The scent of rosewater and melted sugar hangs thick in the Istanbul morning air, mingling with the metallic clang of copper scales and the rhythmic calls of vendors. My fingers, sticky with pistachio paste, move automatically—folding, cutting, stacking lokum into perfect cubes. This was my world five years ago: a small stall in the Grand Bazaar where time moved like slow-pouring syrup.
This isn’t a career guide. It’s the story of how I shattered that sugar-dusted reality and rebuilt myself—first written in Turkish between market shifts, now translated directly for you. Some sentences may feel uneven, like undissolved sugar lumps in tea, but that’s precisely how I experienced them.
The transition from kneading Turkish delight to debugging JavaScript wasn’t just about changing jobs. It meant reconfiguring my entire existence—my worldview, my home, my relationships, even the way my brain processes problems. Where market haggling once required reading subtle eyebrow raises, tech standups demanded parsing technical jargon through my non-native English.
What you’re about to read preserves every raw edge of that transformation. The awkward phrasing? That’s me struggling to explain coding concepts using vocabulary previously reserved for describing baklava layers. The emotional whiplash? Authentic culture shock from moving between the warm chaos of Turkish bazaars and the structured silence of German tech offices.
Medium members can continue reading the full story—including the moment a customer’s thrown lokum became the catalyst for everything—but this free version contains the essence: career changes aren’t just about learning new skills. They’re about becoming someone new while carrying fragments of who you were, like pistachio crumbs in a developer’s keyboard.
Broken Sugar Dust and Awakening Code
The copper scales clinked against the marble countertop as I weighed another portion of lokum, my fingers sticky with rosewater syrup. Five years ago, this was my morning ritual – waking before dawn to arrange the jewel-colored sweets in geometric patterns at our family’s stall in Istanbul’s Grand Bazaar. The scent of pistachio and lemon zest would cling to my clothes long after closing time, a fragrant reminder of generations before me who had kneaded these same confections.
Most customers came for the classics – the pink cubes dusted with powdered sugar or the emerald green varieties studded with walnuts. But I took pride in experimenting with new flavors, secretly documenting the recipes in a notebook stained with syrup spots. Between serving tourists haggling over prices and restocking the display cases, I’d steal moments to wipe my hands on my apron and scribble observations about texture adjustments or spice blends.
Then came the afternoons when the market’s rhythm slowed. While my uncle napped behind the curtain dividing our stall, I’d pull out the secondhand laptop I’d saved six months to buy. Its keys were flecked with sugar crystals no matter how often I cleaned them. That’s when I first typed the words that would eventually unravel my world: “how to change your life when you feel stuck.”
The search results showed articles about meditation and travel blogs, but one link kept reappearing – stories of people who’d taught themselves to code. I clicked through profiles of women who’d transitioned from teaching, nursing, even farming into tech careers. Their before-and-after photos didn’t interest me as much as their descriptions of problem-solving – how debugging reminded one former baker of perfecting cake recipes through trial and error.
That evening, as I counted the day’s earnings amidst the fading shouts of rug merchants packing up their wares, something shifted. The copper coins felt heavier in my palm, their edges pressing crescent moons into my skin. For the first time, I wondered if the scales I used to measure lokum ingredients could balance two versions of myself – the girl who knew exactly how much starch thickens syrup to the perfect consistency, and someone who might speak the language of machines with equal fluency.
Little did I know then how thoroughly that curiosity would dissolve the powdered sugar coating of my predictable days. The keyboard’s sterile glow seemed worlds away from our stall’s warm lantern light, yet both demanded precision, patience, and the willingness to start over when things crumbled. What began as idle searches during slow market hours would soon become midnight coding sessions where I discovered that writing instructions for computers shared an unexpected kinship with crafting confections – both requiring exact measurements, both capable of collapsing with one misplaced character or degree of overheating.
Looking back now from my desk as a junior developer in Berlin, I recognize the quiet rebellion in those stolen moments. Between customers arguing over prices and relatives questioning when I’d settle down, that sugar-dusted laptop became my secret portal. Each line of code I struggled to understand felt like deciphering a recipe from another dimension – one where my worth wasn’t measured in kilos of lokum sold, but in problems solved and concepts mastered. The market’s cacophony of haggling voices faded when I focused on making a webpage button change color, just as the scent of boiling syrup had once drowned out my teenage daydreams.
This wasn’t merely about career change. It was the first crack in the carefully constructed identity I’d inherited – the dutiful daughter who could calculate a 15% discount in her head while wrapping baklava boxes. That flickering laptop screen showed me shadows of alternate futures where my hands might create things that couldn’t be eaten or weighed or bargained over. Where success wouldn’t be measured in coins clinking into a cashbox but in commits pushed to repositories few would ever see.
