EP57 – From Restaurant Manager to Software Developer

Coders Campus Podcast

In this episode we'll talk to Yasiin, who is a graduate from the Coders Campus Bootcamp.

We dive into his story about how he started his coding journey as a Restaurant Manager, and went through two Coding Bootcamp before landing his first job.

Yasiin shares a ton of great insights and tips for beginner coders who are hoping to get a job, so be sure to listen to the whole episode.

Interested in starting your coding career?

I'm now accepting students into an immersive programming Bootcamp where I guarantee you a job offer upon graduation.

It is a 6 month, part-time, online Bootcamp that teaches you everything you need to know to get a job as a Java developer in the real-world.

You can learn more via www.coderscampus.com/bootcamp

Episode Transcript

0:09
Welcome to the coders campus podcast, where you'll learn how to code from one of the best teachers in the industry. Whether you're an absolute beginner or a seasoned pro, the coders campus podcast will teach you what you need to know to master the art of programming. And now, your host, Trevor page.

0:28
All right, ladies and gentlemen, fellow coders. Welcome to this next episode in our coders campus podcast series. This is a slightly different one. And as promised in the in the last episode, I am now delivering this interview. So this is an interview between myself and yes, seen who is one of our bootcamp graduates. And, yeah, I just want to sit down and have an honest chat with your scene about his experience, a little bit about his story, and to understand sort of what his path is, and was in terms of learning how to code, right, this is not going to be a sugar coated story, this is not going to be one where I asked him to pretty up all the details. I'm just asking him for his honest feedback and his honest opinion about his journey thus far through not only my boot camp, but another boot camp as well. And sort of what obviously, the outcome was in terms of, you know, the job and whatnot. And, yeah, this is a really good raw interview, I have not edited anything out of this interview. So you can just sit back and enjoy it and hear a story unfold and in before your very ears, if you will, from someone probably just like you who started out in an industry that has nothing to do with coding, and made the transition into becoming a software developer. So without further ado, let's jump into that interview. So yeah, I guess we get started by by sort of, you know, getting an introduction to who yes, seen is getting to know a little bit about your background of who you were sort of before, I guess the boot camp that I run before you join that boot camp, even start give us a little blurb. Yeah, who are you? What were you doing? So my name is Yasiin. I'm a junior developer right now for a company called Brooklyn bedding. It works in manufacturing industry. Before I got started with my journey, I actually was working in restaurants, I worked restaurants for almost 15 years of my life a long time, and managed to complete a server bartender did everything you could think of in a restaurant with a cook at one point in time when I was really young. Besides that, I actually decided I wanted to do something different in life. Um, after managing for a while, I wasn't being challenged enough to like, just keep myself going. And the brain, they were very monotonous job of coming in at same thing every day. And, you know, you always think yourself, you want something a little bit more. So that led me to a boot camp, which was a boot camp, local University of Arizona, and they had their web development boot camp, which is great to start off with understanding your HTML, your CSS, a little bit of JavaScript, and they touched on Java as well, which was great, because it had to give me a good foundation to understanding what what actually coding was, you know, a lot of times you hear about coding, you don't really know what industry or what you're doing, you hear about these coders making six figures, and it's always going to be a guaranteed job, you go to your boot camp, you come out, you make your six figures, which, you know, that does happen for some people, but it's not for everybody. That's something that it takes a while to build up, you have to keep working at it. That's something I found out just, you know, I'm taking a boot camp and trying to get a job right after and you're like, Oh, you don't have an experience. So then you got to grind yourself out, you know, experience wise was great. I actually after my first boot camp, I didn't get a job right away, I actually took another boot camp and then I was able to get a part time job was a hourly wage, which was great, I found that to be the most developing wise, because the kind of challenge meant will the real world like working experience, because you don't really know if you've never worked in the industry before, what it's going to be like to actually work on a project. That's something that you got to you have to actually be in the industry and working in it and you have to get first job or internship or, you know, pretty much I would say take the first job you get no matter what the pay is just because you want that experience experience is gonna make you 10 times better than what you were. I wasn't very confident in the beginning. That was something that was kind of lacking just because you don't really know like you've never worked in industry. I worked in restaurants my whole life. Like I don't really know what happens and the development industry. Now I get to see the days and days out and you know it's a different side of things.

