Rafael Coomonte is an impressive guy. He’s a Doctor in Philosophy and he’s got a PhD in telecom engineering, but decided to turn his professional career completely around. For us, it’s been an absolute pleasure to have him as a student and we’re honored that he gave us a few spare minutes from his very busy schedule to answer a few questions about his Ironhack experience. When and why did you decide to join Ironhack? I’ve had several boring and discouraging moments in my evolution as a developer. I tried learning to code on my own and concluded that it was impossible, but I knew it was something I wanted to do. When it comes to dealing with a project, one thing is knowing what you want to do and the other is actually implementing it . I was missing the former. I first heard of Ironhack when it was only getting started, and I went to its very first Hackshow. I knew from that moment that this was the option I’d been looking for to complete my education. Last year, I realized it was the right time. I was professionally stagnant and was looking for options that only made me look for more attractive alternatives. With my second child on the way, it seemed impossible to wait another minute for the next opportunity. I had to make a lot of changes, because it wasn't compatible with my job at the time, but I’m confident today that all of it happened for the better. With regard to the bootcamp , could you tell us a little bit about: A problem you had and were able to resolve My poor old laptop was giving me issues during the pre-work and I was afraid I would lose it in the middle of the course. The weekend before the course began, I had to format and clean it out the best I could and luckily it was able to handle all the work it had to do. In the field of programming, your work tool is fundamental and it must be very well taken care of. I later had a number of personal problems that caused me to miss a couple of classes, but with the help of the Teaching Assistants and my classmates, I was able to catch up on all the coursework as soon as I was back. A personal achievement Breaking that wall that was impeding me from reaching full coding competency, which was my main objective when joining Ironhack. After that, my final project was a true test of my progress and I was extremely proud of it. But above all, knowing that I could actually develop projects from scratch, all while understanding what I’m doing, how I need to do it, and what tools I need to use to work more efficiently. A fun anecdote After the first six weeks of learning in class, it was time to fully commit to the final project, and those remaining two weeks were a huge experience in and of themselves. There were lots of times when my classmates and I discussed our project ideas for hours. There was even a Sunday when we all came in to work at the Think offices. Imagine Madrid in August on a Sunday: all of us were scattered around campus. There were even people who came in to work on the Sunday before the Hackshow just to be fully ready. All the hard work was worth it in the end, especially because it paved the way for meeting people with the same concerns and different points of view that helped you grow and learn. Your biggest lesson For me, the biggest step was learning the technical terminology and knowing how to use them such as Ruby, Ruby on Rails, names of different databases, frameworks, and libraries, but I didn’t quite know how to use them or how to connect all the dots. This is what I needed in order to have a solid foundation from which to grow, and it’s exactly what I found. Practicing the languages throughout the course helped me improve my own foundation and better understand how to use all the terminology. Now that you’ve graduated from Ironhack, would you recommend it to anyone? In my opinion, the problem that Ironhack tackles in the educational field is something that other bootcamps have tried to solve as well. Technology careers place a heavy emphasis on management and have left little room for the area that is really important today: t he technical side . In my case, it was the area that I needed to improve upon most. The reassurance of always having help when you need it combined with the simple tools used to improve communication was reflective of the Ironhack staff’s desire to continue growing and create an unparalleled experience for all its students. As students, we adopt these lessons and it adds immense value to our entire learning experience in the bootcamp. I take with me the people I met and the global experience of two very intense months. Once you reach your goal, so many things have happened since the that the beginning seems much further away. What kind of professional opportunities did you have after graduating from Ironhack? During our Hiring Week (the last week of the bootcamp), I was hoping to land something within a startup and luckily I found Diego Soro’s project, Fundera . He gave me the opportunity to be a part of it and even though I’m not coding every day, I’m still deeply involved in the platform’s expansion. I’m learning a lot from the technical team about new languages and tools, and what the reality of a web application is like once designed and launched. I’ve been working on my own projects on the side, which has helped me continue growing and learning. Any advice for the new generation of Ironhackers? Take full advantage of the opportunities that the bootcamp gives you access the tech community. Meet people and go to all the events, meetups, and conferences for developers they tell you about. The community is very engaging, not only in terms of employment (there are plenty of opportunities every day), but also in spreading awareness attracting people to learn more about the tech world. Learning is ever evolving, and you won’t become a coding jedi in two months, but the combination of the Ironhack experience and the quality of the resources available today is more than enough to get you there.

