Tune a coding hobby into a full-time gig

From Indoor Skydiving Instructor to Junior Developer, TRAC Media Services

"The Saturday classes were really great. It was a good balance of personal work and collaborative work."

This is Andrew Sutton, a Nucamp Front End Bootcamp graduate and now a now a Junior Developer at TRAC Media Services.

Andrew is a guitar player and enjoys performing with his alternative rock band monthly.

For 7 years Andrew was an indoor skydiving instructor and watched most of his coworkers leave after only 1 or 2 years in the physically demanding job.

Andrew enjoyed the challenge, but when he maxed out the potential for advancement, he was ready to take on something new.

During the COVID lockdowns, he started to pick up photo editing and graphic design with his extra time.

This naturally evolved into a hobby learning web development and coding.

Andrew started with a mix of both teaching himself coding and recorded courses.

He took his skills far enough to start his development career, but still lacked direction.

A friend of Andrew’s was taking a UI/UX bootcamp and told him how helpful it was.

A bootcamp sounded like the type of environment Andrew needed for the extra push and structure he was looking for.

Andrew researched his bootcamp options but felt the high price points over $10,000 were out of tune with his goals.

When he saw Nucamp’s low prices he was skeptical, but the positive reviews made him reconsider.

During his Nucamp bootcamp experience, Andrew loved the collaborative environment of the Saturday workshops.

He focused his time into building personal projects to strengthen what he learned along the way, all the while contributing to his portfolio.

Describe your job search process.

Andrew used LinkedIn to apply to as many jobs and connect with as many people as he could.

He stuck to his goal of applying to at least 3 jobs a day for 4 months.

The applications started off quantity over quality and eventually he turned his focus into being more specific and adding a unique cover letter for each application.

Andrew spent the time to polish his resume and build out his portfolio since he didn’t yet have a lot of experience.

After 4 months, Andrew secured his first coding job.

Tell me about a moment of doubt or difficulty and how did you overcome it?

Andrew felt there were always moments where doubt would creep in.

He had a particularly difficult time styling in react native after feeling CSS was so straight forward for him.

He overcame the difficulties along the way by focusing on taking it one step at a time to try to not overwhelm himself.

Andrew attributes his step-by-step approach to his success with his React Native project earning him graduating with honors.

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

“Pull the trigger, you have nothing to lose. Even if they don’t end up loving it or getting a job in tech, you will learn a lot about yourself based on how much work they put into it.”

What advice do you have for people who have already started the bootcamp and they are just about to finish Bootstrap?

“Don’t take a week break between each module. Study more than you were the week before.”