Introductions!

Hello!

My name is Jack, I am a 27 year old former New Homes officer who used to work in Housing Development and who, as of last week, has now jumped head first into a coding bootcamp and into the sweet embrace of unemployment (for now)!

What a time to be alive! If you had asked me last year where I would be in 2021, this is not what I would have said I’d be doing.

So my background, as I mentioned, was in Housing Development. It is a career I got straight out of university back in 2018. I studied Social Anthropology at uni so, short of building my own PC (which is pretty much a big jigsaw puzzle), my tech skills were never really strong and I always thought I’d never be any good at coding — too sciency for me.

My uncle had been harassing me for years trying to get me into tech, telling me how lucrative it is, how satisfying it would be and how I’d really enjoy it. Of course I shrugged it off and claimed that I’d be no good at it.

Then COVID-19 hit and the world was thrown into a panic. My role, which normally had me travelling around London most days, was put on furlough and then remote working only. This gave me a lot of time to think about my career, where I am in life and what it is I want out of it and as fun as my job was some days, it wasn’t bringing me satisfaction. After a few months of thinking I decided to give coding a go, I first tried my hand with Python on Codecademy and actually found that I really enjoyed it. It was super challenging and I really enjoyed solving a problem I’d be stuck on for hours. I realised that this is all I want from a career, to be challenged.

Fast forward a few months of researching bootcamps and here I am! Week two of the pre-course. Beginning the first steps of my new career! It’s scary, but I’m determined to dive in head first. I look forward to seeing how this plays out.