Shantay Landed a Software Developer Role at Booz Allen Hamilton After Learning to Code At Sabio

Shantay:

I'm a junior developer at Booz Allen. I went from climbing the cranes and stuff in the Port of LA to now I'm working remote and I can never be bored, because there's always something to do. And if you get bored of doing this, I can promise you, there's something else. Before Sabio, I was working as a network system engineer for this radio company called Comm Line. Most of my job entailed installing, like actual radio systems, more hardware than anything else. And I just kind of got bored of it, it wasn't really challenging. So I decided to go ahead and apply to the vet tech program with Sabio and got in right away and was able to live on my two weeks and that was it.

Q: Why did you choose Sabio Coding Bootcamp?

Shantay:

VA sends you newsletters every so often, they send me one about vet tech, the top school, I believe, that they mentioned was Sabio. So I just did some research found out that it was right here in LA, I went for it. And it was just set in stone for me, especially going from my last job being so hardware oriented, where I learned how to like install things, that's not something I wanted to do. And to switch to software, it just seemed like the right thing for me to do at the time.

Q: How did Sabio help you get you a job?

Shantay:

There's a series of videos that we get sent, I believe your last three weeks, and one of them in particular had the arch Allah talking about all the things that you had to do with each different website, the profile your resume, I followed that to the tee, and I even connected with Lia and spoke to her on LinkedIn. And we ended up talking and getting along really well. And she was like, hey, just send me your resume. And she took a look at it. And she was like, Oh, it's great. Can I give you a referral? And the goal of sending 50 resumes a day I doubled that and competing with my little group and my cohort who would just be like, Oh, how many resumes that you sent out today that really helped and also just keeping engaged with my other team members talking to them, like, Hey, I had this question in an interview, how would you have answered it? Or how did you tackle it? Being able to talk to other people kind of build that camaraderie with finding a job, it really helped me stay motivated, like, Okay, let's do it. Let's keep going every day. Fortunately, I got a job before I even graduated. But what I did do was till I got that signed offer letter, and I was working at Booz may got all my equipment I was still applying every day. So with Booz the offer, I got the same day. So it was like a one and done. And then another company two days later armor, they sent me an offer letter as well, it came down to the fact that who's had better benefits because the pay was going to be the same both offer offer me 85k. But who's just had so much better opportunities, benefits, and I just couldn't say no.

Q: Tell us about your new tech job

Shantay:

I am a junior developer at Booz Allen. It's a big contracting company with the VA. So we're working on modernizing everything from the memorial service all the way up to medical benefits, education benefits. That's what I do. Now, we still do daily stand ups developer meetings twice a week, there's a lot of engagement with your team. And then we have Slack as well. So I'm only required to be logged on for my meetings. After that, I work my own hours. And the only requirement is daily stand ups. And if you miss daily standup you just have to put it in the chat like why you missed it similar to what we do at Sabio with the check in stuff, I get a new hire buddy. If I'm stuck on something, I just reach out to her and be like, Hey, I don't know what I'm doing help me out and they walk you through everything. Your career manager is only there for your career. They don't care about your current position unless it's not making you happy. And then their entire goal is to keep you in the company. I get free classes through Udemy, which is an online learning platform through Booz Allen medical, dental vision 401K, also, now they're putting me back through my clearance stuff. So for me that was a plus, because that's really expensive to do. But now I'm getting Secret clearance for another 10 years. So that was a benefit for me right now. I'm on a junior level, it's called consultant. But if I moved into a different level, that's when we talk about salary increase and stuff like that. So it really depends on the role that you want to switch into. And the great thing is if in six months a year from now, I'm like hey, I'm kind of over this full stack stuff. I want to do more cloud or I want to be a QA or I want to do maybe I want to be a scrum master. There's opportunities for you to go into those roles with training provided because like I went from climbing the cranes and stuff in the Port of LA to now I'm working remote and just the onboarding process alone for Booz Allen, you're constantly learning to the point that I can never be bored because there's always something to do. And if you get bored of doing this, I can promise you there's something else okay, I'm gonna move over to the cloud, because it's just you're always going to be learning so you'll never be bored.