Two years ago I was approached by an external recruiter who had read my blog posts. He asked if I had time to talk about his client, Navigating Cancer. I responded that I was not actively looking for new work, and in fact would be taking maternity leave in three months, but was interested in the opportunity and would be happy to talk given those caveats. We scheduled a phone call for later that week, and then he never called me. Never apologized or explained, UNTIL… exactly three months later, he contacted me again, with no mention of our previous correspondence. “I know you’re super busy at [former place of work],” he wrote, “but can we schedule a time to chat about a company you might be interested in, Navigating Cancer?”
The email arrived while I was in labor, and I can’t remember if I later responded that I was literally having a baby when he wrote oh and by the way, he stood me up last time, or if I only imagined doing so. It was memorable to me because his first email was so personal and diligent — he had tapped into several of my social media profiles, and commented on their content. When I told him about my upcoming maternity leave he even said “3 months! How exciting!” And then somehow he managed to blow all that goodwill by not calling me when he said he would, and contacting me again at the very worst possible time.
I had planned to get back into tech blogging this January with the Code Newbie “blog more” challenge — but then everyone in my house got sick and would you believe I am still sick today — this is the bronchitis that keeps giving, I tell you.
I had also planned to start prepping for tech interviews to launch a job search sometime later this year. I have been happy working at ExpertVoice (formerly Experticity, formerly ReadyPulse) — where for two years I’ve been doing full-stack software development with a fantastic team. My hours and work location are flexible, I get to work on interesting projects, the snacks are plentiful, and the time off “unlimited.”
Job perks aside, I’ve always known that it wasn’t my forever job. My commute isn’t ideal, and the company is heavily skewed towards the outdoor industry, which meant that a large segment of clients are gun manufacturers (hunting and whatnot). They don’t sell guns directly, but they definitely help gun manufacturers sell guns and shooting accessories to military and law enforcement officers. This has never aligned with my values, and sometime after the mass shooting in Vegas, I remember thinking, crap, I have to find a new job.
You know… sometime.
all my free time goes to this kid
Anyway, an unexpected round of layoffs (30% of the company) has turned “sometime” into “right dang now” and I find myself facing down my nemesis, the tech interview. Just like finding a job out of boot camp, finding a(nother) job now requires dedicated and specific preparation. I took some baby steps at the end of last year and did a few interviews with little to no prep — and failed spectacularly. Apparently the fact that I have a few years of actual job experience, have built real software that people use, and can provide great references means nada if I can’t solve a specific technical challenge on a whiteboard or on a shared screen, while my interviewer watches, within the time allotted, which SPOILERS:
Hey there readers, it’s been awhile since I updated this site. Life’s been overwhelming (in a good way), and has required all my focus on one day at a time.
I started this blog in late 2014 a few weeks before quitting my job to document the journey of becoming a software engineer, and in some ways that story is now DONE — this July, after a year and a half of training and independent project work, I started a full-time position as a software engineer with Experticity, the company that acquired and merged with ReadyPulse, where I’ve been contracting for the last three months.
I went into that three-month contract under the following assumption: “This will be a great, foot-in-the-door way to get some industry experience, but temporary, because NO WAY are they gonna hire a career-changing pregnant (!!) junior developer on full-time.” This false assumption was debunked thusly:
My pregnancy (which I disclosed early in the contract period, as soon as it was “safe” to do so, medically speaking) did not impact the decision to bring me on full-time, or not, which yeah yeah yeah I know it is “the law” but look, discrimination happens, and I’m grateful it turned out to be not an issue for me or my company. My advice to others in a similar situation is to seek out a workplace where “family friendly” is a genuine part of the company culture — not just because they say the words, but where employees, including senior management, *have families*.
I turned out to be not as junior as I thought — I’m on a steep learning curve and still have a ton to learn, but I’ve been able to contribute and add value to the company right away, while developing my skills as a software developer and engineer. From that point of view, the decision to continue on full-time was a no-brainer for me and the company. I credit this to my past professional experience, as well as my software training from Code Fellows and Kal Academy — where I not only learned Rails and algorithms, but more broadly: how to learn software, how to work on an Agile team, how to set up a development environment, how to debug, how to ask good questions, etc.
