Engineering

Albrey Brown, is a Berkeley native who does not take ‘No’ for an answer. He was rejected on his first attempt to becoming a Hack Reactor graduate and went on to become a founder of Telegraph Academy. Most importantly, he found a love for teaching and is an educator that has completely changed the career trajectories for hundreds of students. Although he never graduated from college, he always knew that he was going to be a teacher. He grew up in a single family home where his mom raised him to become the man who he is today.

Key Points:
1. When you’re learning a new skill, it’s good to have resources (see below), but try to find someone to double check if you’re doing the steps “correctly”

2. Bootcamps need to be more accessible and there are resources like Telegraph Prep and Climb that are working to democratize this form of education

3. You’re always going to find another bug (another hill to climb, a new thing to conquer) so don’t be afraid of that. Take risks.

4. Mentorship comes through various channels. If someone invests time into helping you, the best thing that you can do is succeed.

SHOW NOTES (FOCUS ON THE  STEPPING STONES):
[1:12] – Albrey grew up in Berkeley, CA in a single family home with his mother and his aunt. He had no idea of what a startup was.

[3:15] Albrey’s mother got diagnosed with Cancer during his sophomore year and he took a couple of years off after he graduated high school (never graduated college)

 [5:32] Beginner Resources – What resources did you use to learn how to code? First, a mentor. Then, he started with The Odin Project and Learn Ruby the Hard Way

[6:35] What was your motivation to learning how to code?

[10:47] What led you to choose Hack Reactor instead of all the other bootcamps?

[11:52] How did you do with Hack Reactor’s Interview Process?

[15:10] Don’t let money stop you from acquiring a new skill – How did you pay for your tuition ($18,000)? When he passed his interview and got accepted into Hack Reactor he needed to figure out how to pay tuition. He had no more money and used a crowdfunding platform called GoFundMe to raise $18,000 in 30 days

[18:19] Tell us more about the Bootcamp Model as a new model for education

[19:06] What makes Telegraph Academy different from all of the other Bootcamps?

 [21:40] Take a Bootcamp Preparation Program if you are starting from scratch and need someone to guide you  

[22:22] What financing packages are available at Telegraph Academy? 

[24:58] What are some of the outcomes for Telegraph Academy?

[26:17] What do the demographics look like at Telegraph Academy? 

[29:00] How did you put this all together? He is a big advocate of taking the road less traveled. 

[30:40] What do you have planned for the future? Thoughts on education in general? 

[33:37] The Lightning Round
1. How would you get back to this point in your career if you were dropped into a new city with only $100? (assuming your food and shelter is taken care of)

Albrey: Become a Lyft or Uber Driver to get a car (here’s the Uber option), make money, learn about your city, and meet people

2. When you ran into roadblocks or struggles, was there any piece of music or a movie that you watched that helped you get over that situation?

Albrey: Always Be Closing by Glengarry Glen Ross

3. Looking back, what is one piece of advice that you would give to someone now that you’ve been through this journey?

Albrey: The best resource that you can have is a mentor

4. Have you been able to speak with anyone that Sponsored your GoFundMe now that you have executed on your promise to start a school?
Yes; His cousin Brian Tippens, who never told him what he did when he originally contributed. Now that Albrey reconnected with him after the launch of Telegraph Academy, he just realized Brian is the Head of Diversity

#1: Albrey Brown - Self-taught Engineer who founded Telegraph Academy to teach people how to code.

Edgar Pabon is a New York-native who, prior to his current position as a software engineer at Amazon Music, was a rapper, a communications degree graduate, and an active duty military. 

He knew that being a software engineer is what he has always wanted to be doing that even during his military years he never stopped learning about the tech industry. Edgar’s journey was not an easy one, having experienced police brutality, undergoing rigorous military training, dealing with the impostor syndrome, and overcoming rejections. Yet through it all, his passion for tech was what has always kept his fire burning.

#16: Edgar Pabon - Army Captain who became an Engineer at Amazon Music

Kush Patel is the Founder of App Academy, which is considered to be the MIT of coding bootcamps. Prior to breaking into startup, Kush previously worked at hedge funds until he finally decided to pursue his passion for learning how to code through and joined the first coding class of Dev Bootcamp. 

