The 2-minute video that got me into quantum computing

I’m Vitalii Manoilo, and before I explain why I’m diving into quantum computing, let me share how I got here.

From Kyiv to Toronto: my first steps into analytics

I won't start from kindergarten, it wasn’t a defining moment anyway, but my adolescence and early adulthood certainly were. I completed my undergrad in marketing in Kyiv, Ukraine, and decided to advance my education by pursuing two post-grad certificates in marketing analytics and brand management in Toronto, Canada. My undergrad was very traditional, a broad marketing program with courses in economics, accounting, finance, and business management. Unlike my bachelor's, my studies in Canada were far more practical and applied. Not a single professor in the two programs was from academia; all were executives or experienced professionals from the industry. That was very cool but hard!

In my first week of statistics class, the professor asked us to open SAS Studio and start typing code. I was surprised; I never expected to write code in a marketing program. I thought I came to Canada to become a marketing analyst, though honestly, at the time, I barely knew what that meant. I also never wanted to write code in my professional life; that’s partly why I chose business education. In the end, I finished the class with a B+.

A year later, as I was finishing my program, I had to find a co-op job as part of my program. Despite sending out over a hundred resumes, I struggled to get any responses. I even tried walking into corporate offices in downtown Toronto to hand in my resume, only to be politely turned away by security guards.

Desperate, I attended a job fair because a bank was recruiting there. Banks were hiring a lot of data analysts. The fair was far outside the city, but it felt like my last chance. When I arrived, I went straight to the bank’s booth, but they told me they were only hiring for call center and branch roles. Disappointed, I visited every booth at the fair, but no one was hiring for data or marketing roles. Just as I was about to leave, another attendee, Jany, overheard me looking for data roles. I pitched her my work, though she wasn’t hiring either. She was also trying to transition into data science herself. Still, she introduced me to Adrienne, a recruiter whose energy could fill a stadium.

After hearing about my job search struggles, Adrienne confidently told me, “Don’t worry, I’ll introduce you to downtown Toronto. I’ve got the network!”. I believed her, and miraculously, she delivered. The interview went well, and they hired me on the spot. But I still had to complete the paperwork before the deadline in 1.5 hours. I borrowed my future manager’s laptop and rushed to submit the final paperwork just before the deadline.

The bookworm phase and career growth

Fast-forward 7 years, I progressed from an intern data analyst to a manager of business analysis. Though no longer in downtown Toronto, I continue to work for the same company. After COVID-19 hit the world, our company moved to completely remote, and our team has never gone back to the office. Now, I work from home in Boston, Massachusetts, after completing my second immigration.

Like many, COVID-19 was life-changing for me, too. As an introvert, I didn’t feel isolated staying home. Instead, it gave me time to reflect. While markets soared and headlines buzzed with Bitcoin, Tesla, and GameStop, I felt like I was missing out. I became a bookworm, reading 67 books between October 2021 and August 2022 — a personal record! I devoured biographies, business books, psychology, personal finance and more. This period was one of the most transformative in my life, building neural links that shaped my thinking. You can explore my full reading list here.

At work, I wanted to grow as a business analyst. I earned two certificates from the University of Toronto and studied the BABOK guide for IIBA certification. Around the same time, my company adopted Microsoft’s Power Platform, a suite of tools like Power Automate, Power Apps, Power Pages, and Power BI. My manager, Dmytro, the same person who hired me 7 years ago, became a close friend, mentor, and one of the most influential people in my life. He encouraged me to explore it, so I decided not to pursue the BA certification and switched to Power Platform. I attended Microsoft's Ignite conference in Toronto and a Power Platform conference in Las Vegas, where I experienced firsthand the enthusiasm of the global Microsoft community. But I still wasn’t sure if it was my long-term path. It felt exciting but not quite like "mine".

Building, experimenting, and searching for purpose

I’ve never truly wanted to be a coder. I didn't learn Python, though I knew it was popular in data roles. But I loved SQL — the language of databases. Designing systems and processes has always excited me. I work closely with a solution architect and software engineers, and I enjoy seeing solutions come to life.

What really kept me curious, though, were my experiments outside of work. For example, I used ChatGPT to help me build a web scraper for grocery promotions. The savings were small, and I used it only once — I probably spent more time checking spreadsheets than shopping. But the project taught me a lot, especially since I knew only one function in Python — print("Hello World").

After that, I took on something bigger: building a personal finance app to manage my banking transactions. I navigated the Plaid API documentation, built a custom webpage using HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, designed my own SQL database, and connected it all to the Azure cloud. The app allowed me to pull transactions directly from the bank and search, sort, filter, and export them to Excel. Although I didn’t pursue it further, it remains the most rewarding project I’ve built on my own, as I was able to touch every aspect of the solution.

Many of my projects ended at the discovery stage; they were valuable lessons, even if they never became useful products — not even for me, let alone the public. Many ideas simply died in my head, never making it to creation.

Throughout my career and education years, I wasn't sure I had a passion for something. The same passion that many people are talking about: "You should do what you love to do." I guess in an ideal world, or if you’re lucky enough to turn a hobby into a career, that’s the dream. In my opinion, it's more realistic to make a living out of something you’re good at and build on it while keeping hobbies as personal passions. As for me, I’m not sure I even have one. I like reading, but I wouldn't quite call it a hobby in the traditional sense. I continue to be in this thought process: what to do with my life, the tech is advancing so fast, how can I build a hard skill that will be valuable on the market and at the same time that I am excited about.

A 2:05-minute video that changed everything

On April 4th, 2025, while scrolling LinkedIn, Bill Gates, celebrating Microsoft’s 50th anniversary, shared his first code, and Satya Nadella posted a short video. Satya used Copilot to recreate the Altair BASIC code in about 10 seconds, a task that originally took Gates and Allen six weeks.  Then, he casually asked Copilot to emulate Q#, Microsoft’s quantum computing language. That moment lit a spark in me.

I googled Q# and discovered that quantum computing had escaped the research labs and was now accessible through the cloud via Microsoft, Google, IBM, and others. The more I read about it, the more excited I became. This excitement became so strong that it overwhelmed my mind, so I felt like my neurons were firing at 10x speed, as if my brain itself were running at quantum speed.

Rarely have I experienced such excitement, usually only during major events in my life. Sometimes, during my experimental projects, like the personal finance app. But at a much lower scale. This time, it was huge, and I couldn't stop thinking about it. For the first time, I thought: Maybe I’ve found my passion.

I realized that while quantum computing is mostly dominated by physicists and researchers, there’s space for analytics professionals to explore its future business impact. Maybe this is my niche, where my data background meets the technology of the future.

For the past week, I’ve been immersed in quantum computing. It’s incredibly challenging, pushing me to revisit linear algebra, matrices, vectors, and other math topics I hadn’t touched in years. But the more I read, the clearer it becomes.

So here I am, documenting my journey into quantum computing — not as a physicist, but as an analytics practitioner exploring its frontiers.