S2E6: Coding Bootcamp to Microsoft (and Beyond) with Saron Yitbarek

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In today’s episode of the Learn to Code With Me podcast, I talk with Saron Yitbarek. Saron is a graduate of Flatiron School, a coding bootcamp in New York City. She is also the founder of CodeNewbie, a community designed to support programmers and people learning to code.

Saron discusses what led her to quit her job and enter a coding bootcamp full-time. She talks about how she prepared for the classes and how she embraced every opportunity that came her way. Her commitment to learning and creating paid off with an apprenticeship at thoughtbot and a later job at Microsoft.

Saron describes her experiences in her three post-bootcamp jobs and says that finding the right team makes all the difference. She discusses the importance of a supportive community for newbies and veteran programmers alike. Saron details the journey that prompted her to create CodeNewbie and share her wisdom and support to others who are learning to code.

Laurence:
Hey, it's Laurence Bradford. Welcome to Season 2 of the Learn to Code With Me podcast, where I'm chatting with people who taught themselves how to code and are now doing amazing things with their newly found skills.

Fullstack Academy is a coding bootcamp that helps people become software developers at companies like Google, Amazon, and Facebook. Fullstack also offers a part-time boot camp prep course that prepares you for admission into selective coding bootcamps. Visit bootcampprep.io to learn more and get a $500 scholarship with the code learnwithme.

Hey listeners, welcome to the Learn to Code With Me podcast. I'm your host, Laurence Bradford. In today's episode, I talk with Saron Yitbarek, the founder of CodeNewbie. CodeNewbie is a supportive community of folks learning how to code. There are CodeNewbie meetups, a Twitter chat, and of course, the CodeNewbie podcast. And let me tell you, the girl behind CodeNewbie, Saron, is a total rockstar.

In our conversation, we talk about what she was doing before she began learning how to code, her decision to attend Flatiron School, a coding bootcamp in New York City, her apprenticeship at thoughtbot, and her later job at Microsoft. Saron drops so many nuggets of wisdom, I cannot wait for you to listen. Remember, you can get the Show Notes for this episode, plus a full transcript, at learntocodewith.me/podcast. Enjoy!

Hey Saron, thanks so much for talking with me today.

Saron:
Yeah, thanks for having me.

Laurence:
So could you do me a big favor and just introduce yourself quickly to the audience.

Saron:
Sure. My name is Saron. I'm a developer and founder of CodeNewbie. We are the most supportive community of programmers and people learning to code and I have my own podcast called the CodeNewbie Podcast.

Laurence:
Yes, awesome. I’m sure a bunch of the listeners are already huge CodeNewbie podcast fans.

Saron:
Awesome.

Laurence:
Yes, I hear great things. I love the podcast as well and listen to it all the time. Could you just give us some insight into what you were doing before you began learning how to code?

Saron:
Sure, yeah. So I was working in startups. I was doing a bunch of different things that were not technical, not product related, but supported the products. I’ve done a lot of sales, some marketing, some design work. I felt very frustrated by how valuable I felt that I was and how much I could contribute and all that.

I just felt like I was sitting next to these awesome engineers who were building really cool things and had screens filled with code that, I didn’t even know what it was called at that point, I just saw a bunch of things I didn’t understand. I saw that and I thought, “Man, I really want to be a part of this, I want to be a big part of the experience of our users.” So I quit my job, learned to code, and now we’re here.

Laurence:
So how long ago was that, out of curiosity?

Saron:
That was about three years ago, I think? Three, three and a half.

Laurence:
I feel like you’ve had such a wild ride since. Of course I know this because I’ve read your LinkedIn and your bio and your website and other places, but when you decided to quit your job at the startup and learn how to code, what was the first thing you did? What was your game plan?

Saron:
Sure. So for me the big thing was I wanted to test out if I was actually serious about it or if it was just that the idea of coding seemed very nice, you know? So I said to myself, “Okay I’m going to give myself a month to figure out if I’m actually serious about this or if it’s just a cute idea that I wouldn’t actually want to do.”

So I used the Flatiron School, which ended being the bootcamp that I attended, had an open curriculum, they had their pre-work. And it was basically just a curated list of resources that started from ‘what is the command line’ to ‘what is git’ to a little bit of JavaScript and a lot of Ruby and some Rails. So I just followed that curriculum and I went through each thing piece by piece and I think I ended up doing that curriculum at least 2 ½ times by the time the program actually started.

