The Coder’s High: Anthony Yono

Anthony Yono (He/Him)

Software Developer, Quality Center of Excellence

I’m a first-generation Chaldean American born and raised in Metro Detroit. In 1977, my parents migrated from Iraq during their honeymoon in Egypt. They left Iraq due to religious persecution and came to America to give their future children a better life.

My parents taught me to appreciate living in the United States. They always told me: “you were one decision away from being born and raised in a village in Iraq.”

This has always stuck with me. I never take being born and raised in the United States for granted. If I’d been born in Iraq, I’d have been raised during two separate wars and witnessed firsthand the acts of violence against my people afterward – not to mention zero opportunities for higher education.

Growing up, I watched my parents work hard every day to provide for our family. My father had a mechanical engineering degree back in Iraq but was unable to bring his degree to the United States. He found a job as a plant worker and was always working overtime – taking little to no vacation days. As my father worked around the clock, my mother put many hours into her job at a salon.

My grandmother played a large role in raising me and my siblings. She taught me a lot about the country we were from, our culture and how to speak our language – Chaldean. While at my grandmother’s house, I spent a lot of time on the computer playing video games. Through video games, I first discovered my love for computer science.

After high school, I didn’t attend college right away and worked in a family friend’s liquor store instead. Working in a liquor store was tough, back-breaking work for little pay. I realize that if I didn’t pursue higher education, this was a life I could be stuck in.

I had no clue what degree to pursue in college at first. After talking to family members, I was told to try and get a degree in computer science due to my passion as a gamer. After being up past 4 a.m. working on programming projects, I discovered “coder’s high” – an intense feeling of being absorbed in my work and not turning off my computer until I was satisfied. After discovering I loved this feeling, I knew this was the career for me.

I graduated from Oakland University in Metro Detroit and started my career at General Motors straight out of college. I was lucky to have mentors and internships that taught me learning doesn’t stop after college — advice I’d give to anyone starting their career in IT. Technology is always changing — if you’re not up to date on the latest and greatest tech out there, you’ll quickly become stale and outdated.

In my case, this meant pursing a graduate degree in software engineering during my time at GM. I’m very fortunate to work for a company like GM that encourages learning. GM does not only provide tuition reimbursement to salary employees but also offers a ton of internal training materials – as well as subscriptions to learning platforms.

Coming to GM, I had no clue what to expect. When I applied, I had no clue where I’d be placed within the company and was nervous I wouldn’t be good enough. Even though I had just graduated college and this was my first full-time job, my friends, family and colleagues had faith in me. They assured me that even though I might not know anything about the job at GM, I should give it my all and try my best to learn everything I can.

The first day, I was very nervous. I met my first manager and she let me know my role was doing user interface test automation. I had no idea I was getting placed on a team using technology I’d already used during my internships. I was the most experienced New College Hire (NCH) on my team and was able to use the knowledge I gained from my internships to help my colleagues.

Today, I’m part of GM’s Quality Center of Excellence to help bring higher quality to all projects within GM. I’m also part of the Talent Acquisition group for the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) Employee Resource Group (ERG). After almost seven years in application development, my advice to anyone at any point in their career is to keep building themselves by always learning and asking a lot of questions.

At times when work may be stressful, I stop and think about how far I’ve come – and everything my parents went through to get me here – and I keep moving forward.