Chemical Engineer Turned Web Dev Looks for Startup Fusion

At 18 years old, Tao Bo picked up his life in northeastern China and moved across the big pond to Atlanta. After graduating from Georgia Tech in chemical engineering, Bo pivoted career paths and chased after a career in tech. A recent graduate from Tech Talent South, this full stack developer is ready to cozy into a startup with room to soar.

Background:
I spent first 18 years of my life in Changchun, China. It is a quiet and beautiful city in northeastern China. However, it's always my desire to enter a bigger market and seek a better education. So after I graduated from high school, I came to Atlanta to pursue my bachelor's degree. I was majoring in chemical engineering at Georgia Tech for three years, during which I met and talked to many great people. I’m passionate about science and technology. And I love to take any opportunity to try out something that will make a difference. When I’m involved with a project, I want to do my best to achieve success. I feel the same way about what I do in my personal life.

What program did you just complete?
Code immersion program at Tech Talent South.

Experience:
I recently received my bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering from Georgia Tech. However, I wasn’t sure if it was the right career fit, so I wanted to try something different. I took some coding courses during college and it’s always interesting to write and build programs. So after my graduation, I took the code immersion program in Tech Talent South. From there, I learned all the basics for a full stack developer, including HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and Ruby on Rails. I also used SQLite and MySQL databases and application deployment with Heroku and AWS.

What did you build during your time in the course?
During Tech Talent South, I worked on a side-project where I built a forum for an online gaming community. The forum allows players to post messages and share screenshots with each other. I used Rails to build the app and Heroku with Amazon S3 to deploy the app.

What’s next on your list to learn?
.Net and PHP are widely used for web page developing. They are definitely on my list to learn next. Also, I’d like to get familiar with Linux system which is commonly used by developers.

What tech/tools are essential to you?
My laptop and Google are a must. I spent a lot of time learning online by myself and I find tutorials to be really helpful. Stack overflow is also a great community for troubleshooting.

How do you stay informed & on top of emerging trends?
I enjoy reading Atlanta Tech Blog and Atlanta Tech Village News. In fact, I put these two websites on my bookmarks bar.

Interested in startups?
Yes. I think it’s a great way to learn and get more experience. It’s easier to communicate with other people in a startup and productivity can be maximized without too much bureaucracy.

When are you available to start?
Now.