Javier Graduates from Sabio Coding Bootcamp and Lands 3 Offers From Amazing Tech Companies

Javier:

My name is Javier. Prior to Sabio I was 12 years in the Air Force. After I left active duty, joined my dad in his construction business. I also went to San Diego State for civil engineering. I felt like I wanted to do something else, something more challenging. I found out about Sabio through the VA, I decided to just jump on it, probably the best decision I made in my life.

Q: How much coding experience did you have before Sabio?

Javier:

Funny story is actually I started looking more into coding because of my sons. He's nine years old but he already builds games in Visual Studio using C#. So one day he asks me a question about it, if I could help him solve one of his bugs. I looked at it, no clue, I told him I didn't know but I was gonna learn. Now we build games together, but when I first started Sabio I knew nothing. HTML was confusing to me, javascript, everything.

Q: What was your transition like at Sabio?

Javier:

I dropped everything else to start this, I didn't want to go back. I used that also to motivate me, I studied as much as I could for the assessments. Towards the end I started having a system, as soon as I could get on to queue I would get on the queue and then after lunch get on the queue again. Just follow Sabio, all the questions that they give you, the whole structure just follow it, just trust the process, everything will eventually click.

Q: How did Sabio help with the job interview process?

Javier:

Once they tell you to apply, just apply to as many places as you can. During the interview process if they ask you and you don't know something, Sabio will have some Q and A's and other videos that help you with that. I submitted hundreds of applications. I had a lot of screenings and I had great job offers, one of them was for NASA, and then another one was for a company called black knight. I had actually accepted the Black Knight offer first, about half a week later Amazon sent me an email saying that I had gotten a job offer. So I had to go back and tell Black Knight that I was going to decline that offer, and then a couple days later NASA called saying that they had an offer for me. Within one week I pretty much found out that I had three job offers. Gregorio did say that a few times, that you're gonna get a tons of rejections and then all of a sudden it's just gonna pour, that's pretty much how it happens. Just don't give up and then attend all the classes that Sabio has, they're great!

Q: Talk about your paid apprenticeship at Amazon Web Services?

Javier:

You go 18 weeks and you learn basically the whole Amazon process. And then after that you transition over to your "on the job" training so you're actually on a team. Pretty much there for up to one year, you finish and they think you're ready before then, then they pretty much offer you the full time position afterward. The salary, it's like $53 an hour which equates to $110k a year, but then they give you a $10k signing bonus so essentially you're making $120k the first year. NASA, they offered me the highest which is $90k. For Black Knight they had a range of between $80k-$106k, so their first offer came at 90, negotiated to like 95, and then when I told them about amazon they said they would give me the 106. Still, I was gonna go with Amazon.