Thomas Got the Remote Position He Was Looking For in the Conditions He Wanted

Thomas:

I came from a zero coding background, right? So when I was interviewing, I thought I was asking too much but it was just a fine amount. So I pushed it up to 80-90k, and that's exactly what I got! 80k, fully remote.

I looked up Sabio, I really liked how it looked but naturally I'm skeptical of things. And this was in 2019, so at that point I was like "Maybe I shouldn't do a coding boot camp." Instead I chose to become and english teacher after I had become a homeless vet counselor, and then covid came. They laid me off so my response was to go to Turkey. Then I was like "ok, I'll go into Sabio now." I was actually supposed to start with C115, with my living situation I still had to work. So then I told Gregorio my situation is sort of like this. He was like "You'd better push it out two months," which was really good because I got to adjust everything in my life to have it be as ideal as possible.

Q: What was your biggest challenge at Sabio Coding Bootcamp?

Thomas:

I took the program while I was living in Turkey. Doing Sabio from 7pm to 7am, that I would say was the most immediate challenge and then some of the ways I would fix that was doing it from 7am to 4am, get some sleep, and then just start three hours early, that way I would have some queue questions lined up. The benefit of that was that my brain was so fried, I couldn't really think about anything else except just the coding stuff.

Q: Tell us about your job search process?

Thomas:

I would do the motivational Mondays, they are motivational, I recommend them after you finish Sabio. So it took me about 3-4 weeks, I was looking for work so I could either have a Turkish job or I could have a job that was globally remote. Basically the biggest challenge was, in the beginning, you have this sort of feeling that the first sort of opportunities that might be within your reach are the most important, and you don't want to lose that. Maybe I'm asking too high, or maybe my demands are unreasonable, but I don't think either of those things are true. You should ask for what you want, something that makes you feel comfortable, that'll make you be better in the interview. And the way I got this job: Axel, who I believe is here was like "Hey, I referred you to my company, go apply." Thirty minutes later a recruiter called me. Two days later, I got an interview, and then two days after I got a call from an internal recruiter saying, "hey I'm sorry the system is down, you can't see your job offer," and I was like "this is the first time I'm hearing about this," and he said "Oh well welcome aboard!" I accepted the job offer, flew back to the US. I'm glad I took it, globally remote, get some good experience at this company, United Health Group, go out and then do something more. Because like Brijesh said, you want to get started on having experience as a developer, not what you're currently doing.

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

Thomas:

Push yourself, yes, but also go as slow as you need to. Take an hour, take two hours, it'll all come together. During the job search I would recommend being ok with being yourself during interviews. You don't want to say thing you think they want to hear. It's ok to show who you are, what your interests are, you want to stand out. There's only one of you.

Q: Tell us why you chose your new tech job?

Thomas:

I came from a zero coding background, right? So when I was interviewing, I thought I was asking too much but it was just a fine amount. Because they're not hiring a bargain bin developer, they're hiring a real developer so then I pushed it up to 80-90k, and that's exactly what I got, 80k! Fully remote, comes with performance bonuses, it comes with 23 days PTO, Performance reviews, raises that go with it. As far as this job, this is a US remote job due to the United Health Group.

Thomas:

Q: How did Sabio help prepare you for your current tech job?

How well does Sabio translate over to this particular role? I kind of feel over prepared to be honest, I'm pretty sure this is where I should be, since Sabio is pretty break-neck pace. A small part of you can't help but think "oh this is what it's gonna be like," I almost miss Sabio, I miss those all night things, because you were just coding and getting stuff done and this is using one piece of particular knowledge that I worked on over and over again in Sabio, and now i'm just doing it here. Sabio will prepare you, and as far as imposter syndrome, there's always going to be more to learn, you're not going to know everything, that's ok, you'll get there. One of the interesting things I found about Sabio, this came up in multiple interviews. After a bootcamp they assume that you do a capstone project, like an isolated application. With Sabio you get that experience of working remotely and then being able to say "I was part of an international team that worked on this project remotely." So that looks really good on your resume, that's what they're looking for, really.