In 2017, I graduated from Business School with a master's in Marketing. My first job was as an e-commerce manager for a small French shoe brand; I then decided to continue as an e-learning and mobile learning project manager for luxury brands. I liked creating solutions, apps or websites; however, after giving these to the brands I was not able to track how the users were interacting with it, if they were using it at all, and what improvements could be made. Just being able to manage designers and developers wasn’t enough and I wanted to go further and create while directly being related to the user . I became more and more interested in UX design. The methodology helped me ask good questions and create better experiences with the user in mind. I started learning about it while doing my job (which I ultimately quit), becoming part of a world that was the perfect combination of design and creativity. It was a pretty big gamble for me, but when I decided to start this new life, I was in a slump. I wasn’t really happy with my career choices and I was feeling like all I did wasn’t really my choice. When I started learning, I was in control and ready to change my life. The Start of my Journey I started learning online, following courses on websites such as Coursera , Skillshare , OpenClassrooms (French), by watching videos on YouTube , by reading books, articles on Medium , listening to Podcasts and following UX/UI designers and product people on LinkedIn (Yes, it’s a lot but when I am interested about something I always go to extreme lengths). While reading, watching and listening about it, I had to put it to the test, thus I started prototyping some stuff. My first project was a website redesign for the shoe brand I worked for. I used Adobe XD and since it was free and easy to use, I kept at it for a while. Then I did the Daily UI Challenge and posted what I did on my Instagram page . Finally I had to meet real people, ask about their lives, and get some tips; I attended several talks in Paris. I ultimately did a Hackathon for a wellness UX/UI project. I teamed up with a UI designer and created my first project as a UX designer: Santeo , a health record app allowing you to group all your information about health and easily share them with doctors. This project was a success and an accomplishment for me; I really felt like I found my way. The Extra Push: Ironhack Learning by myself wasn’t enough to get a job and I ended up doing Ironhack’s UX/UI design bootcamp to practice and learn how a designer thinks: basically everything I couldn’t learn alone. Ironhack was intense, hard, professional and all about “making” rather than only “learning.” The bootcamp was divided in two parts: the first was about UX and the second about UI. During those 2.5 months, we had to do 3 projects , 2 personal projects and 1 project that a real company gave us. For each project we started with the UX part, doing interviews, analyzing data, brainstorming and coming up with solutions, and then the UI part. Maison Plisson App Design (A UI Case): Following the UX case for Maison Plisson which you can find here, I continued with the UI design of the project.medium.com Grow - The meditation App (A UI Design Case) Grow is a meditation app project for the person whom wish to practice meditation on a daily basis but cannot create a… medium.com Back Market - When reselling your dusty old phones is as simple as sending an email (A UX/UI case) How I redesigned a service with both online and offline actions to make it simpler, more transparent and friendlier. medium.com I liked Ironhack’s intensity and it helped me continue learning more. At the end of every project, we had to present it to the class as if we were presenting it to clients. But there is one thing which must not be forgotten: Ironhack is not going to get you a new job if you don’t get the work done. While doing the bootcamp, I continued reading, finding inspiration, learning from people I was following on Twitter, LinkedIn, Dribbble, Behance, and meeting product people. Those are the steps required if you truly want something and it worked for me. After Ironhack At the end of Ironhack's bootcamp, I completed my portfolio and started looking for my first job: Jacques Trouillet on Behance However something strange happened to me. For the first time, people on LinkedIn would come to me for a job even before I would apply to anything. Then, people from Adobe asked to me if I wanted to do a live video on their YouTube channel about the project Santeo. Me! A guy with no experience as a UX/UI designer would go to Adobe and talk about his project. Wow! 2 weeks after the bootcamp ended, I got a job as a UX/UI designer, the first job in which I thought: Wow… 6 months before I was lost, trying to find a job with meaning and creativity, and today I love what I am doing and love the constant feeling of learning. Here's what I wish I knew before the bootcamp: Start online, read, watch, listen, Coursera, Skillshare, OpenClassrooms (French), YouTube, Medium, Podcasts etc… Go to UX/UI/Products/any events. This might be the trickiest part if you don’t live in a big city or if are shy. This is the best way to get a return on your investment and network. Talk to as many UX/UI designers as possible. I have never met a community so great and happy to give advices to people willing to learn (use LinkedIn or Slack channels specialized in the domain). Make, Make, MAKE! Copy, try, create, and fail fast but the more you make, the more you will learn. Show, show, SHOW! Instagram, Behance, Linkedin, Dribbble: there are so many ways to show your work and get feedback from the community. Create a portfolio even before Ironhack ends (not easy)! if you aspire to get a job, it's a way for you to show what you did, your vision, your creativity, and it is also a great help when going to interviews. Thank you! I hope this article helped you. Today, I am still amazed by how much people are willing to do to help me. And I think it is because I have finally found my way. I hope you will too!

