Inventiveness & Love of Engineering Paid Off
Born in Uzbekistan, Izzy came alone to the United States in 2017. He spent two years studying English to gain the proficiency required for admission to Ensign College (then LDS Business College).
Izzy graduated in December 2023 with a bachelor’s degree in software engineering as part of the college’s second-ever class of software engineering graduates. But he entered a challenging job market, where many companies were only hiring experienced engineers.
Determined, Izzy built a Python script to scrape job listings every hour. He submitted more than 400 applications, often between classes, but doors weren’t opening.
Passion and creativity opened the door to Izzy Mansurov’s first software engineering job - when more experienced software engineers were competing for the same position.
The door opened at Ensign College’s semi-annual fall career fair. Vitruvius Built + Design, a construction firm, had set up a booth to recruit an accountant and a construction manager. They brought along VR headsets and 3D models to showcase their work.
Izzy was interested in the tech, and while standing in line, he overheard the CEO talking about innovation in construction. Inspired, he opened an app he had built: a 3D face model that moved based on gyroscopic data sent via Bluetooth through his AirPods. “Are you looking for a software engineer?” Izzy asked. “Look what I’ve built.”
He moved his hand, and the 3D model mirrored his motion. The CEO was intrigued.
A few days later, Izzy visited their office in Park City, where he demonstrated another project. This time he demonstrated an Arduino-powered gyroscope in his shoe controlling a virtual leg on his iPhone.
Even though they hadn’t planned to hire a software engineer, Vitruvius offered Izzy a job because of his inventiveness, technical skill, and love of engineering.
Thoughts for Those Considering Pursuing Software Engineering
- Understand the basis of all programming. In one of his classes, Izzy learned that programming is just “converting the world that you perceive or the language that you speak into the logical language that a computer understands and putting it in an order so that it works bug free. Once I understood that, I thought, ‘I can program anything.’ It was such a liberating thought.”
- Build a product you can share: “After your first two classes, try to come up with a very easy project and try to finish it. One of the hardest problems that we face as programmers is that we never finish stuff. So try to finish something.”
Thoughts for All Alumni
- Always keep learning in your field. Be curious and look for creative solutions to problems.
- Trust in the Lord. As one of his instructors told Izzy, “You might not believe in yourself, but the Lord does.”