Serving up the coding game point

From Spanish Teacher to Software Engineer, Green Mountain Technology

"I LOVED the community. I could get help and help others. I love to help others. It’s something I still do today."

This is Carla Montano, a Nucamp Full Stack Bootcamp graduate and now a Software Engineer at Green Mountain Technology.

Carla is a sports fan who can be found at baseball and softball games cheering on her children, but her all-time favorite game is table tennis.

Before coming to the United States 8 years ago, Carla was a teacher.

She thoroughly enjoys helping and serving others, so it was a rewarding career for her.

When Carla moved to the United States, she continued to teach but it eventually started to backspin.

Carla is competitive and likes a good challenge, but the pandemic aggravated students’ behavioral issues to the point where many would refuse to put in the required effort.

The reward of teaching became a lot less than the cost and time away from family.

Carla started to look for an alternative and thought back to a short coding class she had taken back in university.

At first she disregarded coding since she thought she had to have tech experience and a Computer Science degree to succeed.

When teaching became completely unsustainable for her she spoke with her brother who is a software engineer with a traditional degree about her options.

Carla’s brother advised her to take a short General Assembly tutorial, which she completed within two nights and knew she wanted to do more.

Next, she found FreeCodeCamp.com and solidified to herself that switching into a coding career was definitely for her.

After completing those courses Carla felt like it wasn’t clear how to apply her new skills to the real world; she felt like she hit a road block.

With her HTML and CSS skills she took it upon herself to learn how to use WordPress to begin freelancing on the side.

Carla still didn’t feel where she wanted to be and as she tried to teach herself JavaScript, it was too confusing for her to understand with tutorials alone.

This was the deciding moment for Carla to find a coding bootcamp to guide her through the faults of learning on your own.

Carla knew she needed the flexibility, structure, and support coding bootcamps can offer to work around her busy life as a mom of three with a full-time job.

Nucamp was an ace in her book as it was part-time, online, affordable, and had classes that met once a week.

Carla scored a Nu You scholarship and registered for the Full Stack bootcamp.

Carla learned a lot about herself during her coding journey; proving to herself she is capable and can reach her goals.

In the beginning she wrote down the goal statement: “I am a Full Stack React Developer making $70,000 a year working with an awesome team.”

Carla didn’t believe her goal statement when she wrote it, but crushed her goal in the end!

Now she can confidently tell her kids to put their goal on a piece of paper, work for it, do what it takes, and you will make it happen.

“Even though I’m no longer a Spanish teacher, I can still help people just in a different way though coding. I didn’t know I could give back to the tech community, but eventually learned that I could.”

Describe your job search process.

During the React course of the Full Stack bootcamp, Carla was applying for jobs she thought were a good fit.

She received a lot of rejections, so she took a break from applying and started doing projects to build her portfolio.

Carla then participated in a few group hackathons and started actively using LinkedIn to share her projects and build her network by simply commenting and engaging with others.

The connections she made led a company to reach out to her directly during the last module of her coding bootcamp.

She accepted the job offer the last week of the bootcamp.

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

“Make sure this is what you want to do. Then, make sure you put in the work to make something happen. A lot of people go into a bootcamp, but they expect everything to be done for them. You only get out of it what you are willing to put into it. I feel like I could have done the bootcamp mostly on my own, being shy or passively, but I did it aggressively.”

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

“Just build stuff! If you learn to do something in the bootcamp, apply it outside of the bootcamp on a project. If you learn a component, create something different with what you learn. This is where the magic happens and where you learn the most. Also, lean on the community–BOTH ways–helping, and getting help.”