Anais walked into Ironhack with a background in international relations, food service and a whole lot of traveling. Her serious case of wanderlust led her to pursue a career that would allow her to work from anywhere in the world, so she decided to become a developer. Anais is a Miami Beach native and an advocate for fashion and sustainability. She told us a few things about her memorable Ironhack experience. When and why did you decide to join Ironhack? I decided to join Ironhack by chance. I knew I wanted to learn to code, but it just always felt like I didn’t have time to commit to a bootcamp. Then one day an opportunity sort of fell through, and I found myself with money saved and an indefinite amount of free time. I realized, if I don’t do it now, I will never do it. So, that was it! What was the best part of your bootcamp experience? The people. The community that Ironhack creates was the best part. Really, there are tons of great things about it – the teaching, the feeling of accomplishment when the final project finally comes together, the patience and support the instructors constantly provide, all the fun activities we did aside from coding, but none of it would have been the same without the rest of the cohort. I made some pretty incredible friendships and met some really cool people. All of us still keep in touch, and we all know that we are part of Ironhack forever. That was by far the best part of my experience. Could you tell us a little bit about your web app? I am a bit obsessed with fashion, but I am also extremely conscious of the power that my choices have. I wanted to create a way for people to find brands that were environmentally and ethically sustainable, and I also wanted to make it easy to figure out where you could shop for these brands near you. I ended up creating a web app that curated ethically and sustainably made clothing, including the brands that manufactured them and the stores that sold them near you. The final project was a lot of fun to work on, it’s the part in the bootcamp where all the elements you’ve learned finally come together and you understand how they interact with each other. It’s also the time where you might have a total breakdown because you think you’ll never get it done, but then “AHA!” there you go, after many sleepless nights and obsessing over tiny details you do something you never thought you could, especially two months earlier. It’s a pretty incredible feeling. Most importantly, one of the biggest reason I chose Ironhack is the fact that we get to do our own projects. The process helps you realize what you’re good at, improve at what you’re not good at and figure out what elements of web development you really love! Now that you’ve graduated from Ironhack, would you recommend it to anyone? I absolutely would recommend it to anyone and everyone who wants a comprehensive way to learn to code. I actually suggested to my brother that he join Ironhack, knowing he would find the same fulfillment that I did. He’s now part of an Ironhack cohort, and that makes me so happy. So yes, I would recommend it, even to family! What kind of professional opportunities did you have after graduating from Ironhack? One of the best parts of Ironhack is the amount of support they provide post-cohort. Ironhack helped me find several different opportunities, guided me with interview and resume suggestions, and helped me find a job that I really love and is aligned with what I want to do in life. At the end of the day, that’s a motive for many of us who join Ironhack. We learn new skills because we want to make a change in our careers and our lives. Ironhack really helps us do this, so long as we put in the work, of course. Half of it is just showing up. Any advice for the new generation of Ironhackers? Every single time you think you don’t get it, and you want to just throw your hands up, walk out, and say “forget all of this…” you’re just about there. It wouldn’t be worth it without some of that frustration, and it makes the learning process more meaningful. Aside from advice, I commend anyone for doing something that is worthwhile and will only help you in your future endeavours. You’ve gone ahead and invested your time in something that can only benefit you. So congrats! And finally, for your final projects, if you aren’t quite sure what to work on, my mentor Muhan said something great to me during my decision making process that stuck with me (and is good advice for anything in life). He said, “Anais, when everything goes to hell and breaks, and you feel like the whole project needs to be scrapped, what are you going to stick with and work through? Because that’s the project you should pick”. Thank you for that Muhan! Words I continue to apply to my life and live by when I have a difficult choice to make! If you're ready to launch your tech career, in Miami or anywhere else in the world, check out our Bootcamps and get the keys you need to unlock your future!