I quit my job and I spent at least 12 hours a day, every single day, going through that and reading and taking notes and just really trying to soak it all in and I really dove deep. It was a really awesome process because I was so focused on just making sure that this was for me before I made any permanent long-term decisions. I got to really immerse myself in it and focus on it 100%. My days were mostly alone in my apartment with my hair up and many, many cups of coffee and just trying to get through all those coding tutorials.

Laurence:
I think what you did is so smart. You tested the waters before really jumping and making a big financial and time investment. As we all know, lots of coding bootcamps are both of those, right? It takes a lot of time.

Saron:
Yes, exactly.

Laurence:
How did you even know about the Flatiron School pre-work?

Saron:
I did a bunch of research. At the beginning, I had been in the tech industry enough to know that there was a thing called code and there was a thing called programming and I’d heard of a couple languages here and there. I just did a bunch of research. I think Quora was probably one of the biggest tools that I used. I looked up questions like, “what is code? What’s the right programming language to learn? What are the pros and cons?” The reality is there’s no right answer for any of those questions. I learned that very quickly because everyone has their own opinion.

I gathered a lot of notes and had a little notebook full of the pieces of information that I found, and I got to a point where I said, “Okay, I think I probably want to learn Ruby.” It was basically between Ruby and Python. I said, “I think I want to learn Ruby. I think the community’s a little bit bigger. It looks like there’s more options in terms of courses and bootcamps that teach Ruby.” So it felt like a safer decision.

Once I decided that, then it became, “Okay, so what are my learning options?” So I looked at a bunch. I looked at entirely self-taught using things like Codecademy and Code School and Treehouse and those online resources. I looked into going to the professional continuing education programs at established universities, like NYU has one. I think Columbia might have one too. I looked at those options. I came across the idea of bootcamps, I looked at those. I really just made a big list of all the possible options, and I think that’s when it’s really important to reflect on who you are and what is best for you. I went to a bootcamp and for me that was the right decision. Nothing works for everyone, right? For me I said, “I want to try the self-taught thing for a little while because again I want to make sure this is serious, this is really what I want to do, but once I have that answer, I really benefit from having structure and guidance and having deadlines and those external forces really help me focus.”

So once I decided that, it was pretty clear that I needed to do a bootcamp or a class, and I came across the Flatiron School, it was one of probably the top five programs that I had been looking at. What really got me honestly, and this is slightly embarrassing but it’s the truth, what really got me was their promo video. They had this beautiful, I think it was like a 60 second promo video and I can’t even tell you how many times I watched this thing. I don’t even know if it’s still up anymore but I watched it so many times. When I looked at the way a lot of other programs were marketed, they used a lot of, “You can be a ninja and a software expert and a warrior,” you know, those kinds of words that frankly didn’t really connect with me. I personally feel like going through one class that’s three months long, I just don’t believe that that’s going to make me a senior developer. That just didn’t really do anything for me.

But when I looked at that video, it was a lot of just, “You are great the way that you are and you are creative and you want to make a difference in the world and we are going to help equip you and give you skills to help you reach the potential you already have instead of make you into a different person,” if that makes sense. I don’t know if they meant to do that, but that’s the message I took from it and every time I got really upset or frustrated with code, I would just watch that video and just think to myself, “I could do this, I could totally do this.” So really it was their marketing, their marketing and that promo video totally won me over.

Laurence:
That’s so awesome and I’m thinking as you’re saying that, I really hope they still have it online. This was like how many years ago and you’re still talking about the promo video. Clearly it make an impact.

Saron:
Good promo video.

Laurence:
They should get it back online if it’s for some reason not. So yeah, Flatiron School, I hear awesome things. I haven’t gone through the program myself, but I definitely hear great things about it. Also, just totally out of curiosity, but how how long was Flatiron School around when you went?

Saron:
We were the fourth cohort, so they had been around for just about a year.

Laurence:
Okay, cool. I guess at that time you were already living in New York, so it was probably also convenient to go a bootcamp that was in New York rather than another city like San Francisco.

Saron:
Right, yeah. A big part of it too was just the logistics and the finances around it. Staying in the area was super helpful and a big part of the decision.

Laurence:
Yeah, awesome. Okay, so you go to Flatiron School, it’s like a three month program, you’re done, what was that experience like and what did you do after that?

Saron:
Yeah, it was really hard. It was super freaking hard. I felt like I, for me, that was a very expensive decision to make. I had to borrow money from people to make sure that I could afford it and I took it incredibly seriously. Like I said, I did the pre-work at least 2 ½, maybe even 3 full times before I even stepped foot in the classroom.