So, yeah… I am employed. And we’re pregnant! I’m 28 weeks along today, and due in mid-October. I wouldn’t necessarily recommend to others having a baby in the middle of a career change, but I wouldn’t not recommend it either — life happens when it happens. It’s gonna be tough to leave our little baby to return to work, and I’m incredibly lucky to be in a situation where I have exciting work ahead of me, both personally and professionally. (And a great spouse excited about it all, and a generous maternity leave courtesy of my job — oh look we’re hiring.)
The story is not done, of course — I want to keep writing about what I’m learning and doing to develop myself as a developer in these early stages. And about navigating this space as a new mom. A friend referred me to this Ruby on Ales talk titled “Baby Driven Development,” which is a fantastic 30 minute watch if you’re a parent, parent-to-be, or work with anyone who is.
Future posts will probably continue to be less frequent, and might go baby shaped for a while, but I still like making them, so thanks for reading. 🙂
Long-time readers know that my job search started out with a bang back in November, marinated a bit over the winter holidays, and then resumed in full force these past few months.
Throughout it all, I had some heartbreaking near-misses and some real low points of thinking, “this will never happen for me.” My instructor helped connect me to a potential contract project that didn’t quite get off the ground but led me to develop a cool app anyway. I flirted with some near-coding opportunities like writing code school curriculum and Salesforce development before narrowing my criteria for what I’m looking for. I met other kind and well-meaning people who made a bunch of introductions, and followed those rabbit trails where they led.
And thanks to one of those introductions (which happened not as a result of going to meetups, though I did that too, but rather the practice of “find and follow cool people on Twitter” which I have been doing for YEARS), I met the team at ReadyPulse, a Bay Area/Redmond-based startup where I start Tuesday as a Ruby on Rails development engineer in test.
I’m so excited that I’ll get to continue to work in Rails, expand my knowledge of software testing, work closely with the client support team to understand and troubleshoot issues, and work with a small development team to ensure new features behave as expected with full test coverage. And at a market rate!! (Add to the heartbreaks: the company that wanted to pay me $35k a year to join them as a junior developer, and the company that rejected me from their job seeking site.)
As is not unusual in this biz, I’m starting out on contract for three months, with potential to convert to a salaried position (and possibly move from testing into feature development at that point) if we both agree it’s a good fit.
Some highlights from the interview process:
After being e-introduced, the VP of Engineering invited me to come to the office and after some chit-chat he had me do a whiteboard exercise where I built a simple Rails application. This was actually my first whiteboard experience outside of the Code Fellows practice environment, and it went really well. My interviewer was patient, supportive, helped when I got stuck, and didn’t ding me too badly for some minor syntax errors. After I got home, I built the actual app and sent him a link to a Pull Request so he could see 1) I know how to use GitHub and isolate my code changes in readable fashion and 2) that I paid attention to what we talked about and had the follow-through to create a functioning app.
He replied that the app looked good, and did I have any tests for it? So I added tests.
I did a second whiteboard exercise with the CTO that was similarly positive and even a little bit fun. At one point I was doing the talk/think out loud thing and I told him I couldn’t remember if Ruby hash supported the “shift” function and he was like, “oh, you can look it up on your phone if you want.” And I was like, “SERIOUSLY?” And he was like, “yeah, real programmers use Google. Go for it.”
When my interviewer was discussing the position with me, which involves writing tests and quality assurance for two versions of their software, I asked him “how’s your technical debt” LIKE A TOTAL BOSS and he was like “oh, good question,” and his response led me to a deeper understanding of the situation and excitement to take on the challenge. It is a giant milestone to know enough to ask good questions.
There’s still a lot of unknowns in the future, but I consider this a big step towards the career I want to build as a developer. I’m grateful to Code Fellows for my training, to my partner Josh for supporting our family during this transition, and to friends new and old who cheered for me along the way! I’m gonna keep building my network and do my best to help other new coders find opportunities to get into industry quickly — there’s no better way to keep learning than on the job.
I had one of these to celebrate and I invite you to join me!
