The NoDegree Podcast – No Degree Success Stories for Job Searching, Careers, and Entrepreneurship · Jonaed Iqbal

How a Struggling High Schooler Became a Successful QA for Video Games—Torrontayé Jones | E196

·30 min·1 clip

He applied to Xperia’s Game Solutions, and two hours after the interview they told him they wanted him for the role.

1. The NoDegree Podcast episode centers on Torrontayé Jones’s path into video game QA and non-degree career building. 2. Host Junaid Iqbal, founder of NoDegree.com, interviews Jerron Tarante Jones, who goes by his middle name Tarante, after introducing his own work as a career coach and résumé writer. 3. The episode asks how someone without a college degree can move from phones and AV work into gaming at Xperia’s Game Solutions and Forza Motorsport. 4. Tarante says high school was difficult because he was dealing with problems at home and focusing on whether his family had basic needs met. 5. He started customizing friends’ phones in high school and realized he could make money working on phones before he thought of it as a career. 6. After graduation, he worked in AV and sound for Revelation Productions in Chicago for almost four years. 7. He says that job taught him about audio equipment, lighting structures, software, and running events like one for the Simon family in the Chase Tower in Indianapolis. 8. He later spent a couple of months homeless after a falling out with his aunt and then moved in with his older sister, who had not seen him in over a decade. 9. He took a canvassing job at Mad City Windows in Bath, but negative 20-degree weather pushed him to look for something else. 10. A U-Break iFix location was a block from his sister’s house, and he walked in with phone repair and AV experience. 11. He says manager Mike interviewed him on the spot, called back within the hour, and hired him after learning his brother had worked there years earlier. 12. At U-Break iFix, he learned soldering, reflows, and in-warranty repairs, and he earned certifications through Samsung, Google, HP, and Dell. 13. He says he was promoted twice in his first six months and eventually spent about two years there while traveling for repair work. 14. When the pandemic reduced in-home repairs, he moved to Graphite, an Apple authorized service provider in Madison. 15. At Graphite he earned Atlas certifications for Apple devices, including legacy products, and worked as the first point of contact for broken phones and tablets. 16. He says it was satisfying to hand back devices and see customers’ faces light up when their devices worked better than before. 17. He also talks about music, including a song that later drew attention from Lyrical Lemonade and a $300 payment from his friend Deron after he tried to give it away. 18. He says he has made music since age two and wants to merge technology and music by starting a music tech company. 19. The interview is conversational and personal, with Junaid prompting detailed job-history answers and Tarante moving through hardship, technical learning, and career milestones. 20. People interested in non-degree tech paths and gaming jobs will likely connect with this story, while listeners wanting short business advice without personal backstory may skip it.

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