Joana Bertoldi is Fullstack Developer at Landing.Jobs, having joined us after she completed a bootcamp at Le Wagon. Before she entered the tech industry, she had a career as a cook in a fine dining restaurant. This is a little bit of her reskilling journey, so that it may inspire you. ✨
Before Le Wagon
What did you do before Le Wagon?
I was a cook at a fine dining restaurant.
What made you consider a career change?
Well… The pandemic and my health. After I lost my job due to the restaurant being closed in the first lockdown, I decided the best course of action was to go back to studying and find something that, like cooking, I would love to do every day but that wouldn’t have such a great impact on my mental and physical health. Also, looking for a career that allowed me to work from home seemed like the best decision due to the circumstances.
Why did you choose to join Le Wagon in the first place?
I was learning how to code at home when my godfather asked me if I would like to enroll in Le Wagon. After trying to learn some Ruby and seeing I really liked it, I was then offered the 9-weeks Full-Stack Web Developer course as an opportunity to speed up my career change. I couldn’t be more grateful.
During the bootcamp
How was your bootcamp experience?
I can honestly say that it was so amazing that one day I would like to do another bootcamp but with another programming language.
It’s such a friendly, fun but fast paced learning environment!
Every morning we had a person, the amazing Emily, helping us understand what the challenges and our schedule would be, cheering us up when things got hard or when we were just lost. But not for lack of guidance, at all. Things just move so fast you really need someone to help you keep up, especially when everything is new to you.
The challenges we were given were hard and got harder and harder with time but, as a team, we would learn to overcome them and when we couldn’t, the teachers and teacher assistants were always extremely helpful and patient.
What was your biggest challenge during the training?
Leaving. I wish it lasted longer since I really enjoyed the fast-learning environment and its structure.
What did you enjoy the most during these 9 weeks?
The spirit and companionship.
Life after the bootcamp
How were the first few weeks working at Landing.Jobs?
Great! I was welcomed with open arms by a truly amazing team. I will always cherish my first months as a dev. 🙂
What would you say to the “past Joana” if you could give her any advice about the first days as a junior developer?
As someone that gets very excited when going on new adventures, I spent too much time outside of work thinking about it so I would say: ‘Learn how to create a healthy work schedule from the start’.
If you want to code outside working hours, work on a personal project.
Is it easy working with a team of tech professionals from different educational backgrounds?
Like everything, it depends. Having different backgrounds allows for more empathy and openness to say “I don’t know, please teach me”. You have more of a feeling of team and less of competition. But people also have different personalities regardless of their educational background. So I think the biggest factor really is the personality of each team member and the willingness to do the work.
👉 Are you a recent bootcamp graduate looking for a job? Check these job openings.
👉 Thinking of enrolling in a bootcamp? Visit Le Wagon.
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