From imposter syndrome to dream job: How an InceptionU project led to a new career

“I may not have a lot of experience, but I’m going to have one and it’s going to matter. That was my approach to the InceptionU program.”

Mathieu Cloutier always loved coding and programming. Growing up in Montreal, he would dabble with computer programs. At the age of 9, he created his own computer game. It was pretty rudimentary, but it worked.

After high school, Mathieu didn’t pursue traditional post-secondary education. Instead, he took a variety of jobs in the construction and tourism industries. In addition to being an avid hiker and rock climber, Mathieu was a trip coordinator for a guiding company and worked with children with developmental disabilities.

He was still coding as a hobby and, once in a while, would let his mind wander to what it might be like to develop software as a career. But, he would quickly dismiss the thought, unsure he had what it takes to be a successful developer.

Like many of us, he’d developed a sort of imposter syndrome.

“I spent a lot of time convincing myself that coding and programming is for smart people, not someone like me. That’s an excuse you give yourself to avoid trying and failing,” says Cloutier.

When the pandemic hit and job opportunities dried up, Mathieu became aware of the InceptionU Full Stack Developer program and decided to give it a try. Knowing he didn’t have any previous professional programming experience, he knew he’d have to work hard and take some risks.

“I may not have a lot of experience, but I’m going to have one and it’s going to matter. That was my approach to the InceptionU program,” says Mathieu.

Mathieu took to the InceptionU program instantly, and thrived in the dynamic and engaging learning environment. In fact, he often mentored other learners who were struggling. By the time Project 3 rolled around, Mathieu and his team were presented with an opportunity to work on a client project with tech startup and mentorship platform Inqli.

Inqli helps mentors share their knowledge, while mentees gain valuable experience, connections and insights. The ultimate goal is to help people find meaningful careers. The values that Inqli was built upon instantly resonated with Mathieu.

The technical challenge presented to Mathieu’s team, which became known as Team Oz, was to build a feature in the Inqli app that would recognize domain names of companies and take them through a process to create an organization profile.

“This was not a critical short term feature we needed right now, it was more of a long term goal. So, they could try things, and be able to fail without any major pressure. I think that was an important environment to set them up in,” says Sven Resch, Inqli co-founder and head of Product and Engineering.

The project was challenging. In three short months, Team Oz needed to learn completely new programming languages as the Inqli platform didn’t use the MERN stack (Mongo, Express, React, Node) they’d learned in InceptionU classes.

Through bi-weekly feedback with the Inqli Dev team, almost daily meetings and constant iterations on their project, they successfully built the feature and presented it on Demo Day to Sven and Inqli CEO Rebecca Kirstein Resch in August of 2021.

“I was blown away by how much they’d completed. They didn’t treat it like a project, they treated it like a job. We were impressed with the whole team and there’s a reason we hired Mathieu,” says Rebecca.

While overseeing Team Oz and the Inqli project, Sven quickly noticed that Mathieu was a natural leader. He was always helping out others and consistently went above and beyond what was expected - whether it was “debugging” the code or thinking up new ways to approach problems and find solutions.

“On more than one occasion, in fact many, I would learn later that Mathieu had been up all night figuring something out. He didn’t have to, he just really got into it so much. It was that attitude that I saw and really appreciated,” says Sven.

Rebecca says Mathieu was intrinsically motivated to do a great job and had the “essential skills” necessary to inspire, help, collaborate and communicate with those around him. He was also comfortable with “ambiguity,” which, she says, is a way of life in a tech startup.

That’s a big reason why they offered Mathieu a full time developer role at the growing startup, which is set to launch publicly in Q3 of 2022.

Mathieu finds it hard to put into words how well everything has worked out for him. While working on the project, he knew he believed deeply in Inqli’s mission and thought he’d be a good fit at the company. He never imagined it would actually happen!

“You know, you have your dreams, if everything goes perfect, in a year that’s what it’s going to look like. Well, that’s what’s happening right now,” says Cloutier.

Mathieu works remotely from Cochrane for the Victoria-based company, which will grow to a 16-person team in January of 2022.

Inqli has become a valued partner of InceptionU as both companies are dedicated to helping people embrace lifelong learning and finding meaningful employment. “Everything about what InceptionU is doing is so compatible with what Inqli is doing, which is to create more opportunities for the Mathieus of the world to take those programs, shift their career and land somewhere where they never saw themselves,” says Rebecca.

You can expect to see big things from Inqli in 2022 as the company grows its team, plans to open up a Calgary office and sign on their first paying customers.

Congratulations Mathieu and the Inqli team!