Meri Graduated form Sabio Coding Bootcamp and is now a Software Engineer at Amazon Web Services

Meri: Before Sabio, I had no experience with coding at all really Sabio catapulted me into this life that I always dreamed of. My name is Sterling Merriweather, I've been married for Waldorf Maryland, I was in the Marine Corps for eight years, I joined when I was 17. And after I left there, I went to college for a year dropped out before Sabio, I had no experience with coding at all, really, but I had an understanding of the tech industry. And I knew that's what I wanted to do, I left the Marine Corps because I wanted to make more money, we got pennies, and I don't want pennies anymore. So I decided to get a job that was gonna pay me a lot more. And Sabio was able to provide that opportunity for me.

Q: Why did you choose Sabio Coding Bootcamp?

Meri: 75 percent of the classes that I was in, in college, or really for my degree, and I knew that I was coming out of pocket essentially, to get something that I didn't want. The thing I kind of liked about coding is that you see the results of the work that you're putting in almost instantaneously. So that was essentially the deciding factor for me to say I'm done with this, I was looking on the VA website to see a list of approved Vet Tec/GI Bill courses, Sabio was number one on the list. Um I live in SoCal, and they have a couple of places in SoCal, so that was pretty much a no brainer, I reached out to em. That's essentially why I made that.

Q: What was your day-to-day like at Sabio?

Meri: One of the things we were told to be inside of Sabio is ambitious, be ambitious about your goal for the day, be ambitious about what you want to do for the upcoming week, and then go get it to collaborate with other team members to pretty much get your code up and running and get a problem solved. And then after that, you get thrown on a startup project, essentially thrown into the fire with the help of your senior engineers to bring this idea to MVP, it was actually really easy for me to transition into the program, and they're not gonna give you strict direction. They give you the freedom to find out how you want to learn and implement how you want to learn like my last like two, three years in Marine Corps, I tried to act like a civilian for the most part. So transition for me was pretty easy.

Q: What was your cohort like at Sabio?

Meri: My cohort was cool. We all still talk to this day. There's a couple of people who stay in SoCal, we throw opportunities to each other all the time. If there's a problem that somebody hasn't worked on before we might jump on a call and talk to them for a second, I had to get used to becoming a developer had to get used to knowing to find answers on my own. A lot of times my instructors will be like, Hey, did you look at this yet? I'm like, oh, no, I didn't look at it yet. He'll like, alright, call me back when you look at it. And I will say that it's actually helped me a lot in my role now as a developer, just kind of being a self starter and being able to dive deep on certain topics, definitely propelled me into the situation I'm in now.

Q: What job do you have now?

Meri: So currently, I'm a software development engineer, Amazon Web Services. I graduated Sabio, October of last year. And then I started with Amazon Web Services in like December, it's great. I love it. A lot to do, I was able to have an impact early and often. It's a good role to be in.

Q: How does Sabio help you get a job?

Meri: Sabio they give you any and every tool that you need. They have a great network specifically for myself all the interview questions or the interview prep questions they gave us I was drilling over them every night. I reached out to some cohort members that have graduated before me that were interviewed over at AWS previously. And they polished my answers a little bit to go through the interview process.

Q: How did going to Sabio help at your current job?

Meri: Being a full stack engineer is definitely a blessing because even if you don't want to become a full stack engineer long term, you can have immediate impact on any team that you go to because you've already been exposed to different parts of the stack. And Sabio, we were in a startup environment. Because we were working for startups. At a startup you were 5,6,7,8 to 10 different hats, you're exposed to even more, not just the tech stacks, but different languages and all types of stuff like that when I was able to join my team at AWS, I was immediately thrown into something and was able to have impact. So I appreciated it that.

Q: What advice do you have for prospective Sabio students?

Meri: I would say just try it out try like a YouTube tutorial or try to pre work that Sabio has, it'll give you a good understanding of what you can start to look at as a developer. And then once you see the smaller results, I think it becomes more addicting to be like, Okay, that was cool. What else can I do? I will say Gregorio and Liliana have been a huge help. We still communicate weekly, bi-weekly on anything that's going on. For people that are trying to just get into coding or get into the tech industry in general, just ask for a pathway, hey, what do you think the best pathway to get to exit and a lot of times people are willing to help and they're willing to be transparent.

Q: How did going to Sabio Change your life?

Meri: It's been amazing. I have money to spare. I have a quality of life that allows me to spend more time with my kids. I've grown a certain level of patience, right? Because you have to have patience. So all in all. I think that Sabio catapulted me into this life that I always dreamed of. But now that I'm here, I'm just enjoying it. Everybody wants to start their own company, right. But I eventually want to have a company that is able to help veterans maneuver through certain processes that we have to move it through. But that's my long term goal. In the short term. I'm just trying to learn as much as I can as a developer and grow as I can as a developer and then pay it forward to the men and women that are coming out of Sabio be that bridge for them coming out of Sabio into the large scale company.