He made the career transition into tech with Nucamp’s help

Behind the scenes of a Front End Developer who teaches at Nucamp

"Nucamp helps students narrow down what is actually important to learn and needed to be successful." -Brendan Roman, Nucamp Instructor

Our next instructor we are proud to introduce you to is Brendan Roman.

He is one of our top instructors and specializes in React; using it both at his day job and teaching it at Nucamp.

Brendan now has two years of coding experience under his belt, but started with an unrelated background getting a B.A. in Psychology and starting his career after college in sales.

Brendan was a dissatisfied insurance sales manager; it was a stable job he was good at, but he didn’t enjoy his day-to-day.

He then moved into a data analytics and training role after a healthcare provider reached out to him.

This was his first step toward coding, as Brendan was working with Excel and reading reports, he taught himself VBA and SQL to automate processes to save his team time.

Brendan hadn’t previously realized how capable he was and how exciting programming could be.

As fun as it was for him, pursuing coding took the back burner while he focused on his work.

Then, right before the pandemic, his company started to lay people off.

The layoffs were the impetus for him to revive his dormant passion for coding.

Brendan and his wife created a plan for him to quit his job and focus solely on teaching himself programming and forge a new career he loved.

Over the next 4 months, Brendan taught himself and also completed Nucamp’s Full Stack bootcamp.

He found during the pandemic YouTube was flooded with creators trying to capitalize on the influx of people teaching themselves coding, but thankfully he found Nucamp to cut through the noise and lay out what he really needed to know.

Brendan’s past sales role had put a sour taste in his mouth toward networking, but thankfully the Nucamp community helped him realize networking with engineers and developers was a completely unique experience.

Forming relationships was one based on sharing knowledge and supporting each other without ulterior motives.

A friendship grew between him and an instructor that created the opportunity for Brendan to be referred to the role he now holds working full-time as a Front End Developer at Lunchbox.

What is your favorite project you've created or are most proud of?

Brendan’s most proud of his first project after graduating from Nucamp.

He created a gamified habit tracking app that enabled users to level-up.

Brendan wrote the app to build an experience curve based on the number of hours the user input and thought they needed to achieve to master the skill or habit.

This project dramatically helped Brendan with self-confidence.

Why did you decide to become an instructor?

“I love to teach and I wanted to pay it forward after I was tremendously helped by my Nucamp instructors. Being able to support people in meeting their goals is satisfying and empowering.”

What is one piece of advice you would give bootcamp students (future or current)?

“Be a mentor to other people. You are paying money for a service, make sure you are getting your money's worth. Don't be afraid to ask for help. There's nothing more important than having portfolio projects, so reaching out for help on those projects is critical. Also, networking through Nucamp helped me land my first real job.”

Watch Brendan’s live Campfire interview with Nucamp’s CEO, Ludo, here.