From Virtual Reality to the Facts of Life: The Offer and the £72,000 Journey 4 Hours After Resigning

The Offer and the £72,000 Trip 4 Hours After Resigning When I walked out the door I thought, "What do I do now?" I was thinking... I didn't have next month's rent in my pocket. I was only relying on the work I was doing, my technical knowledge and the effort I had put in until that moment.

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I returned home in the evening. As a hope, I shared a simple update on my social media accounts announcing that I was leaving my job. I had no expectations.

But just 4 hours later, a message popped up on my notification screen that changed the course of my life: "I saw you leave. Shall we talk?"

The person who sent the message was the founder of a UK-based startup. He was following me from a distance. We made a phone call right after. The conversation progressed so quickly and clearly that for a moment I even thought it wasn't real, it was a joke.

They wanted a demo from me. In return, they were offered both a large contract and a work visa sponsorship in the UK.

There was only one problem: I neither had a decent computer nor a compatible device that could test the desired Augmented Reality (AR) demo. (At that time, there were no LiDAR sensors that made our job as easy as they are now, we had to solve everything with pure camera image and processor power.)

All I had were two SDKs that Google and Apple had recently introduced to the industry and whose documentation was sketchy: ARCore and ARKit.

Impossible Demo and Sleepless Nights

Today you can say "ChatGPT, write me ground detection code with ARKit". But at that time, there wasn't even proper support for these SDKs on Unreal Engine. In forums, people ask each other "Why isn't this function working?" he asked, but couldn't get an answer.I scanned all the documentation line by line. I learned how to use SDKs through trial and error. I stayed up nights and created a demo with the limited hardware I had. I printed out the APK and sent it.

One morning that week, I saw the first initial payment in my account. And also a photo: My desk prepared for me in the office in England, the latest model equipment...

Everything was like a dream. But life is what happens while you're making plans.

Visa Impasse and Remote Administration

We applied for the UK Tier-1 (Exceptional Talent) visa with great excitement. We tried exactly 3 times. Each time I received rejection e-mails for ridiculous bureaucratic reasons.

Again, with great excitement, we applied for the UK Tier-1 (Exceptional Talent) visa. We tried our luck 3 times in exactly 3 years. Every time we hit those walls where logic ends and bureaucracy begins.

The first reason for rejection was a complete tragicomedy: The Consulate argued that a talented software developer should have "his own private website". I had a site, but since its infrastructure was WordPress, they found it "not technical enough" and rejected it.

We didn't give up, we tried again. In our last application, the rejection letter was even more brutal: It was claimed that "I could not generate enough income" for the company. However, the projects I developed remotely constituted the main backbone of the company.

Together with a Japanese software developer friend of mine who did not have a visa, we worked on the same codebase from two different ends of the world. I managed state-of-the-art 360-degree recording devices remotely. I coordinated the team. I coded the backend and moved to the mobile side. In fact, there was no Figma at that time, I drew UI designs using Sketch on Mac, received the revisions, and then put them into code.

I didn't sleep at night. The stubbornness to succeed outweighed my tiredness.

The Sad Truth: Technical Perfection Is Not EnoughAt the end of 3 years, I had accumulated a total of £72,000 in earnings. This was an incredible amount of money under the conditions of Türkiye at that time.

But one morning, the company decided to cease operations.

Why? Looking back, I think I may have been one of the reasons for that closure.

We had established technically perfect systems. Algorithms, backend architecture, mathematics... It all worked like clockwork. But I didn't know one thing: User Experience (UX) and Interface (UI).

Due to my lack of experience, I had designed interfaces that "worked" but were "ugly". No matter how many engineering marvels you create in the background, the only thing the user sees is that button. If that button is not in the right place, if that color does not inspire confidence, the product will not sell. And it didn't sell.

Two Legacies in My Pocket

At the end of those 3 years, I was left with two things:

£72,000: Capital that I don't know how to manage because I don't have financial literacy, but it gives me great freedom. (I will tell the story of this and the financial mistakes I made in the next article.)

A Priceless Lesson: A product is more than just code. Being "full-stack" does not only mean writing both backend and frontend; It also means understanding the user and the market.

Sometimes opportunities come at the wrong time, and sometimes you are not ready for that opportunity yet. But if I had not done that demo that day, I would neither have the capital in my pocket nor this experience that taught me "what not to do".

To be continued in the next article...

"I Earned £72,000 But Could I Manage It? The Financial Exam of a Young Software Developer"