I'm Kaka Ruto, a Software Engineer who loves building for the web

I loved making things for as long as I can remember. Tinkering with computers was a favourite thing once I started having computers around me in my teenage years.

I wrote my first line of code when I was 19, in college. Before that, I knew not what computer programming was. This was an introduction to C programming class taught by one very passionate teacher. Needless to say, it quickly became my favourite.

After the introduction to C++ class in my second year of university taking a Bachelors of Science in Biomedical Engineering, I decided to drop the five year-long course in favour of software engineering, which, by the time I picked my phone to call my dad to share the news, I had already scourged the internet for info on what software engineering was and how to become one, and I was convinced that that is exactly what I wanted to be, and all I needed was a computer, internet and determination.

So I went for it! I deferred my studies, got myself a new laptop(on loan), and convinced my university's innovation committee that I was going to build a revolutionary product. They gave me a desktop computer, an office desk and a chair in a shared coworking space at the university's idea incubation centre - which was all I needed.

So the journey began. I learned to code and built my first product, a platform for students to find nearby accommodation. It took me a year as I was learning everything by myself.

Just as I was beginning to test the product with property owners, I got a very lucrative opportunity to join a fast-growing tech startup in Nairobi and, being fresh from college, broke and hungry for skills and a team, I couldn't say no. I stopped building and joined them. It was a turning point, I did learn a lot and met great people that I am still thankful for to date. I just wish I hadn't stopped building my little project!

I worked my way up from there, learning and using various technologies, but my main tool of trade has always been Ruby and Ruby on Rails, right from the university incubator days (yes, I built that little property-search product using Rails 4 in 2016)

The first international company I worked for was Boatflex, a boat rental company based in Copenhagen, Denmark. Then I worked for Gobble, a meal-kit prep company based out of San Francisco and then Plecco in South Carolina, US. I worked for all these companies remotely from my little house in Nairobi, Kenya.

In 2021, I got the opportunity to relocate and work for BettyBlocks in the Netherlands. This was monumental for me as it involved a lot of personal growth. Booting your whole life from one continent to another is a big shift! I'm glad I did it.

A year later, I got another opportunity to work for a fintech company in London, and I took it! Yeah, all the weather memes you've seen about London are true, and so are the rental prices.