Getting out of your comfort zone is no easy thing. It is only after a lot of hesitation and around 50 pros & cons lists that I decided it was time for a career change . Am I Happy? I’m 25 and until earlier this year, my path was pretty straightforward: average student in high school on the scientific path (“science leads to everything,” as most people still believe in France). I chose to study communication and all my high school teachers agreed with that choice: ”you’re always talking in class, so communication seems like a good fit." After an undergraduate degree, a masters degree, internships and my first few jobs, here I am speeding through life in the events industry. Unofficial definition: 5% glamour, 95% burn-out. After 3 years, I started to have some doubts. Do I like this job? Are there more cons than pros? Am I even happy? One thing’s for sure: work is 80% of your week. If you go to work complaining and come back exhausted and insecure, thinking you never want to go to back, then it’s time to leave. And that's exactly what I did. At this point in my life, I really didn’t know what I was going to do. All I knew is I needed something else. So I left everything behind. Learning to code is something I had in the back of my head for a few years. Yet for various reasons, I thought I could never achieve that: I’m a girl and don’t have the “computer science profile” (a common belief which is actually a common mistake), I like tech and innovation but I’m not a geek (a.k.a. I know how to use social media), I suck at math… Anyway, I really didn’t see coding as something I could be successful in. Then I discovered inspiring and powerful communities of women I admire: Girls In Tech , Girls Who Code , Kode with Kloss. I learned that children were being taught how to code because it’s the future and everyone should actually be learning web development. So I thought: "why not me?" I was now convinced I should learn how to code, but wasn’t ready to go back to studying for 5 years at an engineering or computer science school . I had heard about bootcamps: training courses which are intense and short and turn people into web developers. So I went to gather more information. A lot of questions came up: why is it so expensive? What if I don’t like it? What if I suck? What if I don’t get a job afterwards? Regarding the price, it’s actually quite simple: web developers are well-paid. So if you want talented web developers to teach you, you need to pay them a hefty amount. For all the other questions I was asking myself, I couldn't answer them until I actually tried it out. I participated in a workshop organized by Ironhack where they introduced us to HTML and CSS and I knew I loved it immediately! I found it amazing that in 6 hours I was now able to write words and symbols that were incomprehensible by the average person (me 6 hours earlier) and that, once in a browser, these words and symbols became a website. I wanted to learn more. I needed to learn to code. Ironhack Amongst the relatively high number of bootcamps in the Parisian tech ecosystem, my natural choice was to go to Ironhack because they were the ones to taught me to write my first lines of code. Ironhack bootcamps are located 9 cities in Europe and across the globe. The Parisian campus has an amazing and welcoming team, good online reviews (that’s also important), a great space in the center of Paris, a nice vibe and, more importantly, they teach languages and technologies that are up to date with the job market. The importance of choosing the right tech was something I knew nothing about before starting the bootcamp, so it was an amazing surprise for me to see that my post-bootcamp skills matched with 85% of job offers for junior developers. The 9-week bootcamp goes by really, really fast. Classes are in English (Editor’s note: Ironhack now also offers classes in French, but it depends on cohorts) and the teacher was a patient, pedagogical, and resourceful web developer from Miami, the kind of person you meet and you want to listen to