No Bachelor's Degree, No Problem: Jared is making 90k-a-year just a month after graduating Sabio
One of Jared’s first concerns when considering coding bootcamp was whether or not he needed a bachelor’s degree, which he didn’t have. Nor did he have his active military clearance, which he also thought might also limit his job prospects. He had an associate’s degree in business and another for being a private pilot but that was it. Fortunately, those things meant nothing for being a software engineer and after about a month from graduating the 17-week program at Sabio, he landed a 90k-a-year job.
Jared, who spent eight years in the Navy and four doing mortgage loans, works remotely for a healthcare company as a data engineer (with the intent to sidestep into software engineering). His job comes with all the perks, too. “401k matching, health insurance, dental, vision, the whole nine yards. I graduated on November 4th, a Friday, and I accepted the offer on December 16th.”
As Jared explains in his even-toned articulate style, the job interview was less about technical expertise and more about personality. “They weren't necessarily looking for the most experienced person. They were looking for someone that's teachable, someone that's basically not an asshole. And they're teachable.”
That’s not to say out of the 10 to 15 interviews he had, none quizzed with challenging coding problems. Most did and as he humbly admits, he bombed a few of them. But he brushed the rejections off and kept plowing forward, submitting over 2,100 applications in all. Jared is the epitome of how much of a numbers game the job search process is.
One of the ways he ignored the rejection emails was by putting a filter on that sent messages with the word “unfortunately” straight to the trash. Otherwise, he took his chin-up mentality he honed at Sabio with him into the job market.
Coding bootcamp was hard, as Jared admits, but it doesn’t need to be done alone. Sabio provides the opportunity for real human connection among classmates and instructors. “I was fortunate enough that I found a group of people and we communicated every day, like we zoomed every day, whether it was for an hour or 12 hours, just really to keep each other company. I mean, it was all of us still figuring things out for ourselves. But it was nice to have that group of classmates that kind of motivate each other and keep each other accountable.”
When Jared got into his cohort, the work didn’t ease up. In fact, that’s when things got really tough and he had to teach himself new things. “Every day it was basically starting fresh and doing research and trying to figure out what the next step is going to be. That really was the beginning of being a software developer.”
But of course the real beginning is getting paid to do it. And getting paid well makes all that hard work worth the effort.
Jared was hired by: 