A direct flight to your new career is waiting

From Executive Assistant to Full Stack Developer, Pushpay

"This journey reiterated to me that I can do whatever I want to do. I'm not stuck with the choices I made in High School. I'm able to reevaluate my career goals."

This is Megan Flowers, a Nucamp Full Stack Bootcamp graduate and now a Front End Engineer at Pushpay.

Megan and her husband are avid travelers, currently working through their bucket list of destinations.

One of the most memorable places they've visited thus far was Florence, Italy.

Her love for new experiences has carried over into her career path, leaving her wanting new experiences and change.

Megan was always interested in computer science and originally thought she would pursue it as a career, but ended up studying radiology instead.

After 10 years in radiology she knew she wanted a change, but software development had fallen off her itinerary and she wasn't sure what was next.

Her layover decision was taking an executive assistant job—at a software company of all places.

Megan liked her job, but over time her job simply felt like being in a holding pattern.

She proposed creating new role for her company, which was was a warmly received idea, but was put on standby while they determined the best route to achieve it.

Working at a software company, Megan was privy to the atmosphere and day-to-day of the life of a developer, reminding her of her past curiosity of becoming one herself.

Her company had a vibrant mentorship program and it was suggested by a few mentors to do one of the following:

1. Teach herself to code
2. Go back to collage
3. Take a coding bootcamp

Megan didn't want to quit her job, so college was not an option.

Teaching herself seemed very daunting and too difficult without structure and support, so the coding bootcamp was the obvious choice as it provided both guidance and structure.

One of her colleagues had completed a Nucamp bootcamp and highly recommended it.

Still wanting to do her due diligence, she compared her options and Nucamp was the most sensible choice because she could keep her job while she learned.

The affordable price was a huge plus, especially since her company provided a professional development budget and was able to cover part of the cost.

Megan discovered the first leg of the bootcamp was easier than she thought; some parts were easier than she thought; the introductory Web Development Fundamentals bootcamp made her feel confident and motivated her to learn more.

However, as the bootcamp took flight, the challenges increased, but the workload felt balanced.

Megan attributes her success to consistently studying a few hours each night, the productive Saturday workshops, and receiving mentorship throughout the program.

"Remember, making a life-change is scarier than the difficulty of completing a bootcamp."

Describe your job search process.

While Megan was focused on getting a job within her current company, she still applied to a handful of other positions.

When she applied for a position at her current employer, they still required her to go through the full interview process which included a take home test, technical interview, and cultural interview.

The take-home test required her to build either a front end or backend app (she chose to build a Star Wars directory), which was reviewed during the technical interview.

Even though Megan already worked at the company, one might expect the cultural interview to be a formality, but it was important to determine if she would be a good fit within the existing development team.

Megan landed the job and now works on making customized apps for churches.

She described it as "basically PayPal for churches" and is utilizing React, some PhP, and JavaScript within her role.

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

"Just try it. The Web Dev Fundamentals course is cheap, it's doable, it's short lived. If you don't know if it's what you want to do, do the taste-test. A lot of people reached out to her and wanted to get in for free, but the motivation and accountability aren't there. Put a little money into it so that you'll actually value it."

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

"Trust the process. I feel like Nucamp does a really good job warning you that it won't necessarily make sense. The React course didn't make sense at first, but after getting through React Native, it all made sense. Now that I'm in a job using React, it makes more sense the more you use it. Do a side project so you're not just following along and having your hand held the whole time. Do some side learning. The more errors you encounter, the more you end up learning."