I posted awhile back that after two classes, I took a break from working as a Teaching Assistant with Code Fellows. Part of this was logistical: it’s hard to dedicate yourself to a job search while also working long hours to support students and instructors. The job opportunities I’d been hoping for didn’t materialize, so I decided to double down on my efforts.
The second part of leaving was emotional — It’s intense work. Two months seemed like a manageable amount of time to sustain that level of full-time effort. By the end, I was exhausted. I’d had a terrific first class working with my former instructor, and was excited to bring that experience with me to a second class with a new instructor and TA team. The last week of that class was particularly stressful when I clashed with just about everyone on their decision to throw out all the assignments done up to that point and heavily weigh “instructor gut feeling” and a hastily conceived and executed pen-and-paper “quiz” as grounds for student advancement, or not. In doing so, I watched in real-time as all the studies about gender bias in the classroom played out, and experienced the frustration of fighting back against it, all the while being treated to a lecture about how none of this was sexist, at all, the opposite in fact!
So I left that team. And since then, I’ve found myself distancing myself from Code Fellows and gravitating more to communities where inclusion and diversity are lived values. I’m also hitting month five of job searching, witnessing how other code schools have programs in place that help with the gap from code school -> industry, and feeling that Code Fellows is still for the most part sending us off with a pat on the back and a “go get ’em, tiger.”
But it doesn’t have to be this way! Code Fellows has a uniquely diverse and passionate student base and huge potential to be something great. As a friend and alumnus, I have some ideas. I will probably get labeled a “hater” for this, but it comes from a place of optimism.
Some of these I am doing well on and others not so much, but we’re not even to the Ides of March yet so I’m just going to silently note it for now. Besides, I think it’s time to narrow my focus even further. Recent conversations have been valuable in determining exactly what type of opportunities I’m looking for among my diverse and varied interests and abilities. This leads me to the following Career Intention:
I am looking for full-time or contract work…
…as a junior software developer
…in a supportive learning community
…where I can work on substantial projects
…preferably in Ruby on Rails
…with people who value diversity and inclusion.
That’s it! It’s a tall order but not impossible to find. And, I need to be putting all my efforts towards learning experiences and projects that will move me closer to this role. Other tech related ventures that are not coding, I bless and release.
The closest match I’ve found so far is an Outreachy learning opportunity with the Wiki Education Foundation’s Wikipedia course dashboard system. The dashboard is built in Ruby on Rails and uses a combination of technologies I’ve worked with and technologies I haven’t worked with but would like to learn. The project manager is based here in Seattle and would be great to work with. The opportunity itself is a three month internship, paid (a small amount), with a respectable network and prestige for alumni that can lead to more opportunities.
I’m struggling to get my development environment set up to jump in and contribute in some small ways (required for the application), but it’s a priority for the March 22 deadline. More to come on the technicalities of that.
It is tough but a great relief to let go of “I’m open to all sorts of tech and coding related opportunities.” It means I’m still not getting paid, but I’m not compromising on activities that won’t move me closer to the goal.
Having now clarified my intentions, it should be easier to share them with the world and let the world help.
“Now get up and go into the city and you will be told what you must do.”
I’m not particularly religious, but this photo by my friend Andrea was so timely this morning it brought me nearly to tears.
I’m wavering these days, trying to figure out the best path forward. What to work on, what to study, where to spend my time and energy to appeal to potential employers. I’ve been kinda all over the place: I spent a week climbing the Code Wars code challenge rankings to #2 for my Code Fellows “clan.” I went back through the assignments for Code 301 (the class I TAed) and completed them myself, to make sure I thoroughly understand all the components of a MVC website. (301 is a new class, which is why I hadn’t completed the assignments previously.) I’ve been coding in JavaScript and Ruby. I tried Rails 5. I went (finally) to an Open Seattle meetup and met some great people with neat project ideas. I started learning vim!
What I know is this: when I try to plot my path forward from my living room, I get nowhere. So my goal for the remainder of the month is to figuratively and literally GO INTO THE CITY. Look around. Talk to people. And listen for the clues to what to do next.
Hard to fathom that January is nearly over. What a ride it’s been already.
