Are Coding Bootcamps Worth It - Melissa H.

I never thought ever in my wildest dreams, I’d be living and working in Hawaii making a lot of money. So Thank you Sabio! My name is Melissa Hargis and I’m from Texas originally. Around the time that I decided to join Sabio, I was teaching the most amount of classes you could teach at a university. I’d maxed out my salary which wasn’t very high at all. There was no room for growth, I wanted to be constantly developing my career and my skills. 

My daughter was not even a year old. I didn’t want to waste four plus years at a university getting a computer science degree. Then, I came across Sabio! And Sabio was one of the only coding bootcamps that had a good reputation. It seemed like exactly what I needed, I decided to take out a personal loan and just go for it. And it really really worked out.

I knew from the first weekend that this was going to be life changing and that I’d made the right choice. At Sabio, we were learning very hands-on. From day one, we’re learning by doing, and we are doing the things that you actually will do at your job. I know that now because I am on the job.

Gregorio was our instructor and he was fantastic. He was so dedicated to making sure that we learned and he was available to us almost 24 hours a day. From the beginning, Sabio guides you with getting a job, that’s part of the program. The first interview I went on, I was offered the job and so I started my first full stack software engineering job 3-weeks before graduating from Sabio. That’s just how Sabio works. Sabio is all about getting you the skills that you need quickly and getting you that confidence to know that you can go into these interviews and you do know what you’re talking about and you can perform well as an engineer.

Currently, I am working for a company called Upstart. My title is Senior software engineer. In my job, I’m fortunate enough to kind of have freedom to work on what it is that interests me. That’s very typical of software engineering positions. One of the great things about being an engineer is the job flexibility. So it’s been great as a single mom. Upstart actually went public almost a year ago. When we went public I was able to buy a house, and I could go anywhere because we’re remote first, so I said, hey! Where do I want to live? I want to live in Hawaii on the beach!

And so, I can afford that. I can be at home with my daughter, work from home. Without Sabio I would never be here. Sabio gave me those skills very quickly to get my first job and it’s just been one awesome thing after the next. I started with Sabio, 7 years ago and now, here I am! It’s really night and day that I can actually afford to buy a house and I can give my daughter, everything that we want to be able to give our children.

I never thought ever in my wildest dreams that I’d be able to live in Hawaii and now this is my office! I get to go swimming in the ocean after a meeting from work. If you’re not sure and you think that you maybe want to transition into software engineering and try a bootcamp, I think you really owe it to yourself to give it a shot. It was the best thing I ever did.

You will always be in demand. I get so many emails, every single day, where companies are looking to get me to come interview with them. There’s just so many jobs in tech for us engineers. I know that I am always going to be okay. I will always have a job and a really lucrative, fun job at that. Without Sabio, I would not be living and working in Hawaii on the beach making a lot of money, so thank you Sabio!