The freeCodeCamp Podcast

In this week's episode of the freeCodeCamp podcast, Abbey chats with Greek developer and designer Eleftheria Batsou about her passion for creating content and how she balances work, school, travel, and personal time.

Eleftheria moved around a lot when she was young, but settled in Thessaloniki in northern Greece as a teenager. When she had to decide which track to take in school, she picked technology, science, and math. It turned out to be a good decision!

After bouncing around a bit and completing some internships, Eleftheria found a place that suited her. She learned to code by supplementing her education with free online resources (like freeCodeCamp!), leveled up her skills by completing numerous challenges like #100DaysofCode, and realized she had a passion for design as well as front-end development.

Today, she works as a developer, she's getting her Master's degree in design, she attends numerous conferences throughout Europe - and speaks at many of them - and she has a growing YouTube channel. She also has a blog where she shares all kinds of tips, tutorials, and bits of knowledge for beginning developers.

When she's not busy juggling her many tasks, she likes to workout to clear her head and hang out with her friends.

Find Eleftheria on Twitter: https://twitter.com/BatsouElef

Visit her website here: eleftheriabatsou.com

Austin had a biology degree, a poor GPA, and a job in the medical field, but he wanted to transition into tech. He had no experience, but he figured out how to gain it quickly and landed offers from his dream companies. In this episode, he shares his advice and methods so that you can do the same.

Written and read by Austin Belcak: https://cultivatedculture.com

Original article: https://fcc.im/2LydTlZ

Learn to code for free at: https://www.freecodecamp.org

Intro music by Vangough: https://fcc.im/2APOG02

Transcript:

In this episode I’ll show you how to quickly gain experience in any field, as well as how you can leverage that new experience to land job offers in that field.

I personally used this strategy to transition from the medical field — where I was working in hospital operating rooms — to the tech industry, where I received offers from Google and other tech companies (along with a 200% raise).

Myths about things you DON’T need when switching fields

Before we dive in, I think it’s important to address a few “myths” about changing industries:

You don’t need an extensive network of contacts. In fact, you don’t need any contacts at all — you can make them all on your own.

You don’t need a degree in the field you want to switch to. Perception is reality, and results speak volumes when it comes to perception. They are worth more than any degree or previous job title. More on that later.

You don’t need money. Everything you need to know can be learned for free. In fact, I’m going to show you how this process can actually help you generate a second stream of income.

Next, I’m going to outline the exact steps I used to land a job in a totally different industry so you can make it happen for yourself.

Part 1: Painting a picture of the perfect candidate

The good news about entering a completely different field is that you are a blank canvas. You can choose your skills and mold yourself into the perfect candidate.

What does perfection look like?

In order to become the ideal candidate, we must first understand what “ideal” looks like in the eyes of the people who will be hiring you. There are two ways to accomplish this:

Job descriptions

Job descriptions are essentially resumes in reverse. They spell out the exact skills you need in order to be successful in that particular role. That sounds obvious, but we are going to be looking at this from an atypical lens.

Let’s take a look at this Growth Marketing Analyst role that I grabbed from Facebook’s site:

Responsibilities

Leverage data to understand our products in depth, identify areas of opportunity, and execute projects to drive growth and engagement of Facebook users. - Drive projects focusing on new user growth, mobile usage, and revenue — working closely with design, product, engineering, and data teams. - Work both on core Facebook products like news feed, notifications, and mobile, and offsite marketing channels like SEO, SEM, and email. - Use tools like Hadoop/Hive, Oracle, ETL, R, PHP, Python, Excel, MicroStrategy, and many other internal tools to work efficiently at scale.

Minimum Qualifications

BS or MS in Engineering, Computer Science, Math, Physics, Statistics. - 1+ years experience with SQL. - 2+ years of quantitative or statistical analysis experience. - 1+ years of experience managing a project. - 1+ years of experience in marketing, advertising or growth. - Ability to process and analyze data sets, and interpret them to make business decisions. - Communication skills and ability to manage a project or product.

Preferred Qualifications

Software development experience. - Internet Marketing experience. What do you see here? What does the ideal candidate look like? What do they need to get hired?

My guess is that you’re thinking, “Ok, they need a degree in computers or math. Then they need at least two years of experience coding and managing projects at a company.”

Well, here’s what I see:

Facebook is looking for someone who understands how to identify trends/patterns within big data that will have a direct impact on revenue. That person also has enough knowledge of programming to efficiently make those discoveries and present them in a simple, concise fashion.

The main issue a lot of people have is that they think the only way to get “experience” is to work at company or have fancy degrees. This is one of the biggest myths when it comes to job searching.

In order to understand it, let’s take a step back and think about why companies hire.

They want someone who will come in and have a large, positive impact on their bottom line.

Someone could have a PhD in Co...

On this week's episode of the podcast, freeCodeCamp founder Quincy Larson interviews Ken Jee. Ken's a Data Scientist. He's also a Sports Analytics practitioner who works with US Team Golf and USA Basketball.

Ken hosts the excellent Ken's Nearest Neighbors podcast and the Exponential Athelete podcast.

