It was 2019 and I had just enrolled into a masters program that I thought would be exciting and lead to job offers. I had primarily decided to join the program because I wanted to get into manufacturing at the time. Little did I know that getting a manufacturing job in so-cal is pretty hard since there aren’t to many of these companies out here. I was in the program and decided to stop my work as a math tutor and focus on studying.
The program was not well developed and the only things that interested me in it was working on 3D modeling in SolidWorks. There was, however, one class in robotics where we were doing a little scripting in python and I knew I wanted to focus more on this coding aspect of engineering. I went to talk to my advisor to see if there was a possibility for me to switch into a comp sci program or electrical engineering focused on coding. They said no!
I was mostly miserable during the half semester I spent doing manufacturing, It was mainly memorizing facts. I had always known about coding bootcamps and how they can land you a great job with just a few months of training. I decided to try out some of Flatiron School’s free intro courses along with App Academy’s free material for getting into their bootcamp. After solving around 30–40 toy problems and learning some basic syntax, I dropped out of my masters, lost about 3 grand and applied to Flatiron School.
The application process for flatiron was really smooth and fast, I also wanted to do my whole program online and they had some really great recommendations for their online platform. After getting in I started to do some of the pre-work for the program and was ready to start!
I spent about an average of 35–40 hrs a week on the course material which was structured really well. I was in the full time program which is probably the best way to learn and absorb the most material. They teach everything to get a person job ready. And they have great connections to the industry. You work with a career coach who will answer all your questions and help you prepare all aspects of your application to jobs.
Some things I recommend doing:
- Put your projects as job experience on your linkedIn, you will get recognized by recruiters.
- For Flatiron say you’re willing to relocate, you will get more opportunities from their connections and likely chance you will still be able to live in your current location. Also most jobs are remote now.
- Keep practicing, learn all you can about whatever area you want to get into. Also practice Algorithms and DataStructures lots of jobs will have these problems for their interview.
- Build connections on linkedIn.
- Stay Healthy and don’t stress when you don’t move forward in an interview! You’ll get plenty of opportunities if you put in the work to learn and grow.
“I highly recommend Flatiron School!”