Seeing the huge gap between the amount of software engineers produced each year and the amount of software engineers needed in Silicon Valley and through the US, Kush, alongside co-founder Ned Ruggeri, saw great opportunity in the bootcamp space, thus the birth of App Academy.

#15: Kush Patel - Founder of App Academy

Haseeb Qureshi is a Texas-native who dominated the poker world and decided to pursue his dream of becoming a software engineer. He started playing poker at 16 years old and was able to turn $50 to $100,000. He eventually became one of the world’s best no-limit hold-em poker players at 19 but he was not fulfilled. So, Haseeb left the poker world and decided to start over from scratch by giving all of his money away. After hearing about coding bootcamps from a friend, he decided to break into tech and join App Academy. Haseeb learned quickly, became an instructor after two months, and eventually became the Head of Product. He really wanted to work as a software engineer and his recruiting process was tough. On this interview he shares how he got his position at Airbnb by applying lessons from poker and proving that with confidence, deliberate practice, negotiating skills, and an altruistic heart, you can always rise above any challenges you meet along the way.

Key Points:
1. When you’re trying to learn something,you need to give yourself feedback when you make a mistake. This is the idea of deliberate practice. Try to find the smallest possible thing that could be critiqued and then get feedback on it and then try to iterate on it.

2. The biggest difference between boot camps is not the curriculum, the teachers, or the network. The biggest difference is your peers and the rate of intensity with which you’re going to be learning around them.
3. When facing rejections, remember that you have no control over things no matter how good you are. Also, pain is transient. You might feel awful today but you will feel better the next day and the next, until you can barely even remember. Besides, people can’t say no forever.
Consider plugging into your network for job search referrals throughinformational interviewing. Reach out to anyone in your network, sit down with them, ask them about their company and experience, and get referrals.
4. A large part about negotiation is power. Be mindful of it, where it comes from, and how to maintain it. Have leverage in your negotiations by having the ability to not accept it because you have another offer. Interviewers can’t read your mind. It’s not a zero-sum game.


SHOW NOTES (FOCUS ON THE  STEPPING STONES):
[1:33] Growing up in Dallas, Texas 
[2:47] Starting to play poker at the age of 16 with $50 
[11:51] Advice on picking a bootcamp – The biggest difference between great bootcamps and a not-so-great bootcamps: Peers + Rate & Intensity level (with which you’re going to be learning around them)
 [19:12] Deliberate Practice – Haseeb’s secret sauce for being world-class in poker and his boot camp journey (Feedback mechanism is key!) – Working on Codewars, massive practice, going back over and over to fix mistakes, and understanding the pattern
[27:42] Dealing with self-doubt: Haseeb doubted his vision of the world and this picture of himself being somebody who could just walk into an interview and nail it and have all these offers
[28:31] How to deal with rejections:
You have absolutely no control. No matter how great you are, no matter if you’re the best player in the world, there’s always a chance that you’ll lose.
Any pain is transient. What you feel today will be softer the next morning and the next.
Keep going. People can’t say no forever.
[35:05] Haseeb’s approach to the negotiation process
 [37:57] Overcoming recruiter tactics that take away your leverage during negotiation:
 [39:41] Exploding Offers – What are they? How do you deal with these?
[45:56] How to prepare for interviews

#4: Haseeb Qureshi - Professional Poker Player turned Software Engineer

Shawn Drost is the Co-Founder of Hack Reactor, a coding bootcamp founded in 2012 along with his college friends Tony Phillips, Marcus Phillips, and Douglas Calhoun with the primary motive to set people up for success as software engineers. 

They envision themselves transforming higher education to be more transparent, accessible and outcomes-driven. 

Hack Reactor’s community involvement is remarkable as they continue to offer curriculum, volunteer support and training to their nonprofit partners in their conscious effort to bridge the gap between underserved communities and the tech industry.

#12: Shawn Drost - Founder of Hack Reactor

After excelling at Goldman Sachs and top venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, Preethi Kasireddy decided she wanted to leave “the best job in the world” to become a software engineer. 

In her blog post called Why I Left the Best Job in the World, she talks about why she left VC to join Hack Reactor in order to learn how to code. In this episode Preethi shares what motivated her to leave finance for tech, her incredible work ethic, her 5 am workout schedule, and the lessons she learned on her journey to becoming a software engineer.

