Cloud Computing and Python: Coding Bootcamp Student Success Story

From DJ to Sr. Cloud Engineer, BreakFree Solutions

"It’s kind of silly, but I wish I had done this earlier. The coding bootcamp and my instructors were great. The course was so well designed."

This is John-Carlos Sanabria, a Nucamp Back End Bootcamp graduate and now a Sr. Cloud Engineer at BreakFree Solutions.

John was a DJ and enjoyed creating great atmospheres at festivals, clubs, and weddings for over 20 years.

Sadly, COVID faded the event industry and caused major adversity for him and his family.

John started his search for a new job by selling solar door-to-door, but the pressure of sales and being subject to the elements kept him wanting to be back in the event industry.

Then John and his wife excitedly found out they were expecting a baby. So the pressure to find a reliable long-term career he valued began.

As a DJ, or sound engineer, John was great with hardware and considered himself a bit of a techie from a young age.

John hadn’t programmed before (unless you count using his high school graphing calculator), but he did have a CISCO Networking certification he considered utilizing in a backup plan as hardware skills can’t necessarily be leveraged in remote work.

John’s wife helped push him in the right direction by suggesting he lean even further into his computer skills and look into learning to code.

Searching online brought John to consider coding bootcamps with the concept of fast-paced learning at an affordable price.

John narrowed his career course down to aiming for getting into the emerging Cloud industry.

With in-demand jobs and not a lot of qualified applicants in the Cloud industry, John was set on becoming a programmer and learning to code.

John ended up choosing to register at Nucamp based on the combination of price, timeline, and skills taught.

He thought Nucamp's Back End Bootcamp was the right choice as other back end programs were longer and didn’t cover cloud computing as in-depth.

John’s bootcamp experience was beyond his expectations and he loved it.

Before his program started, he took it upon himself to read one of his wife’s Python books that she used while learning to use it at her job.

Reading the book didn’t make any sense to John, which worried him, but as the class began everything fell into place.

Being able to work together with his classmates and bounce ideas off of each other made all the difference for John.

John’s Nucamp instructors were approachable, helped him every step of the way, and even taught extra lessons above and beyond the expected curriculum.

They even helped him outside of the classroom on the things that made a huge difference in him getting his job: endorsing him on LinkedIn and assisting him with setting up his Github profile.

The cloud computing module of John’s bootcamp was of immense value to him and “made every penny worth it.”

Lastly, John followed the final module before graduation on career preparation coursework to a T and was blown away by his career coach’s helpfulness.

The whole time John was learning to code, he was also looking for jobs he would be able to do upon graduation.

This solidified his choice to learn Python since there were many job openings requiring the skills he was learning, and they were paying well on top of it.

Describe your job search process.

About a month after graduating, John secured his job as a Sr. Cloud Engineer.

John spent the month applying to jobs, completing Code Wars and Leet Code practice problems, watching YouTube videos on coding, and tailoring his resume.

He applied to these various jobs through LinkedIn, Indeed, and Dice.

John graduated at the end of January 2022, applied to 200 jobs in February, and had an offer in hand by March 2022.

Of those 200 applications John was expecting to receive maybe 10 responses.

John got 50 responses and accumulated 30 interviews; he was shocked by the great turnout!

What advice do you have for people who are thinking about attending a bootcamp, but haven't yet registered?

"Trust the process. Don’t overthink. You don’t need to reinvent the wheel. It’s always better to work smarter and not harder. Find a quality program, do what they tell you to do, follow the process, do a little research, ask others what they did. "