Hi Iris, can you tell us about your career path?
Of course I have a Master’s in Communication from the university of Fribourg. I specialized on web tools for communication. The idea was to become a community manager. After graduation, I did a 6 months internship in Bern and then I took a job in communication for a pharmaceutical company. I quickly realized this way of working did not suit me. I wanted more freedom and more autonomy. And since I was already interested in the digital nomad’s way of life I decided to take the leap. I found Le Wagon searching on the internet and I applied for the April 2019 batch. I am very happy because today, 6 months after finishing the bootcamp, I work as a PHP developer for a startup in Lausanne.
You learnt Ruby with Le Wagon and now you work with PHP?
Yes! Right after Le Wagon, I started applying for jobs. I met TieTalent, one of the other startups incubated in the same premises as Le Wagon in Renens. Their development stack is based on PHP. So after the interview with the founders, and since it went well, I started learning PHP on my own, in anticipation for the technical test. In fact, the concepts are the same as in Ruby, it's just the way we write things that changes. Anyway, I passed the test and started working soon after. Today, it has been 4 months that I am a developer at TieTalent and I think they are happy about my work
How was it like starting as a junior dev after only 9 weeks of coding?
It was hard. I had to discover the project, understand all the code already written, etc… But Steevens the CTO and my colleagues quickly made me feel part of the team. I am always surprised by the autonomy I have as a dev. In my previous jobs I was managed all the time. As a dev, you are given a task and then it is up to you to figure it out, with a little help from google, stackoverflow, etc… and when I am really stuck, I can always ask my teammates for some help. I like being a problem solver. I get this feeling of accomplishment when I find a solution by myself. It's rewarding.
A quick work about your experience at Le Wagon?
Even if we doubt it in the beginning, everything we hear about Le Wagon is true: it's difficult, it's intense, the program is dense, and the learning curve is steep. When you look back after weeks 7, 8 or 9, you realize how much you have learnt. In the end, it is not so much about the coding languages, but more about learning to be independent, to conceive solutions, to debug, to search by yourself … and that's something that I use everyday in my life and not only in my job.
