It's my pleasure today to talk to a former nurse and now software developer, Taniya Amidon who learned to code at Le Wagon coding bootcamp in London. She was craving a career where she could work from anywhere as well as have an intellectual challenge and she found it in coding. I hope you enjoy this interview where Taniya talks about finding her first job as a developer and how she learned to code.
Hey, so can you introduce yourself?
Hi my name is Taniya. I am a Solutions Engineer at Tray.io in London. Tray.io is a leading general automation platform. I have a background in healthcare and business management. I have been in the healthcare industry for 9 years as a Nurse and a Registered Clinic Manager, before I decided to make a career change at the start of 2019. I trained as a Nurse in Melbourne, Australia. I moved to London around 4 years ago and worked in some of the prestigious health clinics in London, Harley Street.
How did you first get into coding ?
As many aspiring developers, I started with the free resources out there to learn coding and see whether it was interesting for me. I highly recommend this to anyone who is looking to get into coding. I started with Free Code Camp, learnt HTML and CSS and built my first webpage. Then I slowly moved to Javascript and I remember feeling very happy when I made my first webpage. It was very satisfying.
How did you discover Le Wagon coding bootcamp?
After learning on my own with the free resources for about 6 month part time, I realised I really enjoy coding and was ready to pursue a career change. I looked into coding bootcamps available in London. I went through the curriculum of each bootcamp and the tech stack they covered. I also watched demo day videos of each bootcamp available online to get a glimpse of projects built by bootcamp graduates.
Out of the many bootcamps I researched, Le Wagon interested me the most. Le Wagon had great google reviews and was voted the number one coding bootcamp in Europe. I also liked the startup approach when I saw the demo day videos and was very impressed with the projects students completed only after 9 weeks of a coding bootcamp.
Can you go through what you learned at Le Wagon?
I learnt so much; I didn’t know that I could learn so many new concepts so fast in such a small amount of time. Le Wagon has a very good curriculum, we started with Ruby and Object Oriented Programming to learn the basics of coding. Then we learnt front end technologies such as HTML, CSS and JS. Towards the end of the bootcamp we learnt to use Ruby on Rails to build MVC applications and combine all the technologies we used to create a real life application. We also learnt how to work in teams and collaborate with each other from start to end of a project.
What made you want to change from being a nurse to a developer?
I have always had an interest in science and technology. After 9 years in the healthcare industry I wanted something a bit more flexible and a job where I can work from anywhere. Unfortunately this was not possible in the healthcare industry.
I love travelling and especially after moving to the UK, I wanted a career that promotes flexibility and a better work life balance. At the same time, I was looking for something rewarding, helping people, solving problems and most importantly a career where I could continuously learn and improve. Coding ticks all these boxes and it seemed like the right career fit for me.
What was learning to code at Le Wagon like?
I did the bootcamp in January 2019. It was at the London campus. It was one of the best decisions I made and money well spent. Le Wagon exceeded my expectations from a coding bootcamp. Learning was very intense but there was a very well laid out structure and it worked. I had many ups and downs during the bootcamp and I was able to share them with a group of lovely people.
A typical day involved a daily lecture at the start of the day, followed by pair programming challenges with a buddy throughout the rest of the day. At the end of the day, we had a live coding session - which was led by a teacher - where we solved a coding challenge together as a team. This has helped me overcome the fear of coding in whiteboard interviews. In the last 3 weeks of the bootcamp, we worked on group projects, where we built two projects from scratch.
Le Wagon staff were very supportive and they created a positive experience for us. All teachers and teaching assistance have also completed the bootcamp in the past, which contributed in giving more support to us students.
Other than coding, Le Wagon organised a lot of social events for students throughout the bootcamp, as they knew how stressful and overwhelming it can be to go through this intense programme.
What was the interview process for your first developer job like?
I started applying for jobs during the last couple of weeks of the bootcamp. I had a few interviews starting with the initial interview with the recruiter, take home test and final stage with in-house technical test, which included whiteboard exercises.
After the bootcamp, we had a careers week, where we had the opportunity to revamp our CVs, portfolios and meet recruiters and potential hiring partners of tech companies.
What does a typical day as a software developer at Tray look like for you?
I have a very interesting job and not a single day is the same. Solutions engineering at Tray.io involves working predominantly with APIs (REST, SOAP, GraphQL) and building wrappers around them (which we call connectors) to transfer data between these services. We get to work with a variety of cloud APIs and build new connectors or add new functionality to existing connectors. We also build and maintain internal tools that help us build connectors more efficiently.
In regards to the tech stack, in our team we use Javascript, Node.js, Typescript and AWS services, such as S3 and Lambda. We follow Agile methodology, with bi-weekly sprints. On a typical day, each team member would pick a task from the sprint board and work on it. We encourage pair programming and collaboration with other teams to complete the task.
I really enjoy the tech stack I’m using at the moment, as I was interested in a backend role when I finished the coding bootcamp. I really appreciate the supportive and collaborative team culture at Tray, which is exactly what I wanted from my first job in tech. Other than coding, I am also involved in the interview and onboarding process at Tray, where I get to contribute to the process using my past experiences.
How has your life changed since learning programming at Le Wagon?
I was able to land my first developer job in a great company within two months after completing the bootcamp. It was a very positive experience. I can say my life completely changed. I was able to make a successful career change and build connections with similar interests.
What are your career goals for the future?
My goal at the moment is to learn and work with new technologies and grow as an engineer. I’m quite interested in Backend technologies and Cloud Computing, so I am looking to get more experience in these areas.
About Le Wagon
Le Wagon is the world’s leading Coding Bootcamp, with an average rating of 4.98/5 according to 1800+ student reviews on Switchup. It offers immersive Web Development and Data Science courses to aspiring tech professionals across 40 cities worldwide. Since 2013, our cutting-edge curriculums and world-class teachers have given 9,281+ professionals from all backgrounds the skills and tools needed to kick-start their tech career, land a job as a software developer, product manager, join a data science team, or launch their own startup.
