That photo was taken in Seattle on a work trip for Amazon. But this story starts somewhere very different.

I was sixteen, it was a Saturday, and it was 6am.

I’d asked a friend to help me get a summer job at his aunt's business: offloading deliveries, easy money, hundred quid a week. Instead, my phone rang. It was his uncle, interviewing me on the spot for the delivery role. Somewhere in the middle, I said I was “good with computers.” I meant I could use one. He thought I meant computer science.

He paused and pivoted. He mentioned a company project: an app, and much better pay.

Did I have a notepad? “Yeah,” I said, sprinting up the stairs to find one. He started describing the app while I scribbled words I didn’t understand: backend, framework, prototype. By the end of the call I had a notepad full of jargon and a week to build a demo.

I had no business saying yes. I had never written a line of code in my life.

But I said yes anyway.

The next seven days I barely left my room. I didn’t sleep properly. I learned what an app was, what a prototype was, and how to build one. By the end of the week, I had a working demo. They loved it and offered me a place on the team.

I turned it down. 

Sixth form was about to start, and the project was a two-year commitment. But I didn't walk away with nothing. I walked away with the lesson: saying yes before you're ready is what gets you the opportunity in the first place.

That week didn’t make me an aspiring developer, it made me one. Which brings me to a word I want you to delete from your vocabulary.

If you spend any time on LinkedIn you’ve seen it. Aspiring software engineer. Aspiring product manager. I get it. People want to signal direction without overclaiming. But “aspiring” is a way of telling the world you’d like to be a thing, while not yet doing the thing.

Here’s the secret nobody tells you: nobody is going to upgrade you from “aspiring” to “actual”. If you’ve been building like a software engineer, you’re a software engineer.

After that summer, I didn't stop. I built and published a game called Tile Sprint. I built and sold a website to a doctor's clinic. I built an AI fitness coaching TV app. There were others in between.

That's the part I want aspiring apprentices to hear. The reason I got into the Amazon Solution Architect Degree Apprenticeship wasn't because I'd convinced anyone I had potential. It was because by the time I applied, there was a trail. Stuff I'd built.

Now I work as a Solutions Architect at Amazon, helping app developers bring their products to millions of customers on Fire TV and other Amazon devices. It's a degree apprenticeship, meaning I'm earning a full degree while working in the role.

You don’t need a CS degree to start that trail. You don’t need a perfect first project. You need one weekend where you stop watching “Day in the Life of an Apprentice” videos and start acting like someone who gets apprenticeship offers. The information is free, and so are the tools. Just build something.

So if you’re reading this and you’re “aspiring”, drop the word. Not just from your bio, but from your mind entirely. Open a project tonight. A bad one. A small one.

Don’t aspire. Be.

Dominic Tigreros-Bosini

Solutions Architect Degree Apprentice @ Amazon | Creator of Tile Sprint (400k+ views) | Cloud & Software | AWS • React • JavaScript

You can find out more and connect with Dominic on LinkedIn.