Obstacles in your current career don't need to hold you back from reaching your peak.

From Middle School Teacher to Front End Web Developer, BlueWater Federal Solutions

"I really enjoyed [my Nucamp coding bootcamp]. It was rewarding. I enjoyed the workshops, code challenges, and interacting with the instructors and the students. It's a different experience going back to school as a student, as an adult, everyone was more serious, which I liked."

This is Brian Holt, a Nucamp Full Stack Bootcamp graduate and now a Front End Web Developer at BlueWater Federal Solutions.

Brian's favorite pastimes are hiking and mountain biking throughout his picturesque home state of Washington.

Before trekking into the tech sphere, he was a passionate middle school teacher who helped guide students to academic, social, and emotional success by working with a grant called GEAR UP.

He loved being able to give back by helping the kids he taught, but unfortunately a lot of successful teachers like him reach burnout with the multitude of challenges they face in their practice.

Before the inevitable crash, he decided to shift gears and search for a better long term path for himself.

Brian had always enjoyed the engineering aspect of coding; it's a puzzle that requires coming up with the best possible solutions for each task.

He looked into other fields, but found web development was the best route after seeing how realistic it would be to learn new skills and earn a certificate around his day job.

After teaching himself for 5-6 months and realizing how much of a joyride it was, he knew he wanted to go all in on making this new career a reality.

Looking at job boards, he noticed all the positions were asking for specific frameworks and felt he needed more direction and guidance in order to learn these more difficult to grasp concepts.

He narrowed down what coding bootcamp to attend based on cost, being able to keep his job, and the curriculum.

It was important to him to learn the right material and tech stack that employers were looking for.

Nucamp met all his requirements and he noted an added bonus was how helpful going to the Saturday workshops were.

"Through this journey I discovered I am a little bit more resilient than I thought. I can deal with adversity better than I knew I could. That was the biggest thing, to not give up, to be persistent. It was a hard spot during Covid to be looking for a job, but I worked with a recruiter, keeping LinkedIn updated."

Describe your job search process.

During his coding bootcamp Brian started his job search and right after graduating he found an unpaid internship.

His internship lasted until he landed his first paid job 5 months after graduation.

Being a Front End Developer at his current company he is working on rebuilding an old website that was in PhP and in an old framework into a modern stack.

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

"Definitely do it, but expect to work hard. You get out of the experience what you put in. There were some students that were on the edge, but ended up getting too busy. If you only give 50%, you'll only get back 50%. Give 100% and you'll get 100% back. A lot of people want experience, so getting the internship was really helpful. Consider donating some time to startups to get experience and put some things on your resume. It opens so many doors as to what you can talk about, and you might find yourself under a mentor. Push yourself to keep learning. If you don't like learning new things, maybe it's not for you.""

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

"Really set aside 3 hours a day to go through the material, talk to your instructors, look at the React documentations, stay focused and set aside a certain amount of time per day, otherwise it's easy to get behind."