From slacker to Google programmer

MANZINI – Having been introduced about four years ago, the Young Climber Summit has recorded success stories in the transformation of quite a number of young lives.

This was evidenced  during the 2013 Young Climber Summit held at the Southern African Nazarene University, which drew scores of young people from all walks of life. Young people came to listen and take advice from the success stories.
Young Climber was established in 2004 by Wandile Hlatshwayo with other co-founders Mcedisi Sikhondze, Ntokozo Bhembe and Sakhile Dlamini.

 One of the success stories was that of a young man who made it to Google as a software programmer. Here is his story:
“My name is Sakhile Percy Dlamini. I was born in 1986, in Gundvwini. I was born into a rather big family. I did my primary education at Ethembeni Primary School, where both my parents teach. We grew up doing a lot of farming, which I grew up not really a fan of. My dad used to have, on an annual basis, an average of about 40-50 cattle. We also did some crop farming of about five hectares. It was a bit tough. Being in that kind of environment, I think I just did not know much about the academic life. Unfortunately I failed my Standard V, so I had to repeat. Fortunately I passed it the second time, with a First Class.

I then attended Evelyn Baring High School for my Form I to Form V.
In Form I, I continued being the average pupil I always was. When I was in Form II, I found a motivational tape in my dad’s car that changed my life. One of the things it spoke about is how there is a sleeping giant within every one of us. That’s when I really started working hard. It was never an every night thing, it actually took a lot of time to see an improvement in my academics. I remember that I was never actually number one in my class in the JC examinations. I had the dream of being  in the top 10, unfortunately I did not make it. I was determined to be in the top 10 in Form V though. Fortunately, I was in a class with very good pupils, who were really motivational. Six pupils in my class ended up making it to the top 10, and that was the class of 2004. I was position six.
After my Form V, I applied for the Waterford programme.

Interviews

We were invited for interviews around April. These were the scholarships to study abroad. Unfortunately I did not make it. I did the interview again in June/July where they told me I did not do well. Fortunately they called me after a month and they told me that it was actually a mistake, I had passed the interview. I was already enrolled at the University of Swaziland at Kwaluseni. I was enrolled in the B.SC programme. I left the university though at the end of the Semester after I learned that Waterford had offered me a place to study.

At Waterford I did my IB. It was challenging. It was really hard to see how I was going to meet my goals by the end of the two years. Due to the difficulty of the programme, more especially Physics, I decided to study it, spending an hour everyday. Fortunately that hard work did pay off, because I ended up passing well at Waterford as well.
Waterford helps pupils with college applications. They helped me apply to about seven schools; unfortunately I got rejected by all of them, except for Colorado College. Normally this doesn’t happen, but I think the reason it happened is because I did not take the application process seriously.
At Colorado College, I majored in Computer Science and Mathematics.

I did Computer Science as an exploration, I had no reason for doing it other than that I just wanted to try something new. It was really challenging because I had never done it before. I never failed it, but I found myself working extra hard to pass it. Being used to getting As in the past, more especially in the subjects I cared about, it was really frustrating to get a C in Computer Science. One of the things that I think helped me, was to make it a hobby of some sort. Even then I still felt like I was average. I thought about quitting Computer Science at least twice when I was in College. Due to my lack of confidence in my craft, I really wanted to do it again at an undergraduate level.

I applied to Columbia University and I was  accepted, but unfortunately I did not have enough money to pay. My next alternative was to find a job, which was a real hustle. In the USA alone, I think I applied to about 300 jobs, but less than five of them really got back to me and Google was among them. I started doing the interview with Google last year August and was hired on March 4. My interview was in three different stages. The first one was a phone interview, a screening one.

The next one, which I did when I was here in Swaziland, was towards the end of September. The next one after that was in January 10, it was an on site interview, where I was interviewed by four different people. I had to solve problems on the board.
I’m really grateful to have gotten the opportunity to work for Google. It really came at a time when I needed that kind of a financial muscle. I will officially begin work at Google at the beginning of October. That is my story.”

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