The sugar still clinging to my keyboard that night was more than a messy accident – it was the physical bridge between my known world and the one I’d only begun imagining. Little did I know how thoroughly that crystalline dust would migrate from my fingertips to my thoughts, sweetening the bitterness of imposter syndrome that would later come with entering tech as a non-native English speaker. But that’s another chapter of the story…
The Sugar-Splattered Moment That Changed Everything
It was a typical Friday at the Grand Bazaar – the air thick with the scent of rosewater and burnt sugar, my fingers sticky from kneading another batch of lokum. The copper scales clinked as I weighed out portions for a regular customer, an elderly man who always demanded “just one more piece” for free. But that day, a new face appeared at my stall – a well-dressed businessman barking orders at his phone while gesturing vaguely at the pistachio rolls.
‘Three kilos. Now.’ He barely looked up from his screen. When I quoted the price, his head snapped up like I’d thrown water at him. ‘That’s robbery!’ The words hit harder than the wad of cash he eventually threw on the counter. As I carefully wrapped his order, he grabbed the box and – before I could react – hurled it against the stone wall behind me. Sticky cubes rained down like grotesque confetti. ‘Your cheating deserves no better!’ he spat before disappearing into the crowd.
For twenty minutes I stood frozen, staring at the ruined sweets slowly collecting flies. Something about the way the sunlight caught the crystallized sugar shards made me see my whole life with terrible clarity – the endless haggling, the condescension, the way my economics degree gathered dust while I smiled through daily humiliations. That night, instead of counting inventory, I found myself typing ‘career change for women over 30’ into my ancient laptop.
What appeared changed everything: a TED Talk by a former schoolteacher turned software engineer. Her hands moved across the keyboard like mine once did shaping lokum – precise, purposeful. ‘Coding is just problem-solving in another language,’ she said, and something in my chest unlocked. Before dawn, I’d signed up for Codecademy’s free trial, my notebook filling with terms like ‘HTML’ and ‘CSS’ between grocery lists and supplier contacts.
Three things became clear in those raw, coffee-fueled nights:
- The anger wouldn’t fade – but I could redirect it into energy for change
- My bazaar-honed skills translated – patience (dealing with difficult customers), precision (measuring syrup temperatures), and creative problem-solving (stretching limited ingredients)
- This wasn’t just about careers – it was about reclaiming agency in a world that expected certain women to stay sweet and compliant
The keyboard felt alien under my flour-dusted fingers at first. But with each completed lesson, I regained something I hadn’t realized I’d lost – the thrill of learning without permission, of building something that couldn’t be thrown against a wall in contempt. Little did I know the real challenges awaited: cultural barriers in tech spaces, the loneliness of being a non-native English speaker in coding communities, and the identity whiplash of straddling two worlds. But that’s a story for the next chapter…
What was your breaking point moment? Share in the comments – was it a person, a realization, or something quieter?
Learning to Speak Through a Keyboard
The glow of my laptop screen replaced the warm lantern light of the Istanbul marketplace. My fingers, once dusted with powdered sugar from shaping lokum, now hovered over keys that felt as foreign as the German autumn outside my Berlin apartment. This wasn’t just about learning to code—it was about learning to think, communicate, and exist in an entirely new language.
When Comments Lost in Translation
My first pull request should have been a proud moment. After weeks of self-study, I’d finally contributed actual code to our team project. But when the senior developer’s feedback appeared, my stomach dropped. Every single one of my English comments had been rewritten. Not the code—just the explanations meant to help my colleagues understand my thought process.
“The logic works perfectly,” my team lead said gently during our 1:1, “but the phrasing sounds… unusual to native speakers.” I later realized my comments read like direct Turkish translations: overly poetic where technical precision was needed, oddly formal in casual contexts, and full of cultural references that made no sense to my international team.
The Cultural Code Behind Communication
The real awakening came during my first code review. In Turkey, I’d built relationships through elaborate greetings and personal inquiries before business discussions. So when I began my feedback session with “Dear sister, how was your weekend?” to a German female colleague, the uncomfortable silence that followed taught me more about workplace norms than any employee handbook.
