Erin is a US Army Veteran, mom to two brilliant teenage boys, and Web Application Developer at Reax. She helps organize Nash.rb, Nodevember, and BarCamp Nashville. Erin is a go-go-go kind of person: go getter, go-to, go team!! When she is not mentoring or hacking, she can be found transporting teenagers around Nashville.
Bootcamp attendance is on the rise as more and more people are considering a career in software development. How does one go about actually learning how to program? How do you break into the market and convince someone to hire you??
In this talk, I will share my path from self learning to bootcamp to actual paid software engineer, and leave attendees with some advice on next steps on their own journey.
I gave a talk at Code Stock 2016 about leveling up from a junior engineer. I expected my audience to be other junior programmers, but I ended up with mostly people that were considering a career change to software development.
While writing this blog I pondered what I did have to offer to others. Around the same time, a friend from the local community asked me to have coffee with him and his daughter b/c she was considering going to Nashville Software School.
Finally putting all of these events together in my head, I realized the story I currently have to share is about my journey becoming a software engineer. The time from when I was introduced to technology to when I was hired as an Application Developer was about 4 years.