Holberton School & the Three Engineers, Part 1: The Novice
This is an ongoing series of interviews with Holberton students sharing their journey through the program. Holberton students come from many different backgrounds. These interviews are an inside look at each student’s unique journey into software engineering.
Dora: The Novice, Could This Be For Real?
A graduate from a typical four year university with a degree in biology, Dora came to the realization that she no longer wanted to pursue a career in her field. Dora chose to cut her losses, and dive into learning how to code. The bet she made on herself has paid off in a big way, landing a full time software engineering position with Scality.
Q: What were the different options you had after you graduated?
Dora: TJ’s was the first job that sprang up and I just kept it because it was convenient because I didn’t really know what I wanted to do. The idea of going to grad school crossed my mind, or even doing another undergrad but it’s just way too much money that I didn’t have. I was fortunate enough to come out of undergrad without any debt and I didn’t want to take any on. It took something like Holberton to help me narrow down my options.
Q: Tell me how you heard about Holberton School.
Dora: My friend was having a party and I started talking to this guy that I haven’t seen in years. I asked him what he’s doing now and he said ‘I work at Apple’. I thought he meant in retail… This guy was a philosophy and German double major how did [he] start coding? He told me he learned through online bootcamps. I didn’t even know you could do that! The next day I updated my phone, downloaded the news app and actually saw an article about Holberton School.
Q: Tell me about the application process.
Dora: I started getting positive feedback from Julien and Sylvain and I was like woah, this is amazing. I got to the third round; the interview process, and it just so happened I was going to be in San Francisco for Thanksgiving, so I did an onsite interview at the school before anything was set up which was really nice to be able to see the space and everything. They asked me all types of questions like ‘why do you want to be a software engineer’.
Q: Walk me through the realization of being accepted and actually moving here.
Dora: I think it took about two weeks of me actually being here for it to set in that this is actually now my life. It did not sink in at all while I was in Minnesota still preparing. My friends all thought I was doing something crazy, but my family was really supportive. Then, about a week before school was about to start I packed everything in my car and headed out here [San Francisco].
Q: When was your ah-ha moment, when did you know you had made the right decision with Holberton?
Dora: I remember feeling super accomplished after our hexadecimal table project … since it was more of a logical or algorithmic problem we had to figure out, just gradually building on all of that – I think the pace was good for me. I would struggle just enough but be able to break through and figure it out.
Q: Why do you think Holberton is successful in training quality software engineers?
Dora: I think the project based learning style is for me… and apparently other people. It’s so much more efficient than sitting through a lecture. The peer learning obviously is huge. Being able to explain something to somebody is one of the best markers that you actually know it and being able to do that on a regular basis is great practice. The mentors are invaluable and it’s great to get to interact with people who are actually in the industry. Holberton is very reflective of the industry itself; all of that is how you’re going to really be working.
Q: Tell me about what you’re doing in your role at Scality?
Dora: We do large scale data storage and I work on the software engineering team. I work on integrating different clouds to communicate with the API. I’m working to match Zenko (Scality’s open source project) to the backend of the cloud.