In class I, for the most part, sat in the front row, I answered all the questions, I hogged all the TAs, but I was going to get my money’s worth. I was very determined to make the most that I could from that opportunity. So for me, I came into it with the mindset of, ‘no one is going to give me this education, no one is going to give me these skills, I’m going to have to earn it and I’m going to fight for it and I don’t really care what it takes and what it costs.’ I think that, if you do decide to move forward with something as intense and expensive and time consuming...and it’s not even that it’s just time consuming, it’s all consuming. That’s your life for many months.

If you decide to do that I think you have to go in with that mentality. I had classmates and people who treated it more as a, ‘they’re going to give me my coding skills,’ and I don’t think that worked as well. I know there are people who didn’t do the pre work or just kind of skimmed through it and they definitely didn’t get as much out of it as I did. For me, it was very intense and I took it incredibly seriously and I think that really helped me make the most out of that opportunity.

Once it was over we actually had, and it’s really unfortunate because I don’t think they do this anymore but we had a science fair and it was an opportunity to meet with local employers and they would come in and we’d demo our applications and the things that we made. That was, I think it was either the week that we graduated or a week before, I’m not entirely sure. When we did that, everyone but me had many apps to show and had all these cool things they built. I had one app. I had my one app and I thought it was pretty cool, it was a note taking app for videos, so you’d watch a video and in the same screen you can type notes and you have a little time stamp and a little marker that appears on the progress bar and so your notes and your videos are always correlated and you can kind of go back and press play on the note and it will take you back to the place where you were on the video. With this app I was very realistic with the skills I had at that point. I had been coding for a couple months. I’m not going to blow anyone away with my awesome coding abilities, so I didn’t focus on that. I focused on the process and I focused on making sure I knew why I was making the technical decisions I was making. I focused on things like the design. I drew, the landing page of our website is a cartoon where it’s basically, it’s called Noted, and so it was sheets of notebook paper kind of like floating down in a staircase format across the page. I drew that and made a really beautiful illustration and I focused on the things that I felt would help me stand out compared to my other classmates. I think that really helped in pitching myself and making sure I got interviews.

From that science fair I think I got at least 6 interviews and I actually got an interview booked that same night. A week after we graduated, myself and one other students, we were both selected to be, what is it called, Hackers in Residence, which is a 7 month program where we got to code for a non-profit called the New York Tech Meetup in New York City so that was my first job when I graduated.

Laurence:
So you went to Flatiron School, you took it very seriously. I loved what you said, how you fought for it, it was all consuming. You had the science fair at the end. Instead of building multiple apps, you built one really, as you said, it was a good app but you really focused on the design, you focused on the process and you really spoke about those things when you met with employers at the science fair. You got 6 interviews from the science fair and one of those was the Hackers in Residence and that’s where you were after for 6 months.

Saron:
Yep, you got it.

Laurence:
That’s so cool. So could you, I honestly don’t really know myself and I’m sure listeners don’t either but could you explain what you did during the Hackers in Residence?

Saron:
Sure, yeah. That job was very difficult. It was myself and one other developer. We both graduated from the Flatiron School and the idea behind the program was to build a platform for the New York Tech Meetup. When we were initially pitched this, I thought we were going to have a CTO or a senior developer, someone who had done it before. We had kind of a mentor person who checked in with us once in awhile but it’s not really the same as having someone there full-time to make sure you don’t do something really stupid. So a lot of it was just us figuring out what to do.

I remember very vividly, I think it was the first or second day we were there and we all sat down and it was myself, the other developer, the team, and someone from the Flatiron School was making introductions and right at the beginning of the meeting she turned and looked at me and said, “So, where do we start?” And I’m thinking to myself, ‘You know I’ve never done this before, right? This is my first job.’

So a lot of it was just throwing stuff against the wall and hoping that it stuck and hoping that we didn’t make a totally detrimental decision. I learned very quickly that the coding part is not the hard part, it’s deciding what to code and when to code and how much to code and how do you know if you’re coding the right thing. It was all that that made it really difficult. We made a lot of mistakes 10 times before we made the right decision, if we got to the right decision. I think it was a very good growing experience. I learned a lot but I think I learned it a lot more painfully than I had to.

Laurence:
Got it, wow. That’s super interesting thought. As I said, I’ve read your LinkedIn and your bio and About page but I did not know that you did that for 6 months before the NY Tech Meetup. That’s super interesting, I just love that story. When the person looks over and is like, “Where do we begin?” And you’re probably like, “I’m just about to ask you that.”