Earlier this month I had to take my laptop in to the Apple store because it started making vacuum cleaner noises. When I called them to get some additional information, this song above was the hold music. I thought it was sooooo clever. But then I called again a week later and the hold music had nothing to do with waiting, so maybe just a coincidence?
Nevertheless, I have a few irons in the fire at the moment and the waiting is exciting and terrifying, while simultaneously I am trying to continue to forge ahead in case nothing comes of it.
Being unable to talk about my own job search I will tell you instead about a conversation with a colleague last night, a fellow TA who graduated around the same time I did from the JavaScript Accelerator. She’s slated to start working in February for a company here in Seattle who empowers female entrepreneurs, in a contract-to-hire position. When I asked, “How’d you find out about that gig?” she told me that she invited someone out to coffee for a networking conversation, a women she got connected to on Twitter, and that conversation turned into “hey can you come in to interview?” which then turned into “actually nevermind, can you start in February?”
I’m really happy for her, and the more I thought about it, the more I land on: WHY AREN’T MORE ORGANIZATIONS DOING THIS??
I interviewed back in November for job that seemed like a *great fit*, working as a Rails developer (“engineer”) at the local office of an org that allows users to track which books they’ve read and want to read. The job description said “be less than a year out of school” so I applied despite my green-ness, had a great “cultural fit” convo, and then got whomped in the technical phone screen. Guess what: that job is still unfilled, or still hiring, it showed up again today in my job postings notification. In the three months since they talked with me, at least two things have happened: 1. I got better; 2. The technology changed. If they had just hired me in November for a three-month run, I could have gotten better *on their technology stack* and we would both know by now whether it was a good fit for a longer commitment or permanent hire.
Josh helped put this in perspective for me yesterday, talking about another potentially stressful interview process coming up. “It’s not whether your technical skills are good enough to fit on their team, it’s whether they have the training capacity to take you on.” He continued: “[Company X] has enough resources, they could potentially take any of the five of us in this room [including the cats] and train us to work with their software. Whether they choose to do so is reflective of their own priorities and not your abilities or capacity to learn.”
I’m not advocating for throwing your “Ace the Technical Interview” book out the window, but there’s something here worth considering, both for technical job seekers and those to seek to hire them. At a minimum, maybe it’s time to schedule those informational interviews you’ve been putting off!
Oh hey, Happy Thanksgiving December! My last post was a cliffhanger that wound up more suspenseful than intended. And then December exploded and I’ve been busy with no time to blog. But I started down this path, so let’s dive back in. 🙂
Andy Spearing, Crater Lake
Ok, so I was talking about my assumptions going into this year, and I left off at number 4:
I can learn to code in a year — TRUE
I will be job-seeking in a year — TRUE-ish
I can tailor a program of free resources and paid classes for less money and time than the cost of graduate school — TRUE w/caveats
As long as I can build software, the amount of math I’ll need to know is minimal
An all-women learning environment is preferable to co-ed (but not a deal-breaker).
MOOCs will be a great tech resource for learning computer science
Meet-ups will be a great way to network, make connections, and find job leads
Hey, you got a few minutes? Ok, let’s talk about The Plan.
In January, I quit my job to pursue a path in software development. I didn’t really know then that it was called “software development.” I’m still not particularly married to that job title or role, strictly speaking, but a lot of other roles stem from that one so it’s not a bad place to start.
(I am married to Josh, though! I wasn’t when I started. Pretty cool, huh?)
But be ye more educated than I:
credit Brandon Hays 2015 RubyConf talk, full slides here
Knowing very little about the tech industry, I made several key assumptions going into this journey. In this post I’ll detail how these assumptions have panned out (and in a follow-up post I’ll talk about where things go from here).
Assumptions:
I can learn to code in a year
I will be job-seeking in a year
I can tailor a program of free resources and paid classes for less money and time than the cost of graduate school
As long as I can build software, the amount of math I’ll need to know is minimal
An all-women learning environment is preferable to co-ed (but not a deal-breaker).
MOOCs will be a great tech resource for learning computer science
Meet-ups will be a great way to network, make connections, and find job leads
