Born in a Mumbai slum, failed Class 10: How this Indian techie built a life in Germany

A Mumbai-born tech professional’s journey from living in a slum and earning a modest salary to building a global career in Germany has gained attention online after he shared his story and old photographs on social media.

Santosh Yadav posted two images on X that show his life across two different phases. The first was taken in 2012 at his home in a Mumbai slum, and the second in Hamburg, Germany, in 2026, where he was seen celebrating his 17th wedding anniversary with his wife.

“How it started. How it’s going. 2012 Vs 2026,” the post read.

Along with the photos, Yadav shared a detailed account of his early life and career struggles through a blog. He said he lived in a slum in Mumbai for 29 years and grew up facing difficult conditions. “I was born in Mumbai and lived in a slum as long as I can remember,” he said. “It was a typical slum which you see in movies – there were good people and a lot of bad people, too. I was lucky not to hang out with those bad people for long.”

He also spoke about his academic setbacks, saying he did poorly in his Class 10 exams, which limited his options for higher studies. A suggestion from a family friend eventually led him to pursue a diploma in computer science. During this time, he struggled with English but gradually improved.

Despite financial challenges, Yadav went on to complete his BTech from Mumbai University. After graduation, he entered the job market during the global financial crisis of 2008, which made opportunities scarce. His first job paid him Rs 5,000 per month.

“After 8 months, I decided to leave that job and was jobless for a month. I got some support work for the next 4 months, which required some knowledge of SQL queries, so I brushed up on that knowledge,” he wrote.

“Finally, in January 2010, I got a job where I could write some code. It was a Windows application using C#. I gave my best, but the salary was still very low.”

Over the next decade, he switched jobs multiple times before a key turning point in 2019, when he began contributing to open-source projects like Angular and NgRx. His work later earned him recognition as a Google Developer Expert (GDE) for Angular.

In 2020, Yadav became India’s first GitHub Star. He is currently working as a Principal Developer Advocate at CodeRabbit in Germany.