You recently graduated with a communications degree. What made you decide to pursue a tech career?
A goal of mine is to build a startup or a business. When I was ideating, I realised that web development as a skill could help me create a prototype of almost anything I wanted. On top of that, to build a tech startup, it is important to know how things work. This is to ensure that you will be confident in your product, and get investors to be confident as well. Eventually I discovered my passion for programming and decided to pursue it as a career and learn how to build enterprise level apps.
You work as a software engineer in ST Engineering. What does your day-to-day role look like?
I work in an Agile team. We each take one or two user stories to work on at the beginning of each sprint, which is two weeks. We start with a stand up in the morning, where we list out what we got done the previous day and what we're working on for the day. Then I proceed to work on whatever I have set out for the day. If I complete my user stories before the end of the sprint, I can choose to take on more user stories or look into refactoring some existing code. If it's a new feature I get to collaborate with the UI designer where I propose the UI for that and get their feedback.
What are the top advantages of your current role?
Being a full stack developer means I get to see through the whole process of a feature. Apart from more control over how the system should work, it allows me to see things from the user's and system's point of view.
What made you decide to join our Web Development bootcamp?
I had an idea for a software product and thought it had potential to grow. I wanted to test out the idea by prototyping it and testing it out. I started learning how to build an app on my own but I found I was being pulled in different directions on what skills or concepts I should master. I found out about Le Wagon and decided it was the right fit for me, and provided structure to my learning, helping me speed up the learning process.
#Funfact What was the defining moment during your training?
The days leading up to Demo Day for sure. Being able to showcase something you've been working on - and seeing it actually work the way you intended - was deeply satisfying and fulfilling to me. I think that same feeling is what drives me today in my current role.
What's your New Year's resolution?
Master another aspect of creating a product - UX. I'm fortunate to have been given the opportunity to take a course and take on more responsibility in this aspect of product development.
We like to say that there’s life “before” and life “after” Le Wagon, do you agree? Describe your before and after.
Yes, for sure. Before Le Wagon, I was stuck with a career in marketing, which I realised wasn't for me. After Le Wagon, I landed a technical role which gave me the confidence in being a generalist and brought me one step closer to my dream of building a startup!