for hours. You also get help and support from teaching assistants (TAs) that are often former students of Ironhack (it’s quite nice and reassuring to see that alumni can be good enough to teach what they learned). I was completely lost on my first day. Boom . Maximal difficulty, huge doubts, self-questioning. What am I doing here ? I’ll never make it ! Luckily, I was not alone in that class and peer-support was quickly formed between the Ironhackers, which allowed me to power through these first difficult steps. With perseverance and motivation (my own and my friends’ and family’s), I was able to understand the concepts and get my head above water. Speaking of perseverance, I quickly discovered that 90% of coding is spent solving problems. Boom. Huge Doubts, edition #2 : I hate problems. When it’s too hard, I quit; I have been this way since I was a kid. As far back as I can remember, I never spent too much time trying to solve a math problem or finish a complicated coloring book. That’s where Ironhack and coding taught me many things. I learned to persevere, something I thought I was incapable of until now. I stopped seeing coding as a problem and rather as a game that I am leveling through, bit by bit. At the end of the 9 weeks, 5 of which were spent on concrete projects, no mountain was too high for me to climb. I got out unharmed and grown. Now is the time to leave the not-so-comfortable nest of our classroom and dive into the job market. 15 Companies in 20 Days 15 is the number of companies I met with in the first 20 days after the bootcamp , on the phone, or in their offices. 15 companies, mostly startups, were attracted to my profile and wanted to know more. This was super positive feedback for my first job hunt as a web developer. My search was made easier with platforms like TALENT.IO or YBORDER that connect developers and companies on the job search. Basically, potential employers see your profile on a platform and decide they want to meet with you, which is a simple and easy process. Especially when, like me, you come from an environment with few job offers (aside internships and under-paid, short-term contracts). Web development is not subject to financial and job crises. There are more job offers than there are developers , so you are in a position where you can actually refuse a position which you find isn’t tailored to your needs. Out of these 15 contacts, 7 were followed by a technical test (a must-do step to test your skills) and 3 made me an offer ! For certain technical tests, I was asked to learn new technologies, which was completely doable because the bootcamp taught me how to learn. Being a developer is having a curious mind and using available resources and communities (Google, Stack Overflow, Git, etc.) to keep learning in the long run. The most difficult and systematic question during these interviews was the one where I had to convince the recruiter that yes, after a 9-week bootcamp, I was skilled enough to be hired as a developer. I now feel motivated, thirsty for learning. I want to LIVE code; it’s not “just” a career move anymore, it’s the RIGHT choice, the one that makes me happy and pushes me to improve every day . Exactly 1 month after finishing the bootcamp, I signed my first long-term contract as a Node.js developer , starting in a week. A company is giving me an opportunity and I am motivated and excited like never before. If you choose to remember only one thing from my story, it should be this: you need to believe in yourself and dare to make life-changing decisions. Life is too short to be bored! If you are still doubting that bootcamps and coding are meant for you, I'm the living proof that coding is accessible to anyone and that a short yet intense training is enough if you’re motivated! This blog post was originally posted on Elise’s Medium page. It was translated from French to English by the Ironhack team. If Elise has convinced you that bootcamps could be right for you, feel free to visit our website for more info about the training we offer.