Saron:
Exactly. Like, “I thought you had an agenda, I don’t know what’s going on.”

Laurence:
Oh man. So when you were working there, it was just you and one other person? There must have been other people, were you at an office?

Saron:
Yeah, we had an office. So it was me, the other developer, and then we had 2 full-time people who worked at the New York Tech Meetup and later on we ended up getting an additional person. Yeah, it was the 4 of us and it was nice because they were very incredibly patient with us. They were, for the most part, happy to have help and start making progress on this idea that they’d had for awhile. And they were awesome, it was a really great working environment.

For me, it just made me feel like I really wanted to do right by them. I really wanted to make something that’s really good and useful. I think as a new programmer it was just very frustrating to be so aware of the gap between where you are and where you want to be, you know? The famous Ira Glass quote that I absolutely love that talks about how he wishes as a beginner someone told him that you know, you have good taste but you don’t necessarily have the skill and there’s that gap that’s so frustrating and you keep doing things and you build things and you create and you write and it’s just never as good as you want it to be.

A large part of that residency was spent with me feeling like, “Darn it, I wish I could do better and be faster and I wish I could deliver the way that I imagine it.” And just kind of having to deal with the fact that I was probably going to fall short for a good amount of time because I’m learning. That’s the price of learning.

Laurence:
Yeah, that’s awesome and I love that quote too. The taste and the skill and the gap between. So after this experience and then on to the next things. Was there ever like a eureka moment where you felt like you had closed that gap or do you feel like you’re still closing that gap?

Saron:
There is no moment. I feel like, the thing that is most frustrating to me about programming is that you battle with a concept or a feature or a tool for a long time and while you’re battling it feels like you’re never going to get it. And then you get it and then it feels obvious. I feel like there’s a very small amount of time, maybe 5 seconds, where you feel good about. I feel like 90% of it is spent being angry and feeling stupid and then 9% is spent feeling like, “Obviously,” and then there’s 1% of happiness. So if I had any eureka moments, they definitely weren’t permanent.

I think that’s the other thing too, I feel like as soon as I, I remember with Rails 5 a few months ago became standard and stable and all that. I was so annoyed because I was thinking to myself, “I’m finally getting comfortable with Rails 4 and I feel like I know what’s going on and now I have to upgrade to Rails 5, this is bullcrap!” That’s how I feel a lot of the time. As soon as I think I know what I’m doing and I start to feel a little more comfortable, there’s a new technology, there’s an upgrade, there’s a new standard, there’s something else to learn. That’s one thing that I feel is maybe not so great about me is I hear a lot of my developer friends go, “Yeah it’s going to be really cool and really exciting,” and I’m just like, “Oh I just wish things could stay the same.” So, yeah, that’s been my experience.

Laurence:
Yeah, I love that you said that. At the same time, I think the fact that, with technology in general, how rapidly things are changing and there’s an update or there’s a new feature or whatever, it kind of levels the playing field for people who are just starting out.

Saron:
That’s true, yeah.

Laurence:
It’s like, the good news is everyone has to keep learning, not just you. Even the advanced people have to continue to learn. I remember I was chatting with a woman the other evening who studied computer science in college and she doesn’t do anything with computer science now, but a bunch of her friends from college still do and she was like it’s just so interesting how what they learned in college, the programming language, none of them use it today. But not only that, they’re like 3 things away from that. This was, she went to school in the 90s or something. Anyway, I think at the same time it’s kind of reassuring that there’s always something more to learn but for everyone, not just beginners.

Saron:
No, that’s a really good point.

Laurence:
So, after the Hacker in Residency, or the NY Tech Meetup, what was your next move? Because that was just 6 months.

Saron:
Yeah, it ended up going a little bit longer. I think it may have ended at 7 or 8 months, but after that, it’s interesting because the person that I worked with and I, we had very different reactions to that experience. I think he looked that and he said, “Okay, now I’m ready to get a full-time job and really dig in,” and I looked at that and I went, “Oh my god, I need to learn a lot more stuff.”

So for me, it really showed that I was capable enough and knew enough to make things work, but it was going to be very ugly and not put together well and it wasn’t going to be best practices. For me, I looked at coding as a craft and I want to make sure I’m following best practices and really thinking about how well and how elegant the solution can be. So I applied for the thoughtbot apprenticeship because I wanted to get back to a place where I felt like I was going to be mentored and I felt like I was going to learn a lot from much more experienced people.

