The job market for coding has been booming in recent years, and only accelerated with working from home becoming more mainstream. With these revolutionary changes made to the way we work, a career in coding can offer amazing perks, from fantastic work-life balance to countless initiatives to help guide people in the industry. For this reason, Seek is predicting a 25% growth in jobs in the space over the next five years becoming one of the top five most in-demand roles post-covid.
Coding is no longer just limited to programming-heavy professions either. As the world moves further into digital spaces, a variety of different industries have started to transition into digital spaces also. Even graphic designers today need to know basic web development skills or HTML for practical reasons.
This is why there has been a huge push lately to drive the workforce towards programming jobs. Even three years ago, US President Joe Biden was telling coal miners to “learn how to code” and use their transferrable skills in a different industry. Because of this push, several initiatives have opened up to help people switch careers and break into the tech sector.
Giselle Lima is a great example of this career shift, graduating from a BootCamp course offered by Coder Academy, an all Australian private college that offers a variety of courses on coding and UX design. Giselle had been working in the manufacturing industry for 13 years and felt that they needed a huge refresh. She wanted to enter an industry where she could use some of her transferable skills, and work on creative projects that would challenge and nurture her problem-solving skills.
In the past ten months, Giselle has quit her job, enrolled in a fast-track Web Development Bootcamp at Coder Academy, and received a ‘Diversity in Tech’ scholarship as well. After completing a four-week internship, she has managed to secure a full-time position as a Junior Consultant at Alembic.
We spoke to Giselle to hear more about her story and experience in changing careers to coding.
How long did it take you to learn code?
That’s a tricky one to answer as I’m definitely still on my learning journey when it comes to coding. But it took me six months to go from zero coding knowledge to knowing enough to secure an internship in software development.
What attributes do you need to have if you’re considering getting into coding?
Considering that coding involves constant problem-solving and debugging, which may result in some frustrations along the way, I believe that resilience, patience, analytical thinking and attention to detail are valuable skills to work as a developer.
What advice would you give to someone looking to get into coding?
Try as many free online coding courses as you can to see if that’s for you. And, if it is, I highly recommend enrolling on a boot camp if that’s an option you are considering. They are great for not only learning good foundations of coding in a guided way, but also helping you to connect with other devs sharing similar pathways, to understand better what the industry expects from you as a developer, and even find an internship or work placement after the course.
Even though it is possible to learn how to code through self-studying, if you don’t know what to study and how deep you need to go into each topic, you can easily get distracted by the huge amount of resources available out there and waste time trying to figure out where to focus.
What were some of the transferrable skills you found from one industry and bringing it to software development?
Curiosity, communication, problem-solving, teamwork, time management, project management and adaptability are some of the soft skills that I have developed in my previous career that I find useful and applicable to software development.
How did you discover software development as an industry that might fit you?
Firstly, I enrolled in a couple of courses online, like Codeacademy, CS50x and freeCodeCamp, just to see if I would enjoy coding. Once I saw myself considering turning that into a career, I searched for people on LinkedIn who had made a career change into Software Development and reached out to them asking about their experience and work environment. In order to have a feel if I could see myself working on similar jobs.
To my surprise, I found a very supportive and humble community with lots of people willing to help. And it was the possibility of working with something exciting, that pushes you to learn new things every single day in an environment that is welcoming and supportive, that got me determined to jump into Software Development.
How would you describe the diversity in tech?
Diversity in tech is the scholarship offered by Coder Academy to encourage diversity in the tech sector. Coming from the manufacturing industry, where I personally didn’t see much practical work happening around diversity and inclusion, receiving this scholarship, right after deciding to get into software development, was a great reassurance that I was moving into an industry that, even though it still has a big diversity gap to fill, is making an effort to change the current scenario and give me an opportunity to contribute to the cause.
What opportunities have been given to you in tech that you haven’t received in other industries?
The opportunity to truly focus on my work-life balance is a big one for me. I’m finding a massive improvement in my mental health since I started working fully remotely, and that is not a feasible option when you are managing production lines. Another one I would like to point out is the opportunity to include in my work routine a dedicated time for my own professional development, which, in my current workplace, also includes a yearly allowance to encourage all employees to continuously improve their professional skill set.
If you would like to learn more about the Bootcamp Giselle attended, click here.
Coder Academy is an OG Australian Bootcamp provider that blends its experience in education alongside industry leaders to design courses to fill skill gaps. The courses offered are 100% online and designed to be intense, compressing qualifications that take up to one year into shorter periods without compromising learning outcomes.
Attending classes while working full-time can be incredibly difficult, which is why the team at Coder Academy are also highly responsive and agile to help meet your needs.
If you’d like to learn more about Coder Academy and the courses they offer click here.