Technical communication, I discovered, has its own cultural grammar:
- Precision over politeness: Where I’d write “Perhaps we might consider…”, my teammates preferred “Change X to Y because…”
- Context as king: My instinct to explain concepts through stories (“Imagine this function is like a baklava tray…”) confused more than clarified
- The hierarchy of knowledge: My marketplace habit of deferring to senior team members made me hesitate to suggest improvements, even when I spotted actual bugs
Finding My Hybrid Voice
Six months in, a breakthrough came during a particularly frustrating debugging session. As I muttered Turkish curses at my stubborn code, a Polish teammate overheard and laughed—then taught me how to swear in three Slavic languages. In that moment, I realized my strength wasn’t in perfecting “native-like” communication, but in bringing my multicultural perspective to problem-solving.
I began intentionally blending approaches:
- Technical Turkish: Keeping a notebook of how Turkish thought patterns could solve coding problems differently (e.g., our language’s vowel harmony influencing how I structure CSS classes)
- Comment templates: Creating reusable English phrasing for common documentation needs, reviewed by native-speaking colleagues
- Cultural bridging: When explaining complex concepts, using simple metaphors that work across cultures (“This database relation works like a metro transfer station”)
The Unexpected Advantage
What initially felt like a weakness became my secret weapon. My marketplace experience taught me to read subtle cues in customer behavior—a skill that made me unusually good at:
- Anticipating user experience issues in our software
- Spotting edge cases that others overlooked
- Mediating conflicts between team members with different communication styles
The same brain that once calculated lokum inventory ratios now optimized API response times. The patience developed through endless price negotiations helped me navigate code reviews. And that “unusual” phrasing? It occasionally produced documentation that non-native English speakers on our team found clearer than the “proper” versions.
Bug Is My New Turkish Delight
Six months into my first developer job, I sat staring at a blinking cursor with my stomach in knots. The pull request comment read: “This implementation has logical flaws. Needs complete rewrite.” My hands hovered over the keyboard like they used to hover above simmering sugar syrup – terrified that one wrong move would ruin everything.
Then it hit me: I’d been approaching code like I used to approach lokum-making. In my family’s sweet shop, imperfections meant financial loss and shame. But here in this Berlin tech office, my senior engineer added: “Good first attempt! See my suggestions – iteration is how we all learn.”
The Sweet Science of Iteration
Three revelations transformed my coding mindset:
- Debugging as Recipe Refinement – Like adjusting rosewater levels in lokum, fixing bugs became creative problem-solving rather than failure
- Progress Over Perfection – My stand-up updates shifted from “I’ll finish when it’s perfect” to “Here’s what I learned from today’s broken test cases”
- Cultural Hybrid Thinking – My market haggling instincts helped design better user flows (if customers scrutinize raisin quality, users scrutinize UI details equally)
Unexpected Advantages
My non-traditional background became my superpower:
- Color Theory – Just as lokum shades signal flavor (pink=rose, yellow=lemon), I implemented intuitive dashboard color coding
- User Empathy – Watching tourists navigate our spice stall taught me to design for cognitive load – now I advocate for cleaner onboarding flows
- Resourcefulness – When our API failed, I improvised like we did during power outages at the market – finding alternative solutions with available tools
That critical code review became my turning point. Where I once saw broken functionality, I now see potential – like lumpy sugar syrup that just needs more stirring. The sticky sweetness of progress tastes far better than the brittle perfection I used to crave.
Next: How this mindset shift rippled beyond my career – reshaping my identity, relationships, and even how I make lokum for colleagues today…
The Alchemy of Transformation
My Berlin balcony now holds terracotta pots of Turkish mint beside succulents that refuse to die—much like how I stubbornly clung to fragments of my old life while grafting new roots. The laptop staring back at me wears stickers from Istanbul’s Grand Bazaar: a copper coffee pot, a geometric mosaic, the calligraphic swirl of “hoşgeldiniz” (welcome). These aren’t just decorations; they’re compass points reminding me how far I’ve traveled from lokum-dusted fingers to keyboard-calloused hands.
Career changes aren’t linear journeys—they’re seismic shifts that rearrange your entire emotional topography. That customer who threw sweets at me five years ago accidentally gifted me something precious: the realization that resilience, like sugar syrup, hardens into something unbreakable when tempered by heat. Now when my code fails, I taste iron instead of rosewater, but the principle remains—every breakdown contains the ingredients for breakthrough.
Your turn: What’s the emotional flavor of your transformation? Is it the sharp vinegar of rage that propelled you? The honeyed serendipity of an unexpected opportunity? Or perhaps like me, it’s the complex aftertaste of disorientation slowly sweetening into belonging?
For those wondering how tears and syntax errors intersect—the full story lives behind this door. Inside you’ll find the unvarnished truth about that code review where my mascara stained the office bathroom tiles, and why today I’m grateful for every bug that reminds me growth never tastes like comfort.