So I applied for that and I got it but it started basically 4 months later because they wanted me to start in the Winter/Spring apprenticeship, so I basically had a couple months off. In those couple months I focused a lot on CodeNewbie and working on a couple things there.

Laurence:
Awesome. So now you have to explain the thoughtbot apprenticeship.

Saron:
Sure. So the thoughtbot apprenticeship was awesome. It was probably the most terrifying and the best thing I’ve done as far as my learning and coding. It was a 3 month apprenticeship. The idea is that they take people who are very close to having the skills of being a full-time developer but they need a little bit more work and a little bit more polish and experience. Even more specific than that, they needed to learn the thoughtbot way of doing things.

I applied and got accepted and each month you get a mentor. It’s kind of up to you and the mentor what you do with that time together but for me, I spent most of the time, at least half the time, pairing with them. The first month, actually the first two months is spent doing a toy project that you want to do and the last month is spent doing actual client work. It’s awesome. Thoughtbot is such an incredible place to work and it’s full of such amazing people. I really liked it because it wasn’t...you weren’t a code monkey. You weren’t just kind of sitting and taking direction and just figuring out how to make things work. You get to really be a part of the product decisions.

So I got to be a part of design sprints and I got to use a little bit of my creativity and drawing skills, that kind of thinking. I’d been in tech for awhile and startups specifically for awhile. I was very comfortable in that word and I was very comfortable with the concept of an MVP, which is the minimum viable product. I was very comfortable with iterating very quickly and Lean and those kinds of things so I felt really right at home with being able to contribute to the prototyping process and working with clients and that side of things. I got to really focus on, “Okay, how do I take that and really make sure I’m a solid programmer as well?”

In that time, I think one of the hardest things I did was I learned Vim because my first mentor, I was using Sublime before that and my first mentor was like, “I can’t do this, you need to learn Vim.” I was like, “Oh gosh.” So I did that and that was incredibly painful but I think with 2 weeks of full-time, 100% committed full-time Vim practice I was able to be as comfortable as I was in Sublime and a little bit faster as well. But yeah, it was spent most of the time pairing and working on client stuff and it was a really great experience.

Laurence:
That’s so cool. That sounds like so much fun and the fact you get to wear different hats and work on different things and you get different mentors, like a new one every month and then you get to work with clients. That’s so exciting. I love, personally, as I mentioned before interview for my first full-time job at a startup, part of the draw was that I could wear many hats and get to work on different things, get to work with different people. Yeah, that sounds so awesome.

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Okay, so you were at thoughtbot, did the apprenticeship for 3 months, and then did you continue working there after?

Saron:
So they did make me a full-time offer. I literally cried when they told me because I just couldn’t believe that they thought I was good enough to be there. Around that time, it was an interesting time in thoughtbot’s history because at the time when they were going to make me a full-time offer, they ended up having a hiring freeze. So they extended my apprenticeship by an extra month kind of hoping that they would be able to make a full-time offer at the end of that month. But I didn’t know if that was actually going to happen so I started interviewing and looking for jobs.

Basically at about the same time I ended up getting an offer at Microsoft to be a program manager and I decided to take that instead. I had very mixed feelings about it because the Microsoft position was not a technical one. It was program manager for a technical training program. So we had a program called Tech Jobs Academy and it was a free 4 month program for unemployed and underemployed New York workers. It was very much focused on community and tech education and accessibility and a lot of things that I was very passionate about. But it wasn’t focused on developing my coding skills. So while I was there I got to sneak coding in. I got to build a couple prototypes and I had some coding fellows that I got to manage and show stuff too so I found a way to sneak it into my role but the majority of it wasn’t a programming position.

Laurence:
Yeah, I can just imagine being in that situation where it’s extended one month longer and of course you’re going to apply to other jobs during that time because who knows what’s going to happen at the end of the month. I think that’s such an interesting, it was kind of a choice between coding or passions. As you said, you were definitely working towards something you believed in, which I’m sure made it extremely fulfilling and enjoyable. Again you mentioned before I hit the record button that you were working in a coworking space while you were doing this, correct?

Saron:
Yes.

Laurence:
So you weren’t in the big Microsoft office or anything?

Saron:
Nope. No it wasn’t. There’s a space in New York City in Flatiron District called Civic Hall which is an amazing space, I love that space so much. Microsoft was one of the founding sponsors of that space and so the whole team, the whole Civic Tech Engagement team got to work out of there, it was pretty cool.