This whole mess started a long time ago. I was only 12 years old and my father, a quite successful computer science engineer, was making a superhuman effort to try to answer my question: why did a single 3.5-inch floppy disk (known back then as a “micro-disk”) could hold as much information as 18 of the larger, decade older, 8-inch predecessors? (A reasonable question that every 12-year-old kid needs have answered to go on about life.) It did not make sense to me how something a quarter as small in size could be in fact be several times larger in data storage capacity. Needless to say, I’ve had a profound love for technology since I was very young. As my current Ironhack teacher and mentor Hector Bliss puts it, “If you have not accidentally deleted your operating system, you really have not lived”. Oh boy, have I lived! Especially when I couldn’t get the household PC to turn on after installing that upgrade everyone said was not needed; I still couldn’t resist trying it out the new graphics and finding out if it made it faster. I’m quite certain that my brother has not forgiven me yet for deleting that school project he had worked on for weeks and was due the following day or my mother’s accounting books that were lost forever. In all fairness, who could have possibly anticipated that a harmless operating system upgrade could go sour? Backups are for losers! Or so I used to believe. On my mother’s side, it had always been about the family’s chemical business; growing up we were expected to lend a hand to my grandfather, one of the founders. Against all odds, I decided to take the advice and go into chemistry instead of tech and coding in college. I was also very lucky to attend what is arguably the best chemistry program in Mexico. The resulting degree was a shiny diploma but, to my astonishment, no job for me at the family business due to internal grudges amongst partners at the time. There I was, unemployed, without a buck in my pocket and, most importantly, unhappy. After holding a couple of jobs elsewhere, my older brother, a chemical salesman, and I decided to start a company in material science based on recycled goods. It started as a way to make a bit more money to cover for rising school tuitions for both his children and my daughter. Noble as the idea of recycling waste is, I admit we both desperately needed the extra income. We identified an opportunity to use recycled plastics and other wastes to create first grade materials for new plastic products that could compete at a lower price compared to the regular rate. As profitable and awesome as it turned out to be, the process of stabilizing the product quality and with it the overall business took a long time, came at high cost, and met inhumane resistance from both competitors and collaborators alike. But we survived, and that resulted in a change in the way these specific materials are manufactured for good — a small but meaningful improvement to the world, which is more than many start-ups can say. The ride has been rewarding! Yet, for me, not entirely fulfilling since I still feel technology calling. Since I left college, I have tried over and over, quite unsuccessfully, to go into tech. Specifically software development, which I find both thrilling and limited only by imagination. Also, I believe that software is the most important and fastest driver to improve many of the world’s problems. Yet the only entry point to this fascinating industry, at least in my mind, was going back to college to study computer science, which does not really guarantee an entrance to the code development industry in these lightning-fast, ever-changing tech industry days. Also, the time and financial investments are considerable, especially if you have a family to support at the same time. After a somewhat lucky search, I learned about this ultra-fast and efficient program called Ironhack, a coding bootcamp designed as a way to close the gap between the tech industry’s need for qualified developers and the people looking at becoming developers. This program promised some ambitious results, including coding a video game at the end of week 2, going from no coding experience to full-stack web developer in a total of 9 weeks, and helping you land a job in the field afterwards. Ironhack, which was listed amongst the best scored programs in most listings, was practically in my backyard being in the city where I lived. It took me half a minute to get in touch with them and sign myself up for the next session. I’m about to finish my web development program at Ironhack Mexico . It has been a rough ride learning an enormous amount of information in an extremely short amount of time along with really talented and competitive individuals. The result has turned out to be fantastic — a ride that resembles more a roller coaster then a college class. Ironically, this also turns out to be the best explanations of why the 3.5-in floppy disk stores many times more data than its larger size predecessor: “intensity.” Just like the Ironhack program, intensity, ambition and reinvention is what brings Ironhack to the next level in expert coder development. Recently, I was watching a meet-up talk by Hector Bliss where he pleaded with everyone to “not be a hater and not to listen to haters." He defined “haters” as the people that did not share their coding knowledge. He insisted we should also be inviting to others in this wonderful and young web and software tech industry, one that benefits more from group collaboration then any individual talent. “There is room for everyone who really wants in.” I felt those words almost like a divine sign that keeps inviting me forward and asking me not to surrender, reassuring that the ride will be rough but there will be help along the way. I wish I could also say that my transition to this new challenge and industry has been fully realized and that I feel certain about where I am going next in this plan to reinvent myself, or at least that the unknown ahead isn’t scary. But what I can say is that I am an Ironhacker and that I am going forward with the next challenge. So bring it on! - Pablo Turati