From the Navy to programming, Jessica found her passion launched an Amazing Career in Tech!
Hailing from Albuquerque, New Mexico, Jessica at 21 years of age decided to join the Navy. After serving for 8 years, she seized the opportunity to backpack around the world for a few years with her cousin. After all her traveling and life experience, she decided to settle down, “I didn’t really have a passion as far as a career goes. I started looking into jobs that maybe in the future would potentially be remote. I had a friend who worked as that was a recruiter who and knew that I liked to learn quickly at an accelerated rate. She suggested web development, telling me how frequently she would hire from bootcamps. I really warmed up to the idea, I liked that with web development you are constantly challenged to make things work. As soon as I got started, I knew I would never be bored and that this was it.”
Looking around at different schools, Jessica was immediately drawn to Sabio, “They were the only school in California that took the Gi bill. One of the other determining factors was the fact that Sabio had instructors. There were other schools that I looked at that basically had one instructor that teaches the cohort, and then from that cohort someone would become the next instructor and teaches the next cohort. That really stood out to me, I knew I wanted to learn web development with some depth and structure.”
When it came time to get started, Jessica did her best to get ready, “I had been working on coding websites for a while before I went to PreWork. I had a basic idea of javascript, CSS, HTML, but the moment that you start cohort, nothing can prepare you for that. You just have to embrace the fact that you’re going to feel like you don’t know anything the entire time. I learned Persian Farsi in the NAVY and they write from right to left in sanskrit with the dots and squiggles, and that was easier than learning web development. To be fair, I learned that over the course of a year and this was over three months, so maybe if it was stretched out it would be similar, but it was super tough.”
Despite the challenges, Jessica felt like it was a success, “In the end it came down to whether or not I knew enough to actually land a job, and I did. The reality of it is though, technology and web development is so broad, that what Sabio really does is teach you how to learn web development. It’s really sink or swim, if you’re not going to be okay with it being extremely tough and challenging, you’re probably not going to survive. Also, my instructor Victor Campos was great. He wouldn’t give you an answer to a question, he would give you a direction. It was more telling you how to solve your own problems, where to look for the solution. Which, in this field to me, is more valuable because I understand that I’m going to need to find these solutions myself. Being taught where to look and how to search things out has helped me more.“
Now a Junior Software Engineer and RMIS, Jessica attributes a lot of her new position to Sabio’s resources, “They have a Trello board with questions that had been asked in interviews. But really the talks from Gregorio Rojas (Sabio’s Co-Founder and CTO) were the best. He’s very adamant about being confident, and he and I have similar ideas on being aggressive to get a job as far as sending out applications and talking on the phone. I feel like I got lucky with my job, their HR department called me the same day I applied and passed me off to the manager who I had a phone interview with. Next thing I knew, I had an in-person interview the following week, and then I got called in for another interview for a different job the same day. I went to both interviews one right after the other which both went really well, and then I got this job offer.”
At her new job, Jessica feels ready for anything, “The fact that the course was such an intense experience makes my job as a junior developer kind of feel like a breeze. I feel like I can take on way more then than they give me because I’m used to having so much put on me.”
Jessica may have finished Sabio, but she knows it will be part of her forever, “I keep in touch with everybody in my cohort, we were super close. During our course, we hung out every Saturday, and we still talk. We have our own personal slack channel which we still communicate on. We talk about work, if we have any issues, we have other people to ask. That’s what’s so awesome about Sabio, there are so many people still willing to help you. I still talk to my instructor, he was my job reference, and I keep in touch with some of the people that were in the cohort after and before me. We had a really great group, the people that I met there are wonderful.”
Even though she’s just getting started, Jessica has her eyes on the future, “I would like to eventually get to a point of being a senior developer, or like a project or program manager. But ideally, anything that I do, if I can get a remote job doing it, that would be my #1 dream and I feel like that’s going to happen. This is going to be the career I stick with.”
For those interested in Sabio, Jessica has some advice, “You have to embrace the fact that it’s going to be overwhelming, stressful and a challenge. But if you put in the work, you’ll learn what you need to get a job. If you’re just interested in learning to code, there are plenty of ways to get free training for the basics, but if you want to do it at an accelerated rate with someone there to help you, going to Sabio is beneficial. My whole goal out of it was to get enough experience to get a job, and I did. It’s time and numbers. If you go to Sabio and just keep applying for jobs and continue to code and learn after school, then you’ll definitely be successful.”
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Written by Sassy Mohen