Laurence:
So maybe you can speak to this, I’m not sure. Side note, this is such a self-fulfilling question because I’m just super curious to know the difference between, because you had these three interesting job experiences. You have the Hacker in Residence which is for a non-profit, then you have thoughtbot, which is, they have clients, they’re doing consulting. Then you’re working at Microsoft, one of the biggest tech companies in the world. What were those, the dichotomies. What were those experiences like? How were they different? What were the pros and cons?

Saron:
Yeah, that’s a really good question. I hadn’t thought of it that way honestly. I think that no matter where I was, I felt like I was really being pushed to my, to the edge of my skills and I felt like I was being forced to grow on the job. Even though the Microsoft job wasn’t a technical one, it was a lot of things I hadn’t really done before. I had never managed a program. We worked very closely with the community college system and the New York City government and I’d never worked in that type of partnership structure before. And also being in a place where you’re representing a big brand is a responsibility that I wasn’t really used to before that.

So they were different in that the goals of each were slightly different. But at the end of the day, I think what matters most is the actual team that you work with. At Microsoft, I loved my team so freaking much. I had a really great boss and I had great team members and even though I was part of this huge international organization, I didn’t feel like I was. I felt like I had so much support that I could focus on the work I was doing and I could focus on making sure I got it done.

I didn’t have to worry about office politics and being able to navigate these really, I did have to navigate a couple things but overall I got to really focus on doing my job really well and I feel like across those 3 positions, because the people I worked with and the leadership was very determined to make it a really great place for the employees and put the employees in a place to succeed, it kind of didn’t really matter what size and what structure everything else was in because they cared enough to make it really easy for me to do my job well.

Laurence:
Yes, and I love what you said. I always tell people this, the people in your team and your boss and how important that is in your day to day happiness, right?

Saron:
Yes.

Laurence:
That’s such an important message, regardless of whether it’s a huge company like Microsoft or a consulting company or a small non-profit, just the people you work with and how they impact that day to day.

Saron:
Yeah, and I feel like, when I think about my experience in the startup world before that, it was not very positive. That’s the thing that, I don’t know if people really know this. When we talk about the tech industry, in my experience, there’s the startup industry and the developer industry. They’ve been very different for me. I think it also kind of helps that I’m a Ruby developer and the Ruby community’s general known for being kind and welcoming.

But when I was in startups I felt like I was always worried about coming off a certain way or making sure I was a part of the culture. I spent a lot of time worrying about stuff that wasn’t doing my job. I was worried about, “Oh am I hanging out with these people and are we doing happy hour?” I was worried about all this crap that should never matter on the job.

Once I became a developer and the three organizations I worked with, I felt like I was finally free to just be myself and just focus on being a really solid employee and not have to worry about all this other crap. For that I’m just so grateful to those people for making that type of environment.

Laurence:
Wow, that’s so awesome. I feel like I’m sure there’s listeners, even if they are not at a startup, I feel that they can relate to, I don’t want to call it office drama or politics or whatever, I know what you mean. Like, “Do I go to happy hour, do I go to so and so’s birthday party.” Like these different kinds of things that don’t really relate to your job but they sort of do.

Saron:
Yeah, it’s unfortunate but the reality is how your coworkers feel about you does impact the work that you do and whether you get picked. It can be so high school so easily. It can so easily turn into, “Oh I like you so I’m going to bring you to a really important meeting,” or all of a sudden you are managing an account that you had never managed before. It can very easily become just a game of, “Do I like you and do you fit in?” And it can very easily not be that. It can become just, “Are you good enough to be at this meeting?” Or “Am I the kind of boss, the kind of manager who’s going to push you and nudge you when I feel like you aren’t doing as well as you could? And I’m going to encourage you and try to bring out the best in you.”

How well you do on the job I think is so dependent on the tone and the way decisions are made. When those decisions are made for very stupid reasons like “Do I like you?” It’s incredibly painful and very frustrating. And when those decisions are made based on your actual potential, assuming that’s even measurable, and how hard you work, I think things are better for everyone.

Laurence:
Yeah, awesome points. As you’re speaking I’m like, ‘I have to ask this, I have to ask this.’ When you were interviewing, when you were deciding where to work for any of those 3 positions after you finished Flatiron School, were you thinking about that as you were making a decision? Were you thinking of the environment, like which would be the best for you, most conducive and where it would be more merit-based rather than the “I like you” or whatever you want to call it, high school.