5:01
Yeah, so that's a really good, really good. I have a few million questions that came up as you were talking. So in terms of so you didn't restaurants for 15 years? How How would you rate yourself in that period when you're working with restaurants? In terms of your technical abilities? Were you like one being, I don't even know how to operate or turn on a computer and 10 being Yeah, I worked at Google or something. Well, you say your your skill set was, you know, while you were working in the restaurant industry, well, my skill set was never my skill set around computers with great because I went to I grew up in on technology engineering school. So from grade school, pretty much from first grade all the way through high school, I went to engineering technology, magnet schools, which are they're based, that's what they're teaching you the basis. So our foundation is that and we learn everything else with it. So I could operate a computer, I knew how to surf the web, I knew how to, you know, look at different stuff we mostly use like Excel sheets. And I remember in through that through, I even want to hit college, we took I took one of the classes we built, we built a website, but I think I was using Dreamweaver at the time. So a bunch of stuff. And I didn't really know what was going on. And the way they built made it build a website wasn't like building a real website. It was, you know, some of the questions I remember, she was like, I forgot the thing, but just changed it a little icon on the top of the tab page. That was one of the questions we had to do for one of our assignments, VIP credit for that, which, you know, that's something that stuck in my head, just just doing that this little stuff. So I had experience to it. But I didn't realize at the time before I started software development, what experience I had until I actually got into it. And that's that's pretty common. Most people have familiarity with a computer, they know how to surf the web, they know how to use Google, you know. So that's sort of what in terms of my boot camp or what I run, those are some foundational things that you just sort of have to have, if you don't know how to use Google, you're you're not in the right place, you got to go learn that skill first. So that's good to hear. And in terms of you mentioned, you took a different boot camp, first through the University of Arizona. And first, how long was that boot camp? If you remember, the boot camp, I want to three was 24 weeks, put in four weeks, about about six months. That's about that's a life length, the size boot camp. That's that's a good size. And you learn about some of the fundamentals of the web. So HTML, CSS, you mentioned Java, did you do like a little bit of JavaScript there? Yeah, a little, mostly JavaScript, Java was just touched at the end, we didn't go too deep into it. And we were already building projects. And we worked a lot with React what they had as the foundation they had to build in. And and so you did the six month thing you did, you know, essentially a front end development that's in terms of the industry. And you know, knowing what I know, that's sort of what that job, potential job could be as a front end developer. But you said you graduated, then didn't get a job. So can you talk more about that? Why What Why do you think that didn't happen? Why do you think you didn't get a job? Were you looking for like, a two weeks? And then you gave up? Or was it six months? Or sort of how long was that journey and that kind of thing. It was mostly just building my LinkedIn and applying to jobs that popped up. And, you know, a lot of experience when you look at it says, oh, I want five years experience and two years experience. And, you know, sometimes it's a two year experience, but then they wanted a senior developer and then you know, you look at everything. And no matter what, when you apply to that a lot of no responses were you know that we need a little bit more experience, we're looking for somebody more experienced and you get recruit, a call will pop up and the recruiters work and help you out and try to get the job. And then they would call you and be like, Oh, that the company wants more experience. They want you to work more at everything. That was just something where it's like, I guess, you know, when you first started off six months of learning, any type of development of boot camp, you're not really into it unless you had prior experience and you are kind of working towards something else. That's, that's pretty like a blocker yet. Yeah. So from my from my side, just get shedding some light on that problem. This is, again, I don't want to I don't want to generalize, but from what I've seen is for front end development, a lot of boot camps just focus on front end development. It's it's a it's a great skill set to have it is it is entirely valuable. By no means wasted effort to learn front end development. But if that's all you know, that's what a lot of people, there's an oversaturation of people in the market who have that skill set. There's another skill set that you can tack on to that, that makes you full stack that makes you well rounded, you know, on all on the full, you know, in range of being able to develop an application. When you're a full stack developer developer, there tend to be more opportunities at entry level, from what I've seen. So that's sort of my one critique on a lot of boot camps is if they just focus on front end. Sure, some people can get a job. Like you said, Some people can get six figures out of the boot camp depends on where you live. And those are stories that you hear amplified. Yep. Right. And it's

