Meet the Mentor: Tony Kim

Meet Tony Kim

After 5 years working in oil and gas industry, Tony Kim is now a Senior Developer Advocate at MongoDB, supporting developers through content creation and development.

In his Meet the Mentor interview, he shares how a career setback became an opportunity to challenge himself and pursue something new, despite the unknowns and uncertainties. From being intimidated by code in college to embracing software engineering through bootcamps and consistent mentorship, his journey reflects persistence, adaptability, and determination. With a deep passion for mentorship, content creation, and community building, he offers valuable insights on embracing failure, navigating challenges, and the value of building connections in the tech industry.

Snapshot

Current Job Title: Senior Developer Advocate, and Flatiron Mentor

Current Employer: MongoDB

Past Employers: Southwest Airlines

LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/hyung-kim/

Github: github.com/hjkmines/BugView-MERN-Project & github.com/hjkmines

YouTube: www.youtube.com/@everytechtalk970/streams

Experience: 5+ years in Software Engineering

Technical/professional skills: Full-Stack Web Development (JavaScript, React.js, Node.js, MongoDB, PostgreSQL, AWS), Software Architecture and System Design, Developer Relations, Team and Project Management

Teaching/mentoring experience: “I have over 4+ years of teaching and mentoring students at Nucamp Coding Bootcamp and through my own company Hanawilo.”

Words of wisdom: “Learn to fail fast and early, that way, you know how to pivot and move quickly as this industry is always constantly changing.”

Favorite part of your job: “My favorite part of my job is to connect with developers across all over the world and helping them succeed in using technologies that enable them to accelerate their projects faster. Outside of work, I love to spend time exercising, cooking, and hanging out with friends!”

Q&A Transcript

Introduction: Who are you and what do you do now?

• Can you tell us a bit about yourself and what you’re working on these days?
  • I'm Tony, and I'm based out of Dallas, Texas. I'm currently working for MongoDB as a Senior Developer Advocate. My association with Flatiron School is that I went to Flatiron School back in 2020, and I prior to that, I worked in the oil and gas industry. Working for a big Houston company called Halliburton, I did that for about five years, and then I got laid off. I wanted to pursue something else and wanted to challenge myself into something different. But also, I wanted to build. I think that's one thing that I really started to do. And I thought Flatiron School was a great opportunity for that. I got a chance to essentially showcase my skill sets and go through the program. I did the one in Denver, and so that's where it all started back in 2020.
• What’s your role at MongoDB, and what excites you most about what you do there?
  • It's been about four months now that I've been at MongoDB. We're a database company, so every software engineer that works with data knows about SQL and then, of course, NoSQL databases. MongoDB is a leading NoSQL database. What I do specifically is a lot of content creation, helping developers understand how to use our products and use them in the most efficient way. And also, a lot of my work is doing development, but also strategically planning the content that developers would want to watch, read, and get a better understanding of our product.

Career Journey: How did you get here?

• Can you walk us through your career journey? What were some of the pivotal moments that shaped your path?
  • I had a pretty interesting path to where it all started. I was very fortunate to where, during COVID, it was the boom— so I rode that roller coaster when it all started. When I graduated from the bootcamp, I actually started interview prepping very, very early. I actually started to interview during week three or four of the coding bootcamp. One of the reasons why I did that is, I knew I wasn't going to really get that first job through those first couple interviews, but it gave me that exposure to know what it's like to be in an interview. Through those moments, I've learned what I needed to do better on and just be feedback-driven in terms of my next future interviews. That landed me my first job in Dallas. Moving from Denver, never been to Dallas, and had no thoughts of coming to Dallas, but here I am still five years after. I started at a startup. I worked at a startup that was pre-Series A. It had about 15 engineers at most. I got hired as a backend developer doing Node.js and I did that for about ten months. Then I got hired at Southwest Airlines, which was actually my second company. They reached out on LinkedIn. All my jobs in software has been purely through LinkedIn. For my second job, Southwest reached out, I went through that interview process, and I got an offer. So I moved on to southwest to work on enterprise-level software. I was a full stack developer so Node.js, React, AWS—everything that Flatiron School students use, I pretty much applied that knowledge at that company. And then recently, where I'm at, MongoDB, I've wanted to focus on content creation just because I've been an instructor for about four years, teaching code outside of my work through Flatiron School, but also through another bootcamp. I also own a company doing mentorship, and I really found passion in that as well. But I love to create content, so I really wanted to focus a lot on that on a professional sense in my career trajectory. That's kind of what led me to MongoDB. There was an opportunity on LinkedIn, I found it, interviewed and that's kind of where I am today.
• What inspired you to pursue a career in tech, and how did you land in your current role?
  • In college, I majored in petroleum engineering—nothing to do with code. I was actually very intimidated by code. We had a chance to take one coding class; it's like VBA, which is like an Excel-related code. But I was always intimidated by code. I really wish I would have done it sooner. I wanted to transition into it because, while I was in the oil and gas industry, we were working on an experimental project that had to do with some involvement of code. That was where I got my first exposure to saying, “Hey, let me try to revisit this again and see how I like it.” And it wasn't as bad as I thought. I don't know what happened during my college years—why I didn't like it as much, but the second time around, it just kind of started to connect. I felt like things started to fall in its place when I got laid off. That was my time where I had a chance to maybe pursue this new opportunity. Of course, it was kind of scary—a lot of unknowns and a lot of the bootcamp students do quit their jobs to pursue this full- time, so it is a huge transition. But that's what made me want to switch: one, I found interest in it, and two, I wanted to build things again. In my old job in the oil and gas industry, I didn't have that much exposure, and so doing that now is very, very satisfying. The way that I found my job currently is through LinkedIn. I had connections, and that’s kind of how it worked out.

