Creativity, learning, and passion were her perfect distillation of ideal career values she found in coding

From Mortgage Consultant to Intern Programmer, Blue Cross Blue Shield

"I realized I could put myself out there more than I thought to get out of my comfort zone, I have the ability to push myself a lot more than I thought, and I learned a ton in a short period of time."

This is Calli Oberembt, a Nucamp Full Stack Bootcamp graduate and now an Intern Programmer at Blue Cross Blue Shield.

Calli enjoys taking her dogs to the park, playing tabletop board games, and exploring Minnesota's many breweries.

Before learning to code her career as a mortgage consultant was going well, but it didn't have the shelf life she had expected.

Only taking a few months to learn everything needed for the job meant it was repetitive from then on.

The passion just wasn't there as it wasn't fulfilling her need for continuous learning or creativity.

Even obtaining a promotion lacked the gravity to fuel her passion, so she started exploring other crafts.

It hadn't been on her radar at first, but a lot of her friends were in software development.

Looking to satisfy her creativity, she dabbled in coding and her love for it bubbled to the surface.

She then took the leap, quit her mortgage consulting job, and started teaching herself how to code while working a part time job in healthcare.

A year into self-teaching the pandemic hit—fomenting in her mind she needed to work from home instead of in a long term care facility.

Calli had been thinking about taking training programs for awhile since she realized she wasn't going to be able to get there on her own; she needed the structure and extra accountability.

Diving into researching the best fit for her, she had a flight of coding bootcamp options to choose from.

She liked the idea of building relationships with local people, but she wasn't too keen on the Income Share Agreement (ISA) financing option that other bootcamps were offering.

Ultimately, Nucamp had local in-person workshops, affordable pricing, great reviews, and the right tech stack for her.

Before signing up for her Nucamp bootcamp, Calli felt like she was taking a risk by joining a course that cost so much less than most, but her concerns were quickly alleviated.

The top 2 highlights for Calli were how helpful all her instructors were and how the bootcamps were structured with all the right ingredients.

She really enjoyed the social aspect of connecting with other students and her instructors on Slack.

She really enjoyed the social aspect of connecting with other students and her instructors on Slack.

"Something too structured might have stressed me out, so it was comfortable that there was some self-pacing options, as long as I was ready for the Saturday workshop."

Describe your job search process.

"I took to heart the advice I got again and again from my career advisors: networking is key."

While still in the bootcamp Callie made networking the #1 thing she focused on by making a LinkedIn profile and attending local meetups with other coding enthusiasts.

She was able to get a referral about an intern position at Blue Cross Blue Shield and it had the exact tech stack she learned in the Full Stack Bootcamp.

In her new role she is focused on building a public-facing React app.

It currently exists in production, but it's in Angular so she is working on rewriting it into React.

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

"Just go for it. Short term cost, long term gain. I would definitely recommend Nucamp. Sign up!"

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

"Learn to become very comfortable with not knowing what's going on, or what you're doing, but just trust that it will click as you keep working at it. Just keep working at it, you're going to feel lost at first, but that's okay."