Hi Joana and thank you for your time!
Before Le Wagon, you used to 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.
And then, why did you choose to join Le Wagon in the first place?
I was learning how to code at home when my godfather (also a Le Wagon alumni) 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
web development course as an opportunity to speed up my career change. And I couldn’t be more grateful!
How was your bootcamp experience?
I can honestly say that it was so amazing that one day I would like to do it again. It’s such a
friendly, fun but
fast-paced learning environment!
Every morning we had Emily, our amazing Batch Manager, 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.
After the course, you got hired at Landing.Jobs as a full-stack developer. How were your first tech days?
Great! I was welcomed with open arms by a truly amazing team. I will always cherish my first months as a developer.
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 tell me more”. You have more of a feeling of team and less of competition. 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.