Lessons Learned: What have you learned along the way?

• What’s one lesson or insight from your career that’s stuck with you and continues to guide you?
  • It's embracing failure. You're gonna face a lot of that during as a coder, developer, or full-stack engineer—whichever career path you go. Learn to embrace failure and don't be so discouraged by it. Whether that's through thousands of job applications that you submit and get rejected from every single one of them, or you do something that's pushed up to production and something happens—it's part of the lesson as being a junior developer to experience those things and learn from them. But don't be afraid to fail, because it's all part of the journey. And if you can understand how to make it better and also reflect on it, I think that's the most important part. Obviously, don't just kind of like set it to the side once you realize it. Immediately try to reflect on what you’ve learned from this failure and what you could do better. I think that's the opportunity that you can take with you—one that you won't get a lot of chances at. For me, I've experienced a lot of that with my business, too. Some of the businesses I've done, I've seen a lot of failures, and also just in life in general as well.
• Was there a moment where you faced a major challenge or failure, and how did you grow from it?
  • I think the biggest challenge I've had just from the last couple of years as being a developer is something I think a lot of people can relate to—it’s when you experience a new, foreign skill set. You can think of that as both good and bad. It's going to require change. Change is a very sensitive word because I think change tends to typically intimidate people, for better or  worse. For me, one of the challenges I had at my previous company was a change and shift in our work. We were so used to doing a regime—we were building this product we were so familiar with. I worked on the team that builds and maintains the aircraft schedule, so it was an internal software, and that's all we knew. That was our main product. But our shift went to another product that we had no knowledge of, complete foreign territory. That kind of intimidated people, Yes, it was challenging, but I think that's where you have to have a lot of growth mindset. And that's where I took the chance of stretching my mindset of asking people, asking the stakeholders, learning to build some levels of communication that I haven't done before. Also, one of the reasons this industry pays well is because you're solving a lot of unknowns. You're getting paid for the ambiguity that's there. That's where a lot of the software engineers learn and grow—by embracing change. I think that was the biggest growth challenge I've had. We were so used to doing something, and then now shifting that away to doing something completely different and foreign required a lot of shift in mindset. But also, at the same time, thinking about ways I can help familiarize myself in terms of communication, understanding the docs, and so on—requires that level of thinking.

Mentorship: Why did you decide to become a mentor?