Saron:
Yeah, I feel like I was very naive. In my world, I’m an immigrant, I come from a family of immigrants. Growing up, my mentality has always been like I’m so lucky and so grateful to be in this country and have all the opportunities that frankly my parents have given me, like I haven’t really earned half this crap. I feel so fortunate and I feel like it is my responsibility to maximize every opportunity that I can possibly get.

I just kind of assumed that everyone had that value system and I assumed that everyone wants to work hard and wants to do well and that you are rewarded for your work and that is totally not true. It’s true in the right places and it’s not true in others. I think that I was very naive to assume that as long as my intentions were good and my effort was good and my work was good and I was dedicated, everything else would kind of fall into place. Sometimes that happened and sometimes it didn’t. When I was looking for jobs, I did try to pay attention to things like, “Is this a place where I can learn? Is this a place where I can grow? Is it a place where the mission...is it something I can get with? Is it something I strongly oppose?”

So I looked at that kind of thing, but looking back there were some pretty, and I talk to my husband about this all the time, there were clearly some big red flags that I chose to ignore because I didn’t understand the repercussions of them. I think that now if I were to look for a job, I would have a much better sense of what to look for and what to pay attention to and what questions to ask. I think back then I wasn’t really aware of the repercussions of those things.

Laurence:
Yeah, wow, that’s so interesting. We’re towards the end of the interview but you’ve just given me such interesting advice. I want to end with you talking about what you’re doing today, talking about CodeNewbie, how you started that, where it’s going. Let’s just like bringing it up to present. I feel like we spent a lot of time, I’m just blown away, so fascinated, I think you gave us so many good insights that people can apply to their own job hunt and their own careers in tech. So yeah, let’s talk about CodeNewbie and all that.

Saron:
Sure, so I’ll do like a brief background. I started CodeNewbie about 3, I think it’s been almost 3 years, 2 ½ years, because I went to a bootcamp and before that I learned to code on my own and the biggest value that I got out of the bootcamp was the community of people. It was just having people every single day that understood all the pain points and understood all the highs and the lows. And we cried when things didn’t work and we high fived when it did and it just made the journey so much more doable and bearable and accessible. It really frustrated me that if you wanted to have that type of community, it was really hard to get that if you weren’t part of a structured environment like a bootcamp where you have to take months off of work and pay thousands of dollars. It didn’t feel like that was a very accessible option.

And I knew that there were tons of people who were learning to code on their own and I thought, if they could just meet each other, things would be a lot better. So I started our first CodeNewbie Twitter chat and it was just using the hashtag #codenewbie and it’s every Wednesday night at 9pm for one hour and I would just tweet out questions and there would be questions like, ‘What are you working on, what language are you excited about, when did you start coding?’ The questions were just really an excuse to get other people talking to each other and they did. I thought it would last maybe a few months but it’s been almost 3 years, we’ve had over 130 Twitter chats at this point and it’s been absolutely incredible to watch people from all over the world share resources and share stories.

One of my favorite ones, a couple weeks ago we had an episode on mental health, a podcast episode on mental health. So we did a Twitter chat themed on that and I was in tears throughout the whole chat because people were offering up so much vulnerability and just beautiful and empowering stories and sharing resources and supporting each other. I learned a lot about my community and I was just so humbled that they felt safe enough to share that type of stuff with all of us. It was absolutely incredible to watch. The Twitter chats are a really great way to start conversations but they’re not a great way to unpack topics and really dive into someone’s story.

My first job out of college was actually working at NPR and there was a period of my life where I thought I was going to be a journalist, well I guess I was a journalist, and so I thought a podcast was a really great way to unpack things. We started the CodeNewbie podcast and the idea was to interview people at all different skill levels and to hear about the human side of tech. There are lots of tech podcasts out there that are very technical, which makes sense because they’re tech podcasts. But there weren’t a lot of options for just hearing stories and hearing the how and the why and the what.

So we’ve had folks on who just started coding, who just got their first apprenticeship or just graduated from a program. Then we’ve had really awesome people like Yehuda Katz who created Ember who told just a beautiful story about how he grew up technically knowing how to code for many years but just never believed in himself and never saw himself as a developer until I think his mid-20s. He talked about having to pick between eating lunch that day or taking the bus because otherwise he’d have to walk for an hour to get home. Just like these really incredible human stories of people at different levels who at the end of the day just want to do really cool stuff and want to build great products for people.

That’s been one of the things I’m absolutely the most proud of. We’ve done 108 episodes as of today. So a couple months ago I decided to quit my job at Microsoft and focus on CodeNewbie full-time. Which is awesome and terrifying. So that’s what I’ve been up to and this April 21 and 22, we’re actually going to do our very first CodeNewbie conference called CodeLand.