9:54
amplified and you're like, I'm gonna do this I'm gonna be that guy. I'm gonna do it. You know, and you sometimes you're discouraged because you're not that guy. And you're like, who's getting these jobs? And you know, and then I realized now who's getting the jobs and those people, they don't just come right out of the boot camp, they have more experience. They they either know somebody in industry looking to hire or, or they've already got their foot in some other way. Like they work for a company that's actually hiring. This was them pushing us up to the next level. But it's, it's, it happens, but it doesn't happen all the time. That's a run the big false is false things I've learned. So I know, that's marketing, right? That's the marketing the marketers doing. So getting people into, you know, their, their, their boot camps. And, you know, so that's, that's also one question you can if you if you're a student watching this, and you're considering joining a boot camp, a good question to ask is, yeah, don't tell me the top the best stories like what's the average case? What's the on average? What are your you know, graduates get? On average, what is your graduation rate? On average? What is your placement rate x, you know, that kind of thing. So, right. That's it, sorry, good. Yeah, upon graduation, that, I would say you got to keep working out things. I say, take your job, take a job no matter what it is, and work at it for a full year and just devote yourself even if it's not too high paying, I was working two jobs at the same time of working still in a restaurant as a server. And I was still doing the part time because that meant more to me to my development of getting myself to the point where I wanted to be until I can land that big job, which, you know, eventually now I've landed a bigger job higher salary, and you know, it's great. But honestly, like, to start off like, you can't expect yourself to be making the six figures expect yourself to make the real the you know, look at where your market is how much the average pay is, I know I'm in the Phoenix Arizona market, that market, the average pays from 60 to 75. For start off with that's average of a developer, if you can get that great. If you get a little bit lower than that, don't be discouraged. Take it and just devote yourself and pick yourself up. Because eventually that next year, you're going to have the recruiters calling and recruiters are gonna be inbox you and you know, your LinkedIn, you're gonna be like, Okay, I got another recruiter call, I got another recruiter call, take the recruiter call, you know, I didn't, I didn't plan on taking a recruiter call for his last job I got, I actually kind of blew them off couple times, and eventually was like, Okay, this person's hitting me up, let me talk to him for a moment, I ended up talking to them and ended up getting a job getting job place with them. So that was great. It was It wasn't expected. I had other plans, I was, you know, building a new portfolio that was about to launch some new new apps on my portfolio. And I was like, doing great. And I'm like, alright, alright, and then it just happened before I even can launch the whole thing. So there's, you know, there's, there's other ways that people will notice when you're working at something, and you're using your GitHub, and then they look at things like that, if you're updating your GitHub and you're pushing to it, and they're seeing all the stuff go in there, they know that you're making the effort, and you're pushing towards it, if you're not using any of those tools that are out there, they're gonna look at you and be like, this person's not really showing any work, you know? Yeah, it's, it's important to when it comes to coding, it's it, I think it's important that you like it, right? Some people can, you know, slog through it, and they'll, they'll hate their life. But I just don't think that's a very, like, we have such a, you know, relatively speaking short time on this earth, you gotta sort of enjoy what you do, right? You do, oh, you got not every day, you're gonna like every project, no, like, that's gonna be something where you're doing something monotonous. You're like, oh, and then working on the front end, and you're just trying to make it a little bit better. And every time you put a code in, it breaks it and you got to keep going back at it. And you you're working on the same thing for a week. And you're like, I hate this. But once you're done with it, you feel success. Gear six, it's a success. And you're just happy. The fact that you actually finished the project, you're like, I move on to the next one. And that's experience you're going to you're going to take with you and be like, Oh, I remember this last time. I took me a week to finish this. I actually, you know, sometimes you you store your code, like what you want, if like, what the problem was, I write everything down. And I'm like, Okay, let me put it this block. So if I have this problem, again, I know exactly where to refer to. And I got a little template for myself to help out. Which is awesome, which is great. You know, it's that's the process right? It's everyone thinks that the I shouldn't say everyone I got it. I'm over generalizing, but there is a common myth, or I don't know how to say, beginners will look to an expert and say, oh my gosh, there's so much better than me, like how am I ever going to achieve that level? Right? And, and that level takes a decade or more to get to when you know, these senior level people who look like who make it look effortless.