• How did you first get connected with Flatiron School, and what drew you to the school?
  • When it comes to why I went to Flatiron School as a student, it’s because the curriculum itself—at least in Denver was very unique. The instructor at the time was Kyle, and he was a fantastic instructor. He allowed a lot of industry-related concepts during our coursework which was very important, and I really appreciated that. Also, Flatiron was a pretty big name at that time, too. A lot of people said good things about it, and that's what made me pursue enrolling in Flatiron School. And why I became a mentor here is, on a professional sense, I'm a developer, but at the same time, I have a lot of passion for helping the people that are going to be the next set of developers. I get a lot of gratification from seeing people grow and learn, but also be guided by industry professionals. Especially this industry, if you have insights to learn from professionals, I think that's the biggest asset you could have. You'll be so much far ahead in terms of your learning experience. Plus, that mentor can help guide you, help you save time by sharing what they did and the mistakes they made, and kind of replicate that. And so that way, the next set of mentees don't have to experience that, and they can just optimize it as they go.
• Was there someone who influenced your career path and who (knowingly or unknowingly) mentored you?
  • I'm not going to lie—I think watching a bunch of YouTube videos. I'm sure everyone else has thought about it too, just like the free food and those videos on YouTube where people like that's very motivating to see you can have that kind of like lifestyle. And working remote is a very big luxury because, prior to getting into tech, my life was very different. I was working night shifts, often 12-14 hour days, in the middle of nowhere in the oil field. And to be where I am now, where I'm working out of my room, it's incredible. So, I think personal motivation was one of the biggest. And of course, watching a bunch of YouTubers that's already been in the space has been a tremendous inspiration, for sure.
• If you could give one piece of advice to someone just starting out in tech, what would it be?
  • If I could just give one piece of advice, it’s connections, connections, connections. We're kind of out of this COVID era, and what's different now than during my time is that back then, whole in-person activity was non-existent. But now we're back to normal, I think. If you can find connections and just network—especially if you're in a very big tech hub like Austin, New York City, LA, San Francisco, there's so many conferences but also so many workshops that you can attend. It doesn't really matter your background, but if you can try to get as much exposure for your name and your network, I think that's the biggest piece of advice I can give to anyone: try to get to know as much people in the industry. It's not as big as you think. It's a pretty relatively small industry.

Future Focus: Where do you want to go next?

• What’s something new you’re learning or exploring right now, and why does it excite you?
  • The first part is my professional career path. Where do I want to go in the next five, ten years? I really want to work with mentoring in a more professional sense—being a leader in the tech industry. That could mean being a manager or director and helping shape the next level of developers, which is one of my aspirations on that side. On the second part, I've recently shut down my old business of mentorship, but I’m also looking at potentially doing something outside of that—getting back into the whole entrepreneurship level. I want to just get back into content creation of making coding a lot easier for people. That might be making YouTube videos visually. And I love teaching. Teaching is a huge part of my life, and I really, really enjoy doing that with students. So, my two aspirations of today are: one, to dabble back into entrepreneurship, and two, try to become a very strong leader that people can really admire, but also be influenced by.
• Are there any projects or goals you’re currently working on that you’re particularly passionate about?
  • What I'm working on is, we're having the shift of placing our digital content of blogs, videos, and things like that to where developers go. A lot of times, even bootcamp students, where they go is typically maybe not the actual product website, but maybe in a discovery site like Stack Overflow, Reddit, where communities flow and then discover their product in those avenues. That's one thing that's kind of very fun but also kind of very challenging and something I'm very interested in—figuring out how we broadcast that out to those audiences and help people understand how to use MongoDB. That's kind of what I'm working on there. It’s kind of the strategic initiatives but also just the content ideas of what people want to see for most. Now on the outside of that personal, I'm currently trying to develop some of my own content creation through my YouTube channel. I do have a YouTube channel where I kind of stopped it for a little bit right now, but I used to interview other professional engineers that are from Flatiron School mostly. I want to get back into just developing some content, and right now I'm building some that relate to the the same stack that Flatiron's doing, but in a more visual sense. I'm doing that just to kind of test it out and of see what people's understanding is and stuff.

Who should we interview next?

• Who should we interview next? This could be someone you know (a mentor or coworker), or it could be someone you learned from in another capacity (through a book, newsletter, blog, etc.).
  • When I started my first job, the person that hired me, Brian Hudson, pretty much gave me the green flag to hire me and gave me a shot. He actually worked with me at the company that I built and was a mentor there as well. He used to be an English teacher, went to the VP level of engineering at the startup, and recently stepped down to become a teacher again to pursue full- time teaching because that's what he loves to do. I would highly recommend trying to get an interview time slot with him because he has inspired me so much in terms of the outlook on software engineering and what's possible. He's built a company from the ground up to become a multi-million dollar company. I think getting that unique aspect is something that a lot of people don't have and would be very valuable to a lot of people.

Lightening Round Questions

• What’s something you’re listening to or reading right now? (It can be any genre and can be a book, audiobook, or podcast.)
  • It's a personal help book. It's called Atomic Habits. I'm like halfway through it. I'm listening to the audio book for it, but it's really good.
• What’s one product or tool you’re into right now?
  • It's my running watch. I think I'm like super geeked out on it for some reason. It's my go-to thing next to my phones.
• What date does your next cohort start?
  • My cohort starts in May 8th, so it's actually coming up in a couple of weeks. I'm really excited for that.
• Where can listeners find you?
  • Listeners can find me in two areas. One on my YouTube channel, which I'll share with you and also on my LinkedIn. I'm very, very active on LinkedIn. I share a lot of the content there as well, so you can find me on there.
• What made you smile this week?
  • It's Friday. It's TGIF!