What were you doing before Le Wagon?
I was working in sales and marketing. I had various freelance clients that I was doing work for and on top of that I and was selling affiliate marketing products online. One of the cool things about that is that it's allowed me to travel around the world as I worked which has been pretty cool.
What made you decide to change career?
Just to be involved in tech. Anyone can see that tech is taking over the world and programming is a really big part of that and I thought in order to ride the wave, the first step is learning how to program.
Why did you chose to do the bootcamp?
As I was researching how to learn programming, there were multiple options where you can self learn, do a degree or do a bootcamp. I found that bootcamp was a well round option - it's not too expensive as opposed to a university degree but I wasn't going to spend all the time to learn by myself and answer stupid little questions.
Why did you choose Le Wagon?
I had been traveling for two years and I was a little homesick. I noticed they had a bootcamp running in Melbourne and it wasn't outragously priced. When I researched it as well I couldn't find one bad review which, after thousands of reviews it was a pretty good sign.
Were your expectations met at Le Wagon?
They were, definitely. I came in to understand at least the basics and I left with so much more understanding of both front-end and back-end and also built a working application. If I had done that by myself within 3 months I'd be nowhere near that so, it was definitely worth it.
What were the top 3 challenges of the bootcamp?
Firstly, the workload can be overwhelming at least if you are not coming from a programming background like myself. Secondly, working in a team - in our team we had 3 back-end guys working on the project. The back-end was great we came up with a really solid product. It was a bit difficult at times working on the front-end and fixing that up. Those were my main challenges coming through, but I felt like we handled them pretty well.
What were the key takeaways from Le Wagon?
Anyone can learn to program. The first few weeks learning to program was really overwhelming. I had no basic idea of what I was doing, then coming here to a structured course which takes you through from a lower to intermediate level in only 2 months, if someone like me coming from a sales and marketing background can do it, then anyone can do it.
How did you feel working with other developers in the same position as you?
The team I had were awesome. We got along really well which was a key part of working in a team. Sometimes it was a big of a struggle to get the front-end up to the quality of the back-end, but we got through it with teamwork in the end.
What do you think of the space?
Inspire9 is a really cool place. There's a lot of chill people and there are a lot of entrepreneurial type of minds and whenever you're meeting new people you can always have interesting conversations and the Friday night drinks are pretty good as well.
What was your experience upon leaving Le Wagon and what are you doing now?
After Le Wagon I made sure I enjoyed Christmas, now I am doing lead generation for a client and also developing a web application for him. It's a good balance for me as I'm doing what I am good at - sales and also working on develop the programming skills with this project.
What are your future goals?
I still want to travel for the next couple of years and develop my programming skills. When I eventually stop traveling I can easily fit in to a junior developer role and take my skills to another level.
