His Job is Top Secret, but How He Got it is Not
The secret to Heriberto’s success? A holistic understanding of programming and an unwavering persistence that keeps him cracking every code placed before him.
The former US army vet who got a degree in computer science was not as poised as you might think to enter the tech industry. In a traditional university, Heriberto explains, “They don't teach you about the applying process, they don't teach about LinkedIn. They don't teach you about how tough it is to get a job working in this field.”
Sabio coding bootcamp, on the other hand, is a hands-on, immersive experience that has an 80% post-graduation job placement success rate. What’s more, it’s a fraction of the cost of college and can be done in just 17 weeks. It was exactly what Heriberto needed to segue into the workforce. “I just needed messing around with JavaScript and some other stuff.
The thing that I learned at Sabio that helped me the most is C# because it's highly object oriented, and the language that I'm using is object oriented, and we are expected to use object oriented principles.”
At his job now, which is a defense contractor job that’s updating the legacy software on intercontinental missiles, he’s applying these skills every day. This is where having a solid foundation, a birds eye view of programming as a whole, is essential. “It's a lot of older languages. “We don't use the newer stuff. We use something similar to GitHub and then we do have a CICD pipeline. But again, I can't really say much since it’s mostly classified.”
He applied through LinkedIn, Indeed, and ZipRecruiter, sending out countless resumes and was ever-wary of scams. But when he interviewed for the job he’s at now, he knew he had it in the bag. “It just flowed and it wasn't one-sided, like we were both talking and it just felt good.” And Heriberto has a technique for breaking up the tech-heavy tone of most interviews. “I don't like just focusing on technology. I like letting them know that I can solve problems, like I'm a problem-solver.”
Safe at his high salary, high secrecy job, Heriberto is acutely aware of what got him here: the top-down view of coding that Sabio drilled into him. Most of the problems he faces involve a combinatorial approach, “If you truly understand how everything works, it's easier for you to come up with solutions.”
Heriberto was hired by: 