We talk about:

How an injury pushed Ken out of pro sports and into data science

How Ken explains his statistical insights to coaches and players to help them improve their performance

Why Ken doesn't think building projects is all that useful anymore. "Data Scientists should instead build products."

How Ken starts and ends each day with meditation, and writes down all the ideas that pop into his head after each session.

Ken's observation that: "Who is the best suited to excel in a world where AI tools are prominent? Probably the people who are building them. People in the data science domain, people who are coding – they're the most prepared to use these tools for other things."

Can you guess what song I'm playing on my bass during the intro? It's from a 2006 dance song, and it was originally played on a synth.

Also, I want to thank the 10,109 kind people who support our charity each month, and who make this podcast possible. You can join them and support our mission at: https://www.freecodecamp.org/donate

Links we talk about during our conversation:

Ken's Nearest Neighbors Podcast: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCpEJMMRoTIHJ8vG8q_EwqCg

The Exponential Athelete Podcast, also hosted by Ken: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLAkSd12rP282takuFJKsAsYlHdpdEDhuE

The Founders podcast, which both Ken and Quincy listen to. James Dyson episode: https://www.founderspodcast.com/episodes/88384801/senra-james-dyson-against-the-odds-an-autobiography

Anna Wintour episode: https://www.founderspodcast.com/episodes/58741411/senra-326-anna-wintour

San Antonio caves that Quincy visited: https://naturalbridgecaverns.com/

On this week's episode of the podcast, freeCodeCamp founder Quincy Larson interviews prolific programming teacher John Smilga. John grew up in the Soviet Union. He worked construction for 5 years before becoming a developer. Today he has taught millions of fellow devs through his many courses on freeCodeCamp.

John spent his childhood in Latvia before the Soviet Union fell. He sought work in the UK as an expat hospitality worker on the tiny island of Guernsey.

But he had his sights set on moving to the US. There he worked construction and taught himself to code. He also attended online university courses to get a degree.

He met his wife, a nurse from Ukraine. Together they started a family and live together in Florida.

During this conversation, John talks about his journey into teaching the programming and computer science concepts he's learned. He talks about his free courses on freeCodeCamp and his paid courses that help him pay the bills.

John's voice is instantly recognizable by developers. He shares that this is because he has condition where is vocal cords are partially paralyzed, for which he has to receive frequent injections.

I hope you enjoy our conversation.

Can you guess what bass line I'm playing on my bass during the intro? It's from a 1982 song produced by Quincy Jones.

Be sure to follow The freeCodeCamp podcast in your favorite podcast app. And share this podcast with a friend. Let's inspire more folks to learn to code and build careers for themselves in tech.

Also, I want to thank the 9,003 kind people who support our charity each month, and who make this podcast possible. You can join them and support our mission at: https://www.freecodecamp.org/donate

Links we talk about during the interview:

Guernsey island: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guernsey

John's personal website: https://johnsmilga.com/

John Smilga on Twitter: https://twitter.com/john_smilga

On this week's episode of the podcast, freeCodeCamp Founder Quincy Larson interviews Leon Noel, founder of 100Devs and head of engineering at Resilient Coders. Growing up, Leon had it drilled into him that he had to become a doctor, lawyer, or dentist. But his ambitions grew and he went on to have an exciting career in tech. After a successful exit from a startup, Leon wanted to help folks who were struggling during the pandemic. He started 100Devs, a charity which has helped 10,000s of people learn to code. We talk about:

• dropping out of Yale
• getting into the selective Tech Stars startup accelerator
• Getting involved with Resilient Coders, a charity that helps court-involved youth learn coding
• Starting 100Devs and building a Discord server with 60,000 people learning to code together

Quincy recorded this podcast live and hasn't edited it at all. We want to capture the feel of a real live conversation, with all the human quirks that entails. Can you guess what song he's playing on my bass during the intro? It's his arrangement of the intro to a 1990s cartoon. Be sure to follow The freeCodeCamp podcast in your favorite podcast app. And share this podcast with a friend. Let's inspire more folks to learn to code and build careers for themselves in tech. Also, we want to thank the 8,427 kind people who support our charity each month, and who make this podcast possible. You can join them and support our mission at: https://www.freecodecamp.org/donate Links we talk about during the interview:

The video that changed Leon's life on Spaced Repetition, by Ali Abdaal: https://youtu.be/Z-zNHHpXoMM

The official Anki app, which is free on web / desktop and doesn’t lock you into a subscription. Leon's advice: "Only create cards on one device, but review on any to save you from weird syncing issues." https://apps.ankiweb.net

Dr. Barbara Oakley’s Learn How to Learn course, which Leon calls "a masterpiece": https://coursera.org/learn/learning-how-to-learn

The 100Devs website (new cohort starting in early May): https://100devs.org/about

Trailer for X-men '97: https://youtu.be/pv3Ss8o9gGQ

Thelonious Monk [pianist Quincy mentions] "Straight No Chaser" documentary trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dx0E9-ThvKc

Leon on YouTube: http://leonnoel.com/youtube

Leon on Discord: http://leonnoel.com/discord

Leon's Twitch for his live streams: http://leonnoel.com/twitch

Leon's website: https://leonnoel.com/