Zachary M Alumni Spotlight

ZACHARY:

There are so many opportunities out there and there's so much money, which is part of the really big reason why you don't want to be seen as a student, because students always make less money. But you're not a student. You are a junior developer if anything. But you know, you're still a developer. 

Started off with the military from there, kind of bounced around from job to job, got into sales, kind of ended up stuck there for a while, got into project management for a little bit, but was feeling trapped honestly. And happenstance through a TikTok, I saw some guy, he was a trucker and he was like, Look at me. He's like, I'm a developer. He's like, You could be a developer too. And it’s literally that little connection there. I looked through to see if there was any programs. I found VET TEC. On their preferred providers list, Sabio’s there. Liked what I saw, liked the reviews that I could see online and then committed. I'm pretty happy with the results. 

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

ZACHARY:

Something that Sabio instilled in you is the ability to be resourceful, the ability for you to figure things out on your own as a developer because when you get a job, it's something that you need to be able to do. And that mentality of, you know, spend an hour trying to figure it out, get on the queue after if you can't figure it. That's what my job is like now. It's funny how there's so many similarities between Sabio, the way it works, you know, and it's obviously by design. 

Q: What questions were you asked in the job interview?

ZACHARY:

The job that I got didn't ask me any questions about syntax, what's the definition of React...no. They asked me nothing but conceptual questions -- How would you solve this problem? If you had to create a blog post about something programing related, what would you describe and what would the concept be? And I had to, you know, make up something on the fly really unexpected. But that's kind of like sometimes you'll see the mentality. Another one that I had, same thing. It was not a technical interview, but it was because he was asking me technical questions before I even got to this next stage. 

I would acknowledge that I don't know the book definition of this. They asked me something and I said, You're looking for the answer of what a singleton is and a singleton is something that I got asked. And I was like, well, what's a singleton? I'm like, Well, I know when I'm like, I need to add it to the singleton. I need to, you know, put these services, I need to put it in this file or else it doesn't work. I don't know exactly the specifics. But you know, this is what I use it for. And then I described what I would put in there. Like, well in a singleton, I know, you know, it's a method without a body or something like that. 

Like it's just like those those little tidbits that you might get. Anything that you might get, try to answer it still because the worst case scenario is you get it wrong. But at least they can see how you work and how you think. And a lot of times you'll notice the interviews are trying to see how you think about stuff, not necessarily all the things that you have memorized. 

Q: What’s your work-life balance like at your job?

ZACHARY:

So the company that I ended up working for is remote and it’s based out of Utah. We have stand ups that are at 8:30. For me, money was not the biggest motivator. You know, I made money in sales just fine. I wanted to work at a place that was going to invest in me as an individual, that was looking to help me develop my skills as a developer, and that the people that I worked with were cool. So like, those were the things I was looking for. 

My manager was like very specific and explicit in the beginning and he said, I don't care if you know TypeScript or Python. He's like, I can teach you the syntax. I need people who can think a certain way. I've been learning. I'm in Sabio all over again, guys. I'm still learning, I'm watching YouTube videos, I'm reading documentation. Sabio has given me the skills to be able to take on additional languages that I didn't know and still, you know, be performing at a satisfactory level without having any sort of computer science degree or anything else. With this experience that we got, it’s enough and you'll be able to be successful after this cohort is over.