#18: Preethi Kasireddy - How Investment Banker & a VC quit her job to became a Software Engineer

Transitioning from arts to engineering was not a smooth ride for Matt Brooks, but he never allowed obstacles to get in the way because he was willing to embrace failures. 

Matt started out as a fine arts major and was doing woodwork until one day, something grabbed his attention to engineering and gave it a try. He started to learn coding, initially gave up, went back to try it another time, and got rejected at the bootcamp the first time. 

His job search experience wasn’t an easy one either. But persistence was the key theme for Matt. He kept going and going and sought the guidance of a mentor until he finally found his place working as a software engineer at OpenTable.

#19: Matthew Dean Brooks - An Artist who became a Software Engineer

Rodney Urquhart grew up in a North Philly neighborhood ridden with gang violence and effects of the crack epidemic. After seeing people around him get involved with gangs and crime, he realized that staying in high school would result in getting arrested or shot. 

At 16, Rodney dropped out of high school and moved in with his grand mother. Being a high school dropout and having no college degree, Rodney had his fair share of companies casting doubt on his ability. But his willingness to learn and work well with others was what got him to create an impressive company portfolio including Comcast, Microsoft’s Yammer, and ThoughtWorks. He didn’t just want to survive, he wanted to thrive. 

Rodney currently heads the test infrastructure team at Slack. He is also part of a program called /dev/color, a non-profit organization that aims to maximize the impact of Black software engineers in the tech space.

#28: Rodney Urquhart - How a 16-year-old High School Dropout became a Software Engineer at Slack

A New Jersey-native, Charlie Harrington believes that you can’t find luck unless you take that courage to jump off the train and put yourself out there. 

From New York to London, Charlie transitioned from finance to business development at a startup. As if breaking into startups via the non-technical route wasn’t enough to quench his thirst for creativity, Charlie ultimately took a deep dive into software engineering by attending a coding bootcamp called Hack Reactor. 

Charlie currently works at LendUp as a software engineer but it was through a chance encounter that eventually got him the job.

#29: Charlie Harrington - From Finance to Biz Dev before finally becoming an Engineer at LendUp

For Michael Jay Walker, his career was more likely driven by the motivation to do what people thought he couldn't do, fearlessly working his way up the marketing ladder until a decision to take a passionate leap into the tech space. 

Michael got his MBA at Ross School of Business and took on executive marketing roles for large corporations such as Ford Motor Company, Kraft Foods, PepsiCo, EA, and Mattel.  

25 years later, he went out to co-found a mobile app startup and served as a Chief Marketing Officer and Operations Officer at a few other tech companies. He then decided to learn how to code at Dev Bootcamp until he was later asked to join the team as a Chief Academic Officer and Campus Director in San Francisco.

#34: Michael J Walker - How a Marketing Exec Became an Engineer at 51 Years Old

Realizing the need for a more rigorous and accelerated curriculum for software engineers, Nimit Maru founded Fullstack Academy. He also founded its sister school, the Grace Hopper Program, which is the world's first tuition-deferred coding academy for women. 

Prior to Fullstack Academy, Nimit and his co-founder, David Yang, graduated from Y Combinator. He also worked as a software engineer at Yahoo! and got his business degree from Wharton. Aside from seeing how the tech scene in the Bay Area and in New York differ from each other, Nimit has also seen how much coding bootcamps have gained credibility and recognition (especially among large tech companies) over the years.

#38: Nimit Maru - Founder of Fullstack Academy & Grace Hopper

The Breaking Into Startups Podcast is a platform where we feature stories of people who broke into tech from non-traditional backgrounds. Curious about how startups work, how to get a job without a degree or what technical and non-technical careers are out there? We have news for you - tech fields are booming and you don’t need the best technical degree in information technology to break in and get a six figure job in technology. 

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Our guests attended coding bootcamps and immersive programs like Hack Reactor, App Academy, General Assembly, Dev Bootcamp, Flatiron School, Iron Yard, Tradecraft and more. After graduating they found well paying jobs in big time startups focusing on education, medicine, financial services, healthcare, AI, machine learning, automation, sharing economy and more. If you listen to 500 Startups, Learn to Code With Me, Twenty Minute VC, This Week In Startups, Startup Radio, Startup Podcast, The Tim Ferris show, Startup School Radio, Course Report or other tech stuff news, then this podcast is for you my friend.