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Aaliyah Siddiqi is quite literally the model of skilled American workers without college degrees.
Siddiqi, a 26-year-old tech worker from Newark, Delaware, was recently featured on a billboard in Times Square as the face of a national ad campaign for YUPRO. The workforce placement organization aimed to raise awareness of the 70 million Americans who took alternative routes to professional careers.
For Siddiqi, that started with taking a few college courses before getting a job at an Amazon warehouse where, she said, she sometimes never saw the sun.
“I was a picker there, so it was very, very intense,” Siddiqi told Technical.ly. “I remember getting up in the morning before sunrise, and then exiting the warehouse after sunset.”
That warehouse would become what Siddiqi considers the beginning of her journey into a tech career, a place where the work was hard and her coworkers were supportive of her finding what she really wanted to do with her life. Today, she works as a marketing operations specialist for a Philadelphia pharmaceutical company.
Her journey includes a 2021 Year Up Wilmington cohort, internships, a YUPRO apprenticeship and, finally, officially entering the tech workforce in 2023.
In this edition of Technical.ly’s How I Got Here series, Siddiqi discusses her journey from warehouse to hybrid tech worker, and shares advice for anyone not sure of their career path.
This Q&A has been edited for length and clarity.
How did your Amazon warehouse experience lead you to where you are now?
Everyone was so kind there. When I would speak to people who were a lot older than me, they would always comment on how I had my whole life ahead of me and I shouldn’t be spending it there. These conversations would always stick with me for the rest of the shift, and I would think about if this was something I wanted to do for the rest of my life — the incentives were great, but my feet were killing me.
The incentives were great, but my feet were killing me.
Aaliyah Siddiqi, marketing operations specialist
One day, when it was time for my break, it just hit me: the Year Up Wilmington program. My sister completed it, and she was successful. So I decided right then and there to open up the website on my phone, and I filled out an application.
A few days later, we did the interview and then a few days after that, I found out that I was accepted into the program, and it was just a rush of excitement. Once I got that confirmation, I left Amazon and started the program.
What was the Year Up program like?
It was a unique experience since everything had to be virtual. It was definitely a big adjustment to have to do everything at home.
There were three tracks that were available to choose from, and one of them happened to be investment operations. I decided to take that track since I had some familiarity there.
Doing the classes at home definitely had challenges. Dedicating myself to work helped, and also forming virtual study groups with my peers.
And before we knew it, we did it.
Where did you go after YearUp?
After the Year Up program, there are six months of college courses and another six months of an internship. I was sent to intern on a marketing team. It was a really cool experience, I got to be in charge of creating posts for Instagram, Facebook and LinkedIn, and also got to dabble in tracking analytics.
My manager was really kind and supportive, and she helped me build corporate skills that are necessary to have within that path.
My Year Up coach reached out to me about an opportunity that was being offered at my current company, with the IT talent enablement team. That experience was also virtual, and it was my first experience of really being in that corporate world and being surrounded by a global team. There were people from the UK, China and Prague. I thought that that was so cool.
At the end of that, unfortunately, I ran into an issue with there not being enough head count on the team, but a manager found out about YUPRO OpenClassroom, which was an apprenticeship that I was able to become a part of in digital marketing, which was perfect.
How did you get your current job?
At the end of that apprenticeship, I had another great manager who helped me get a position there, because he saw my skills and my potential. He found out about a central planning position that was being offered, and from there, I was able to do an interview, and that’s how I got in.
Since then I’ve been a marketing central planner and a support specialist, and I’ve been with that team for a little bit over a year now.
Then, back in the end of December, YUPRO reached out to me about the billboard opportunity after hearing my story, and I said, yeah, absolutely.
What advice would you give to someone who is unsure about their career?
What are their passions? What are the kinds of things that they enjoy doing? I they still haven’t figured that out, don’t be afraid to dabble into things and experiment, because you never know what you’ll find out.
One thing that you can do is take college courses and go undeclared, so you can just take a few classes to see which one actually sticks out.
To those who feel that life isn’t really going somewhere for them, I’ve definitely felt that way at times. Things feel like they’re moving too slowly. Just keep going. Don’t lose hope. Never give up. Because you never know where these opportunities come up, it can be just being at the right place, at the right time, and knowing the right people.
Broaden your horizons and step out of that comfort zone and just put yourself out there.