Laurence:
Oh my gosh, wow. Where is it going to be?

Saron:
It’ll be in New York City, so you are totally invited, I hope you’re able to make it. And it’s hosted at Microsoft, which worked out really well. I’m really glad I used to work there.

Laurence:
Right, building connections, keeping connections, nurturing them. That’s awesome. I feel like I could talk to you for hours Saron, so fascinating, so interesting. I love how you’re combining the journalism with tech and you’re doing the CodeNewbie podcast and, as you said, bringing on the human side of things and it seems like such a good fit for you. It sounds like you’ve had great career experiences and everything before this was also a good fit. The podcast, that’s just so awesome.

Saron:
Thank you. Yeah, I was talking to my husband the other day and I feel like with CodeNewbie I get to do, I get to pull from everything I’ve done before. Before I decided to do this I was always kind of concerned I had wasted my time with a particular skill that was never going to be used again, whether that was coding or design or journalism or whatever that was and I feel like between the podcast and the conference and we have meetups in a bunch of cities and we’re still doing the Twitter chat, I feel like I really do get to pull from all the different experiences and the lessons that I’ve learned into creating a really positive experience for people learning to code.

Laurence:
So amazing. So awesome. You rock. Tell people where they can find you online.

Saron:
Sure. You can follow me on Twitter @saronyitbarek, my first name and my last name. And I actually have a vlog that I do which my mother hates, so that means it’s really good. She’s like, “Are you sure you should be making all of that public?” I’m like, “It’s fine, it’s totally not embarrassing you at all.” It’s funny because we had a DC CodeNewbie meetup recently and somebody came up to me and he’s like, “I listened to your podcast and then I watched your vlog and I can’t believe it’s the same person.” Because I’m just an idiot on video. So if you’re curious about what I’m like in my real life, you’re welcome to check that out. Just search my full name, Saron Yitbarek, on YouTube, you’ll be able to find that. And I’d love for you to listen to the CodeNewbie podcast if you go to codenewbie.org you’ll see our podcast and all that. Hopefully we’ll have tickets available soon for CodeLand, our first conference, so keep a look out for that and you can follow us on Twitter@codenewbies.

Laurence:
Awesome, thanks so much.

Saron:
No problem, thanks for having me.

Laurence:
I hope you enjoyed my conversation with Saron. Again, the Show Notes for this episode, plus a full transcript, can be found at learntocodewith.me/podcast. If you’re listening to this episode in the future, simply click the search icon in the upper navigation of the website and type in Saron’s name. The episode should appear at the top. If you enjoyed this episode, make sure you sign up for my 10 Free Learn to Code Tips. You can find them right at learntocodewith.me. Thanks so much for tuning in and I’ll see you next week!

SPECIAL THANKS TO THIS EPISODE’S SPONSOR
Fullstack Academy: If you’re looking for a coding bootcamp that will prepare you for your dream tech job at a top tier company, sign up for Fullstack Academy’s bootcamp prep course today. Don’t forget to enter the code learnwithme for a $500 scholarship offered to Learn to Code With Me listeners.

Key takeaways:

  • Be serious about your preparation for bootcamp. Make sure you know what you’re getting into and that you’re ready to make the most of every opportunity.
  • A bootcamp is intense, expensive, and time consuming. Sit in the front of the class, ask questions, and get your money’s worth.
  • Coding is not always the hardest part of a job. It’s deciding what to code, when to code, and how to know if you’re coding the right thing.
  • Recognize the gap between your passion for creating and your ability to do it right. Look at each coding opportunity as a growing experience that will move you closer to your goal.
  • The good news is that in tech, everyone has to keep learning, not just the beginners. There will always be new updates and new features. It levels the playing field for people who are just starting out.
  • When you’re looking for a job, think about what the job can do for you. Is it a place you can learn and grow?
  • What matters most is the environment in which you will be working. Your team will keep you going when things are hard. It should give you the support you need to focus on your job and succeed.
  • Finding a community of people to understand what you’re going through is important. Having people who understand all the highs and lows of coding will make your journey one you can enjoy.

Links and mentions from the episode:

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Special thanks to this episode’s sponsor

Fullstack Academy: If you’re looking for a coding bootcamp that will prepare you for your dream tech job at a top tier company, sign up for Fullstack Academy’s bootcamp prep course today. Don’t forget to enter the code learnwithme for a $500 scholarship offered to Learn to Code With Me listeners.