That is also how the real job works.
• Dedicate a season, not a lifetime. Seven months. Husna gave up social life, weekends, and free time for seven months. That is not forever. That is a season. If you are willing to sacrifice one season of comfort, you can build a career that lasts decades.