14:19
When you when you take them and go back to month one, they're probably gonna look exactly like you and I've said this to some of my students before where where maybe to you too, is you guys are so much better off now. Like at the very beginning and in your careers so much better off than I was when I like I had a I graduated with a university degree right I graduated with this thing that's supposed to be the holy grail of getting you a job and I could not get a job and I once I finally did through a streak of luck and things falling into place I finally was off offered a job And I was terrible at the job. I it was atrocious, my first anyway. So people always go very hard on themselves, right. And it's just you have to be more gentle on yourself because this stuff is extremely difficult to learn. And you guys are in like now with YouTube, and with you know, and learning and boot camps, like I didn't have any of that. And anyway, you guys are so much better off now. And that sort of ties into what I want to talk about next, which is you sound like someone who you just dove right into boot camps. You did one boot camp and then another boot camp and then did a job and blah, blah, why not go the self taught route? Why did you? Or did you try to do it self taught on your own like YouTube and podcasts or blogs? Like, can you talk more about to the reason why I felt the bootcamp I like the experience of having just the mentor who could help me out with things, I have a question I have someone to talk to you when you're doing self taught, you don't have the mentor all you have is like, you know, whatever for me, you hop on your Free Code Camp or, or you hop on for whatever, like your YouTube or anything. And the YouTube was discouraging, because you're watching people on YouTube, and they're building stuff and you're like, I'm never going to get to this level, I'm never going to get to this level, and you're having the same question the same problem over you're like why he'd asked myself the same question. Like, I'm never gonna get there. You know, now I look at YouTube, I look at it differently. And I was like, how much did this person rehearse in order to get this video on there? You know, that's like being a person who puts it up on YouTube. Like, you have to like rehearse if you're not doing it live, or you're seeing all the mess ups. Like you rehearse that, like somehow, you're not just building unless you are the best developer in the world. And you could just develop things that easy. You're gonna make mistakes for every developer, no matter what your level is here. You know, that was one discouraging thing. Like I tried the YouTube I tried to self taught and it just didn't work out. Like as I wanted it to it does, like even today, I still do kind of teach myself certain things. I'll hop on YouTube, watch a video, and I'll build it with them. And I'm like, Okay, I understand what I'm doing wrong now. So it's like, you're not really just the bootcamp gives you a great foundation. It helps you out and gives you those extra questions that you wouldn't be able to ask anybody. I'm the videos that I find on YouTube or videos that I'm like, looking for a specific thing to do. And I need to go find it somewhere on YouTube within somebody's coding video. And I'm like, Okay, well, they're building this, I know, I'm building something similar. And I'm going to look for what I'm doing. And I'm going to patch that together, just like you would go on Stack Overflow, and you're like, Okay, what am I looking for? I need this exact same thing. But you're never gonna get the exact thing you're building, but you need to kind of patch things together to make everything work.

17:33
And that's, I mean, that's, so You took the words on my mouth, it's again, we didn't we didn't rehearse this beforehand. This is you know, so when, when you have the skill set, so yes, you're someone who now has the skill set, right you are, you've been exposed to coding, you have a year or two under your belt, a professional experience. And you can now utilize that skill set that vast amount of knowledge and experience to be able to watch YouTube and listen to a podcast or that and you use it like a scalpel. Right? You go in there. And that's that's exactly that's those. That's what the tools are best used for. When you use them on the brand new beginner side of things and expect to be able to just watch videos. It's like you said it can be demotivating because it's like, Well, wait, I'm not getting this. And you feel like you should be getting it and you get you hear these stories amplified by all these people. You know, I'm a self taught coder, and I got a job for $100,000. And it only took me four months. And it's like, there is so much more to those stories than what you're hearing. Again, I'm generalizing. But I've been doing this for I've been teaching people how to code for 10 years. I haven't seen that unicorn yet. I haven't seen someone who could just go and do it all on their own. Not saying that you can't. It's just it's it takes a lot more than a few months to do it on your own. And yeah, so if you're getting discouraged if you're someone who has been watching YouTube, and you know, trying to do it on your own, and you've been hitting, you know, roadblock after roadblock, and you feel like you don't understand this stuff, and that you'll never get it and everyone smarter than me and like, that's normal. You are 100% normal, but there isn't really, you know, every single person who I can I can say with confidence, every person who has the experience now and who who knows what they're doing. can listen to the words I can say and say oh, yeah, I totally relate. I Yeah. 100% That's true, like, totally relate to it. It's totally So yeah, if you're demotivated and what just know that it's entirely normal. And in my opinion, and obviously, it is a biased opinion. What you need is you need support, you need support from an expert who's been there before who can teach you this stuff, who can, you know, translate it in different ways and watch your face and see how your face is reacting to the information coming out of the mouth and have that teacher you know, say okay, doesn't look like you're getting that you're seeing maybe can I explain it like this and like that's where that's where the work happens. That's where the level ups happen that and all these Working on projects yourself. But anyway, I'm getting I'm getting into the weeds, that might be a good transition to talking Well, how was your experience with the bootcamp that we have here coders campus? All the good, good. It was, it's a great group camp, like, I didn't have a foundation in Java. So Java was a brand new language that I was actually learning and pushing towards. So the Java side kind of like, it was it was harder, because now I had to refocus myself and everything that I learned to take this some stuff, but not everything and push it towards, of course, you know, the language is crossover, and you can't do everything exact same way. It was a great experience, to be honest, like, I felt it, it prepared me more to get a job than my other bootcamp, the like, it was just the other boot camp. Don't get me wrong, it was great. It gave me the great foundation. But what you're looking for is how to get a job in the real life examples of things. And like, like you said, Job is everywhere. Like, you're going to get a job if you learn Java. And that's something for sure. I didn't really have anything bad at the bootcamp, I felt it was great. I honestly, I didn't really the projects were project. Tough. They weren't, they weren't too easy, where, you know, like, my other product with other bootcamp, were pretty easy. Build your frame out and change the color of this, this was more, you're challenging your brain and you're thinking a different way. And you're learning at the same time? And I'm curious, um, this is, you know, I didn't plan to ask this question. I'm just curious to see. And again, don't, I'm not trying to, you know, make you give the flowery and and politically correct. And be honest, truly, with the job that you have. Now, first of all, what's your the title in? Do you have an official title in this new job? Software Developer software development? Yeah. So that's another thing that people get really fixated on is titles. And like, it's one of my first jobs or second job I got, I was called a software engineer. And I was like, Wait, I don't have an engineering degree, like, what you're calling me an engine. And it was like, that's, you know, they throw these words around every

