A Girl Who Learned Coding on a Broken Laptop and Got Hired by Google

In a small town where opportunities were scarce and dreams often dissolved into the dust of reality, there lived a girl named Ayesha Khan. Her family struggled to make ends meet. Her father ran a small grocery shop, and her mother worked as a tailor. They earned just enough to pay rent, keep the lights on, and put food on the table. But when it came to buying luxuries like a personal laptop or paying for expensive coding courses, it was simply impossible.

Ayesha, however, was different from everyone around her. While most kids her age spent evenings gossiping or scrolling through social media on borrowed phones, Ayesha had bigger dreams. She wanted to create technology, not just use it. She wanted to build apps, websites, and maybe even her own company someday. But there was one problem: she didn’t even have a proper laptop.

The only device she had was an old, broken laptop that her cousin had thrown away two years ago. Its screen had a permanent crack on the top right corner, the battery no longer worked, and the keyboard was missing three keys. To use it, Ayesha had to keep it plugged into the wall at all times, balancing it carefully so the charger wouldn’t slip out. Whenever the power went off—which happened almost daily—her “coding sessions” ended instantly.

Still, she wasn’t ready to give up.

The First Step:

One day, Ayesha came across a free YouTube tutorial titled “Learn Python in 30 Days”. Something about the video lit a fire in her heart. She decided that no matter how hard it would be, she was going to teach herself coding.

She started small. Every day after school, she would sit cross-legged on the floor with her broken laptop plugged in, her notebook open, and her phone nearby to Google things whenever her laptop froze. She would practice writing small pieces of code, sometimes spending hours debugging a single line.

At first, nothing made sense. The syntax errors frustrated her. The blue screen crashes made her want to scream. But she reminded herself of something she had once read online:

> “Every programmer was once a beginner who refused to quit.”

Those words became her personal mantra.0

Struggles No One Saw

Learning to code wasn’t her only battle. Her family didn’t understand why she spent so much time “playing with computers.” Her mother often scolded her:

> “Ayesha, these things are a waste of time. You should focus on becoming a teacher or nurse. At least that guarantees a job.”

But Ayesha had a vision bigger than her circumstances.

The biggest challenge, however, was the lack of internet access. The old laptop barely connected to Wi-Fi, and when it did, the speed was painfully slow. So she started walking to a public library in the nearby town every weekend. There, she downloaded coding eBooks, video tutorials, and sample projects onto a USB drive to bring home.

Every bug she solved, every little “Hello, World!” she printed, and every program she made run without crashing became a victory worth celebrating.

Her First Project:

After months of practice, Ayesha decided to test her skills by building something useful. Her father’s grocery store had always struggled with inventory management. He used handwritten ledgers, which often caused confusion and losses.

Ayesha decided to create a simple inventory management app for him using Python and SQLite.

It took her three months to build. She stayed up late nights, searching forums like Stack Overflow, reading documentation, and fixing endless bugs. Finally, she showed it to her father.

At first, he didn’t believe she had made it herself. But when he started using it and realized how much time it saved him, he looked at her with tears in his eyes:

> “Beta, you’ve done something I could never dream of. I’m proud of you.”

That was the first time Ayesha felt her dream was within reach.

The Turning Point:

By now, Ayesha had fallen completely in love with coding. She started solving problems on platforms like HackerRank and LeetCode using her slow, half-broken laptop. She learned JavaScript, React, and Node.js through free courses and YouTube tutorials.

One day, while browsing through LinkedIn on a borrowed phone, she saw a post from a recruiter at Google about their “Step Internship Program” for self-taught programmers and underrepresented communities.

Her heart raced. This was it—the opportunity she had been waiting for.

She applied, fully expecting rejection. After all, she didn’t have a fancy degree, nor had she attended any prestigious university. But she poured her heart into her application, highlighting her projects, her persistence, and her journey of self-learning.

Two weeks later, she got an email from Google.

She had been shortlisted for the first round of coding interviews

The Google Interview:

For the next three months, Ayesha prepared like her life depended on it. She practiced hundreds of coding problems, revised data structures and algorithms, and watched mock interview videos. She even borrowed her friend’s slightly better laptop just for the interviews.

The day of the online interview, her hands were trembling. The first question popped up on the screen:

> “Design an algorithm to find the shortest path in a weighted graph.”

For a moment, she froze. But then, she remembered all those nights of struggling, debugging, and not giving up. She took a deep breath and started typing.

The interview lasted 45 minutes. When it ended, she felt both exhausted and proud.

A week later, she received the email that changed her life forever:

> “Congratulations, Ayesha! You’ve been selected to join Google as a Software Engineer Intern.”

From Broken Laptop to Google:

Ayesha’s story went viral on LinkedIn and Twitter. People were amazed that a girl from a small town, learning on a broken laptop, had beaten the odds to land a job at Google.

Her father fixed the broken laptop and placed it on a shelf in their living room. It became a symbol of her journey—a reminder that success isn’t about having the best resources, but about making the best use of what you have.

Today, Ayesha works at Google, building software used by millions of people worldwide. But she hasn’t forgotten her roots. She now runs free weekend coding classes for kids in her town, making sure no one else has to give up on their dreams because of lack of resources.

Lesson of the Story:

Ayesha’s journey teaches us one powerful lesson:

> “It’s not the device you have; it’s the determination you carry.”

Dreams don’t require perfect conditions. They require patience, persistence, and belief in yourself.

Her broken laptop didn’t hold her back.

Her small-town background didn’t limit her.

And today, she is living proof that your circumstances don’t define your destiny.