Developer Ben Awad Splits His Time Between Coding, TikTok, and YouTube – Business Insider
- Ben Awad is a part-time software developer and TikTok sensation.
- When he isn’t creating new apps, he’s creating content for his 670,600 TikTok followers.
- He’s best known for having a loyal fan base that leaves risqué comments on his videos.
Ben Awad has two jobs: software developer and TikTok Casanova.
When the 24-year-old developer isn’t creating apps — like a Clubhouse clone called DogeHouse and a dating app for programmers where users swipe on each other’s code rather than photos — he’s channeling his wry coding humor into making tame TikToks for his rather untamed audience.
“Ben, my tail is wagging ferociously,” one commenter wrote on Awad’s stitched video about the hygiene of “comp-sci boys.”
“Ben please just give me a chance,” another added.
Some comments contain genuine thoughts about coding. But most are not G-rated.
But aside from his thirst traps and the risqué replies they inspire, Awad has an audience of 670,600 followers on the app that’s mixed with young developers and fan girls dying to get his attention. Some would leverage that fame to level up in their industry, but he’s more interested in creating his own niche as coder-creator than locking himself into Big Tech’s golden handcuffs. And he isn’t alone — many up-and-coming software developers are straying from the safety of Google salaries, for example, to forge their own paths outside the tech norms.
“I have a hard time working as a regular employee for somebody,” Awad said, adding that he felt like full-time software-development jobs slowed the rate at which he could learn new coding topics and put his “life on pause.”
“So I don’t see myself working at a
FAANG
job. I just rather do my own thing,” he said.
A man who wears many hats
Like many TikTokers, Awad is living a digital-nomad life, currently en route to an Airbnb in Nashville, Tennessee. But before becoming famous for being a “TikTok hunk,” as Vox referred to him, Awad was living in Austin, Texas — best known for its general weirdness and budding tech scene. He was homeschooled before he got into the University of Texas, Dallas, to study computer science.
It was at his university, in 2016, that he decided to create coding tutorials on YouTube. Awad amassed 360,000 subscribers and even created a diss track dedicated to the JavaScript framework AngularJS, warmly dubbed “I love AngularJS.”
His love for coding partly comes from his dad, who is a …….