22:04
company, every company I've learned has different titles like software developer, one or software engineer, one, it depends on the company itself, and what they're actually putting. So if you even though it says software engineer, it's, it's different. Like, there's different terms for every company. So don't think like, oh, you can't find an engineering job. If you look at everything on there, and what they're looking for, if you match up with it, apply to it, even though you're not a software engineer, I would say though, on your resume, change it to software engineer match with their matching. So don't just keep it as like, oh, I software developers, you know, make sure you're matching what they're matching. If your skill set matches their skill set, you know, those are things where you have to do you can't just be like, I'm gonna apply to this at this this level, or, you know, I understand I'm, I'm still a junior developer, I'm not a senior developer. I don't call myself a developer, I call myself a software developer. That's what I do. I'm not a junior, I'm a junior, but I'm not a junior. I'm a software developer, I do the job, like, you know, it's not like I'm working to do the job, or I'm still in school. You know, I say, while you're in school, call yourself a junior developer, because you're still learning. You know, as a software developer, you you are a software developer. I agree. So now in terms of your job now, and this is sort of where I'm, I don't know where this question is gonna go. And if it blows up in my face, that's fine. So you're, when you take the experience you got from, from the bootcamp that you did with us with coders campus. The experience you got there? How well did it match up with the job that you're working at now? Is it 80% crossover and 90% 50%? Like, the skills that you need? How close was the match? So it's, it's weird, because, of course, you have the Java bootcamp, they looked at more of my react side of everything, because their application, their front end runs on React, and they look at Android, which I have no experience with Android. So I'm learning Android on the fly as it is right now. They did like that I knew Java because they actually work in C Sharp as well. So I'm learning C sharp, and I'm learning the Android Studio at the same time. So because I knew somewhat of the Java side, they're like, Okay, he can match up towards a C sharp, so it kind of it correlates with certain things, depending on what market you're in. Your lead developer who works on the product, he'll know exactly what what can actually move forward, what they're what they're doing what. So what you're saying is the skill set that you learned in the boot camp, and the fact that I you know, we we go hard on let me teach you this one language that is, you know, not the most easy language and not the most difficult, but it's a little bit on the harder side, the Java language tends to be the harder side, my my thesis and what I base my education off of is let me teach you Java, because it's pretty difficult. And once you know that language pretty well, you can apply it to almost any other language fairly successfully. And I don't again, this could have backfired, but I wanted to see what you said. He just said, Yeah, I use Android, which you didn't learn in the boot camp, and I'm maybe using C sharp which you didn't learn at the boot camp, but now you're getting paid to do that. So that helps to dispel the myth that you absolutely Like, you applied to that job, or maybe they they went to you and your skill set didn't match 100%. Right? Not actually, this job was a recruiter found me for this job, right? I didn't apply to hire you. But they found me because they're like, your skill set matches what we're looking for, like, you know, I know, my boss. Now, what he gives a recruiter with probably skill sets of matching, because when they had my resume printed out, when I walked in for the interview, he's like, these are skill sets. And there's three people sitting in front of me, and I'm, like, nervous, and they're talking about everything. They're like, what are your skill sets? Us? Can you tell me more about your skill set on Java? And they started picking everything out? Oh, you're my, you're my sequel, you know, of all these things, trying to pick it out to know what I knew on that point. You know, I told him I didn't really know C sharp, but I knew Java, I know that Java can relate towards it. So I think I could I could figure it out at that point in time. They're not looking to see if you have you know, everything 100% They want to know if you're willing to figure it out. If you're going to be that person who's like, I don't know this. Right now I have a seizure going into work today, I have a C sharp question. Because they're asking me to update some stuff. And I'm like, I have no clue where this is supposed to go in the code. I've read through everything of understanding what I understand. But it doesn't make sense to me. And that's okay. Because believe it or not even saw, like myself with 15 years of experience happens to me, too. I'll walk into something and I'm like, I have no clue what's going on here. And that's just software development software. But I have my notes that I took yesterday while I was trying to do it. And I'm gonna go in and be like, alright, this is my problem. This is what I need to do. Am I looking at the right thing? And can you point me in the right direction? I don't want the answer. I need you to point me in the right direction or, or tell me I'm doing the right thing. And to get me to get me there. Hey, now, and I want to dive into the actual interview part of this whole thing. Now, I guess this is I was gonna say, how many interviews did you go on before you got the job? But I guess they approached you, right?

