Tomas worked for a multinational company, but following a difficult year during the pandemic he decided to take his career in a new direction. Half a year after completing bootcamp, we sat down with him to find out where this change has lead and what lessons he has learned along the way.
What was your (professional) life like before starting bootcamp?
Prior to starting bootcamp, I worked in logistics and purchasing for a multinational company. You could say that the job came with all the pros and cons of a regular office job. The breaking point for me was during the COVID pandemic when, after a tough year, I gradually came to realize that I do not find my daily duties very fulfilling. And after some consideration I saw it wouldn’t get any better going forward. Basically, I didn’t see much future in pursuing the same career any further.
What is your current job/position and what is it that you do?
At the moment, I’m working as a process designer for Ceska Sporitelna. Specifically, I work on improving functionality and user experience of internal applications for bank employees. Simply said, they create new requests, specifying what they would need or like us to add or change, and we analyze the possibilities. If the request is doable, we implement it and make changes in the application.
Which of the things that you learned in bootcamp do you use the most?
I need to be able to look at a script and understand it. Understanding the internal logic of the script also helps me work with programming languages I haven’t studied, so that’s very useful.
Besides this, there are plenty of opportunities to use my soft skills, but also to show that I am capable of thinking as a developer would–that I can be systematic in my work, patient when looking for possible solutions, and so forth.
Was there anything that surprised you when you got your first job in the IT industry?
Not that I hadn’t expected it, but I was still surprised to see how much time one has to spend on “thinking” about the topic rather than doing the coding itself. I literally spend perhaps 80% of my time studying the code so I would understand what each part of it does, before making any changes.
Another thing I found surprising was to see how many people are involved in the whole process of development and maintenance of applications that are vital to make everything run smoothly. Naturally, this depends on the specific company and your job within the company.
What words of wisdom do you have for (prospective) bootcamp students?
This may sound like a cliche, but be prepared for an uphill struggle. Work hard and push yourself further because bootcamp is just the kickoff. You have to keep learning and adjusting. But that’s not bad. You just have to dial down your ego. So what if you are inexperienced! You can always ask others for help. (Coworkers are usually quite approachable, in my experience.)
That being said, double and triple check your work. And when you make a mistake, don’t try to hide it because the truth of the matter is that in the IT environment, you can’t sweep anything under the carpet. Someone will find out about it sooner or later. So it’s best to own up to a blunder because mistakes do happen, and that’s also one way you learn.