What’s the “Right” Experience to be a Career Changer and Learn to Code?

Do you feel like you don’t have the right kind of experience to become a software developer?

Then you need to meet Joe Klause.

Before attending Alchemy, Joe earned an arts degree from the New England School of Music, was a professional trumpet player, and also spent five years running an ice cream sandwich business. He had an exciting, eclectic career but he was also regularly working 12-14 hour days and still not making enough money.

"I realized I needed to do something else from a financial standpoint. I wanted to feel more stable.”

So how did you choose Alchemy, out of all the options?

“I ended up having this conversation with the husband of a musician friend of mine, who is a manager at Nike. He asked what I enjoyed about my work. For me it was all about managing and developing more efficient processes to run the [ice cream sandwich] store."

Do you think Alchemy prepares people with the tools necessary to jump into their first software development roles?

"Yes. After graduating from Alchemy Marty [Alchemy’s CEO] worked with me as a mentor, and I was basically developing an app by myself. I built two-thirds of that—writing components and a full stack app—before I left for my next job."

"When I moved into Sprinklr, I became the lead developer because I was able to leverage the skillsets of working alone by myself. I had a concept of architecture and the large scope of a code base because I'd created one essentially.”

“I also got to hire two people recently. And I interview people from all different code programs and backgrounds. The thing that I noticed about the Alchemy grads that I interviewed - they kind of go narrow and deep. They know the thing that we are hiring for. The narrow and deep thing is what gets you hired.”

“It's great to have a breadth of knowledge, but the actual tasks that you're assigned to do require depth of knowledge in one direction.”