26:50
Um, they actually even through the interview process. I actually never got the recruiter call. It was really weird because the recruiters like, I'm setting you up to have a meeting with me, we're gonna talk and the recruiter eventually cancelled the first one because something happened and he was busy with something. I was like, okay, no big deal. He's like, so he rescheduled me, and it said interview and I, I assumed it was with him, the recruiter, but it wasn't actually the recruiter, which was really weird, because like, hop on the phone, I think, as a recruiter, and I've been emailing back and forth. And so I'm really casual dissection of what's going on, you know, just like he's my best friend, because we've been talking for a while. And I didn't realize it was my boss, who is it now that I was talking to him, and I was like, Oh, my God, I'm talking to him right now. And I didn't notice this till like the last two minutes when he said his name again. Because in the beginning of the call, when we first got on, our connection was just really bad. We both introduced ourselves, we didn't realize ourselves, so we're like, oh, and he's asking these questions. I'm talking to him. And then he's like, Well, let me get back to the recruiter. And then we'll, we'll see, we want to do next. I'm like, Oh, my God, what? Oh, yeah, it was it was it was kind of shocking at that point in time. At that time, I was like, I just freaked out because I was too casual. And I wasn't business oriented, you know, that I displayed a little bit more confident because one recruiter it was, it's easier to talk to, you're gonna have more confidence when you're talking to actual interview person, you're going to be nervous, you're sweaty, you're freaking out about everything. That that interview process to me, it was like, just display that for the next interview. I was like display confidence, the same confidence you had just go in there being relaxed, got a little nervous when you have three people come into the room and you're like, ah, snapper three people in here. I'm just gonna be one person. But at the same time they it was it was different because they didn't ask me to pull up my laptop. They didn't ask me all these, you know, leetcode questions or anything, they didn't, they didn't do any of that stuff on this when they wanted to know who I was, what I was doing and what my struggles have been throughout coding, and they want to know if I'm going to be a fit for them. They've already screened me in the beginning, they seen my resume. They they seen I pushed up to GitHub, they they knew I had the other job that I was working on for about a year's time. So they they already know that they want to know who you are, and if you could fit for their company. This isn't like a big company like Google or anything like that. But you know, it's a it's a startup now. So the company called Brooklyn bedding, they actually just merged with helix, which they all make mattresses and they sell them across the world. Brooklyn bedding is a main manufacturer, so they manufacture all the foam and all the coils and everything for beds and either the beds in the box you buy on Amazon or if you go to your Costco or Sam's Club, you have a lot of their stuff in your stores, you'd never even know. So it's it's a big company, and that just merged and even 10 times bigger than the office on East Coast and the West Coast. Now we're teaming up with helix. So it's, it's great to see a company that now I believe like three years ago, they only had like 200 employees now they have over 400 employees. So they've doubled in size and but it's great. They have a brand new facility that they're building out here for everybody and and it's a growing company is a growing startup and yeah, that's really cool. I think it could be great just what they're doing and how they're cornering the market. They have new technology like just on the manufacturing side that no one else is doing right now. So and it's it's interesting because it's like, when I think of a mattress company, I don't think 400 employees and I don't think software developers, right. So you know that that was a weird thing. I was like, yeah, what are they going to do is like, so I took the interview, not knowing I was like, This is gonna be weird, then we'll see what they're having me do. I was like, I don't know if this is really a software job. And it was 100% You know, knew exactly what, what I wanted to do. But you know, it gave me that great experience. That's so good. Yeah, it's just there's so many opportunities out there. And anyway, I don't want to repeat myself with how you know, amazing it is to be a software developer. But there's so many different types of software developers out there work for different companies. It's it's not just your your Google, your Facebook, your your Amazon, there's, there's everything else as a smaller independent market is healthcare. There's a bunch of software developers for them. And like, you know, the market is huge. So no matter what industry you want to go into, it's into the need for it. And you so I forget you say it's a local, or is it a remote or is actually local. So the office is here in Phoenix, Arizona, which I go into the office every day, I can work remote someday, if I want to work remote, I prefer just to go in the office because it's right now starting off new, it just makes it easier for me to ask questions and be around everybody and get to know the team and not the one remote guy who's who's on the other side. That's right, exactly. Cool, man. Now, I had a question teed up here for you know, do you have any advice for aspiring coders, but you already given some pretty darn good advice in terms of all these tips? Is there anything else that you can think of in terms of like, if someone is where you were, I don't know, a year or two ago, they're considering a boot camp? I don't know Is there anything else that you could suggest to them or, you know,

