Her love for coding began in childhood. She got started with coding when she got hooked on Neopets. There she learned and taught herself to write html and css. She then went on to create fan pages for Harry Potter, Marvel and more. Then she joined the Navy and never really thought that she could work in a career building websites. But she knew she wanted to do something technical and started looking at a career in hardware before realizing it was software she wanted to do.

She thought she was going to have to use the last of her GI Bill and get a bunch of loans and spend four years in school. But then she learned about coding bootcamps on a military reddit site. She learned about Sabio from the VET TEC site as it was one of the recommended schools. They also said if students didn't find manful employment within six months of graduation they would not get paid. Not a guarantee for a job, but a strong motivator to show that Sabio believed in their program and that they would help you find a job. 

It took a few months to get a job and after receiving an offer and it being rescinded she had started to give up. But a recruiter reached out and shared with her a job opportunity working on a program that helps with mental health. It was something she was passionate and couldn't believe the opportunity was opening up for her. But she did not want to get excited, worried it might all fall through. She spent the next week preparing for the interview. She knew she needed to be strong with C-sharp so she spent the week building a program (a tic tac toe game) that helped her know how to answer the questions for the technical interview. 

She realized she sent out too many resumes and attended too many interviews when she first started looking for a job. She once had 12 interviews in a week and felt she did mediocre on all of them because she didn't have the time needed to prepare. Looking back she would be more selective of where to apply. 

She recommends people looking into a career in coding. There are a lot of problems that need to be solved and if you want to learn about how to solve problems it could be a great career path for you. 

Want to learn more about how to become a software engineer? Head over to www.sabio.la to learn more about their coding bootcamp and how you can begin your career as a software engineer. 

Interviews with people who work at Sabio:

Co-owner Gregorio Rojas: https://breaking-into-tech.simplecast.com/episodes/helping-other-learn-to-be-software-engineers

Alley Johnson: https://breaking-into-tech.simplecast.com/episodes/how-you-can-use-your-vet-tec-benefits-to-become-a-software-engineer

Nancy Her: https://breaking-into-tech.simplecast.com/episodes/advantages-of-sabio-coding-bootcamp

Megan Black: https://breaking-into-tech.simplecast.com/episodes/helping-your-start-your-career-in-software-engineering

Janessa Harris: https://breaking-into-tech.simplecast.com/episodes/breaking-into-tech-with-janessa-harris