Ramin Azhdari is a doctor, software engineer and now a co-founder of his own startup, Vie de Médecin. We talk about how he transitioned to becoming a software engineer, why he thinks developing software is really exciting as a doctor, how he got his first software engineering job and about his own startup, a social network for doctors.

This was the first podcast episode I ever recorded, so I did expect it to suck a bit, mainly because I had zero experience as a podcast host and interviewer. But, boy, was I wrong! And that’s because Ramin is such an awesome, smart and interesting person. He taught himself software development during medical school. He’s super passionate about it, and it shows! I felt there were just so many interesting topics he had things to say about, and we could have easily doubled our allocated time of a bit more than an hour. Still, both of us had to get back to work (this is a hobby project after all), but I still think we covered some really cool, interesting stuff!

Things We Talked About

• Why did he become a software engineer instead of working as a doctor?
• How did he learn software development? What would he recommend to other doctors who want to get into software engineering?
• What are your chances as a coding doctor to land a job? Do doctors who code have any benefits over “normal” software developers?
• What’s his own startup about - why a social networks for doctors?
• How’s it going? Is it hard to build a social network for doctors?

Listen to the Episode

Links As Mentioned In The Podcast

• Ramin on LinkedIn, Twitter and GitHub.
• Vie de Médecin, Ramin’s startup which is a social networking app for doctors in France (direct link to app stores: Apple App Store, Google Play Store)
• Doctolib, the company where Ramin got his first job as a software engineer. Their main product is a website for patients for scheduling doctor’s appointments.
• alan: Ramin worked there most recently before quitting his job there and starting Vie de Médecin. A health insurance provider with an app which provides health and wellness coaching to teams.

Ramin’s Biography

Ramin studied medicine in Lübeck here in Germany while also studying abroad in Bologna, that’s in Italy. While studying, he co-founded Edition.ly, a marketplace for artist books and photo books which gained 40.000 followers. After graduating as a doctor, he worked as a freelance web developer for two years before joining Doctolib as a software engineer, a company which probably many people know - many people use it to schedule their doctor’s appointments. After that, he joined Alan, a health insurance provider with an app which provides health and wellness coaching to teams. A few months ago, Ramin also co-founded his own startup which he’s now working on which I’m especially excited to talk about with him.