31:38
take a boot camp, I would say take a boot camp, I have nothing about bad about a boot camp. But if you're gonna take a boot camp, be prepared to not get a job right away, but push towards getting that job, you can't just take a bootcamp and expect to get a job, you have to know your stuff. So that means you're going to be putting in a lot of work, putting in a lot of work and a lot of hours, and you're going to make some sacrifices. You know, my social life kind of died at that time, I really have no social life. Now, just because I made that sacrifice few years back. And you know, I'm still every day I wake up, I think about coding, I go to bed, think about coding, you know, you have to do it every day, you have to programming, I think right now is the longest where I'm programming for like 10 hours a day, sometimes because I go to work for eight hours, and I come home and still coming back home and programming for two more hours trying to finish up things. And, you know, eventually I'll figure out my balance. But right now, you'd have to put the work in, if you're going to, if you're going to take a bootcamp, be prepared to put the work in and dedicate yourself to your development, because it's your development. It's not software development, it's your development in software development. That's such like, that's also I don't like, this is a very, what you just said, is a very large piece of this puzzle. I say this a lot, I get on my soapbox and talk about motivation. Everyone is motivated at the beginning. Everyone sees the end goal, and they say, Wow, I can't wait to be a software developer, get a job, be able to, you know, make eventually six figures or whatever, and it's gonna be great. And I'm gonna have flexibility and it's gonna be cool. And, and it's, it's fun, and it is motivating, right? And then they get 30 days into something like a boot camp. And the motivation probably disappears pretty quickly. The reality of the task, and the mountain in front of you, slaps you in the face and shoves you onto the ground. And then you know, anyway, so you need more than motivation. And the word, the terminology I use is dedication, right? There's, there's motivation, and then there's dedication, there's drive, right? And that you're not going to succeed if you don't have that. So I'm glad that you pointed that out. And it's a ton of work. It's a ton of hours, a ton of work. It's very frustrating. But in the end, I don't know, I think it's worth it in the end. But I think it's worth it. Honestly, I ended up there all my development was during COVID two, so like the first year was before COVID, and then COVID hit and then I took the drop, like my, my hourly job at that point in development. So it was like a three year process that I took to dedicate myself COVID started it and I've kept working COVID hit, you know, and it it was downhill at that time. And, you know, a lot of stuff shut down around me and I was like, Okay, well, what can I do right now, while I'm not working? Because of course, we're quarantining everywhere and I took the second boot camp. That's why I found coders campus is it was one of those I found online and like, Okay, this is the online boot camp. Let me try this one out, dedicated my money that I had was like, let me start taking this and, you know, and make my payments and take the bootcamp and I think it was a great experience because during but what else was I gonna be doing during that time? I needed something to keep myself focused. So it was just learning so and now you have a job and are you comfortable sharing the salary that you were offered or you don't have to if you don't want to so? It's not it's not I don't want anybody knowing especially if somebody else you know, I worked with, let's say That's a, you know, if you let's say there's a fallen in the in the average rain for the area. Oh, honey, yeah, honey, there you go. Yeah, so and then average rain. And that's again, I'm rival or Phoenix is supposed to be for that average windows. Exactly. So that's a good good piece to end on is is, you know, set your expectations, it's going to be hard work, you're going to be drive, you're going to be more than motivation, you're going to probably feel like you're, you're going to want to quit, because of how hard it is, Oh, I thought about quitting so many times. But you know, I couldn't quit, I just, there's something about it that just like, I don't like to fail at something that I'm putting my heart towards. And to me, that's my dedication, you know, I always tell myself, I will, I can't, I must, which is my little three things, I will do this because I can do this. And I must do this because I want to do this, you know. And if you keep yourself in a motivation, where you have your own motivational speeches, you know, every day is not going to be perfect. There's some times I'm like, I don't want to have my computer today. I can't touch it. I can't touch it. I'm just my brains fried, you know, and there's days you're like that and other days you hit you touch your computer, and you're the best you seem like you're the best coder ever. Everything comes to you naturally. And then you have your roadblock. So you have to just dedicate yourself towards it. Then the big the big thing. I love it. Yeah, cuz like anything. I mean, it's not there's not unique to coding, there are plenty of other careers and professions where it's gonna be hard ladies and gentlemen. So you gotta you gotta have you got to like it. I think, you know, you got to have a curiosity, you got to have something there above just motivation at the beginning. So anyway, easy, everybody be making $100,000 a year six figures if it was easy, but everybody's not making that because it's not that easy. You just got to dedicate yourself.

