#169 From fast food worker to cybersecurity engineer with Tae'lur Alexis

On this week's episode of the podcast, freeCodeCamp founder Quincy Larson interviews Tae'lur Alexis. She's a developer and security analyst. Instead of going to college, Tae'lur spent years working various fast food and retail jobs.

Tae'lur taught herself Python and JavaScript using freeCodeCamp and worked as a software engineer for 5 years before specializing in security engineering. Now instead of building applications, she breaks them.

We talk about:
- Making ends meet working McDonalds in Florida
- How she taught herself programming using freeCodeCamp and the #100DaysOfCode challenge
- Leveraging local meetups to make developer friends
- Moving to Thailand and working remotely

Support for this podcast comes from a grant from Wix Studio. Wix Studio provides developers tools to rapidly build websites with everything out-of-the-box, then extend, replace, and break boundaries with code. Learn more at https://wixstudio.com.

Support also comes from the 11,384 kind folks who support freeCodeCamp through a monthly donation. You can join these chill human beings and help our charity's mission by going to donate.freecodecamp.org

Links we talk about during our conversation:
- Tae'lur's website and blog articles: https://taeluralexis.com
- Tae'lur's YouTube channel about working remotely in Bangkok: https://www.youtube.com/@TaelurAlexis
- Tae'lur on Twitter: https://x.com/TaelurAlexis