36:35
I would say everybody that's a coder, once they hit, you know, five or so years. And I think six figures is very likely once you're above five years in. That's my 1000. That's my goal. Right? There is like getting to that point five years in, this is why I want to make so yeah, I'm, I'm there. I'm pushing it. So yeah, I think you'll get there typically, from what we see is we see about a $10,000 a year increase. For every year that you're doing development work, you tend to see about 10k and then eventually that levels off. So you can't you know, it's not like you're getting making 150,000 more than the average, if you have 15 years experience, no, eventually it caps off. But yeah, that's what we're sort of what we're seeing is between 10 to maybe 15,000 is the average raise per year. So it's just good data for you to know and understand once you want to get going. So don't just focus on the first job and the first salary for the first year, because that's only one year of your career, right. So because I say take the first job, whatever you get just right here, you're going to be a fit and make sure you're ready to learn. You're not you might not be building everything you want to build, you might just be doing the monotonous tasks, but just just do it, just do it and you're in, you're in it, you're gonna still be doing your own developer on the side, your own projects still, but just take the job and get the experience of actual working in the industry. So good. I think that's good. I think we get in there unless there's anything else you has. No, that's it but wonderful. So thank you yes scene for sharing your your honest feedback on the journey. And yeah, hopefully we as coders campus now, my my marketing message to you, without any hype is yeah, if you've seen message sort of resonates with you, if you can see yourself in him, maybe you might be a good fit. So I don't know, wherever this video is, there's probably some way to take the next action like clicking on a button to talk to one of our admissions advisors, or clicking on a button to apply or whatever go for it doesn't cost you anything, you can dip your toes in those waters and see if you might be a good fit, because you might be a better fit, then you give yourself credit for as I've seen with many students in the past. So thank you guys, for being with us and sharing your time. And hopefully Yeah, we'll get an update at some point in the future. Perfect. Yeah, thank you.

38:49
Thanks for listening to this episode of the coders campus podcast. But before you go, Trevor has a favorite ask you. In order to keep these episodes free, he'd love for you to leave a rating and review the podcast on iTunes. Just go to coderscampus.com/review to leave your own rating and review of the show. So if you have 30 seconds to spare right now, please help out by leaving a rating and review via coderscampus.com/rubio It will ensure that you continue to get these awesome free podcast episodes each and every week. So if you like free swag, head on over to coderscampus.com/review Happy Learning

The post EP57 – From Restaurant Manager to Software Developer appeared first on Coders Campus.