From Bootcamp to Berlin
As some of you may know, I am pretty new to coding. This time last year I was 6-weeks into a 9-week bootcamp in Barcelona; now I am living and working full-time as a frontend developer in Berlin. From the outside it all seems to have happened very fast, but the process of leaving my former career in post-production & VFX to simultaneously pursuing a new future in tech and a permanent move to Europe was filled with ups and downs.
In the past few months I’ve received a lot of questions from people who’ve been aware of my journey and I’ve found myself advising a lot of other Americans, especially WOC, that have similar goals and would like to know how I managed to achieve some of mine. In order to give wider access to these conversations (and to fulfill a promise that I made to my mother about blogging), in the next few posts I’d like to share some of my story, the highs and lows of being out of the US, and the challenges that I’ve faced and continue to face while being Black in Berlin.
To start, I’ll focus on the bootcamp that I attended last summer and my initial process of finding employment abroad. Many of these questions are direct quotes from a conversation I had with someone looking to attend the same bootcamp before also moving from the US to the EU.
Why did you choose Le Wagon vs a program in the US?
1) Le Wagon itself
LW has a great international community that extends beyond your time in the bootcamp. When researching it I read many articles on Medium and other sites written by LW alumni and the people all seemed to a) know what they were talking about and b) be very cool and interesting individuals. Aside from actual code-related threads, I still use the Le Wagon slack channel to look at industry news, post or look for jobs in various cities, apartment hunt, find out about parties, you name it.
2) Starter Language
I was not 100% sure on if I would like front-end or back-end more, however LW seemed to have a pretty good focus on both. I especially liked that the BE language was Ruby, because in my research and own self-teaching I found it to be the most intuitive and easy-to-understand. I figured that if coding is like learning a language, why not start with something easy to understand so that I can focus my brain-power on digesting concepts and techniques rather than on remembering abstract syntax. I would definitely say that this decision helped, because while Le Wagon did not teach the framework that I currently code in at my job, by the end of the bootcamp I understood the concepts well enough to teach myself enough of the framework in 4-days of Edx.org MOOCs ahead of the technical interview for my current position. I think that is something that is really amazing about LW; they teach you how to learn, which is important in a field as dynamic as this one.
3) Networking
Since I knew that my end-goal was to work in the EU, I thought that going to a bootcamp here would allow me to meet more people who know of positions, internships, etc. This proved to be true; the company that I currently work for was referred to me by a friend-of-a-friend that I made during the bootcamp! Now we’re super close — in fact, we are flatmates!
4) Cost
I don’t know about the rates now, but when I was applying I found Le Wagon to be very competitively priced when compared to many of the bootcamps in the US of the same caliber.
5) Location
It was in Barcelona. ‘nuff said.
Click here to read my Google Review of the course. I wrote it 1 month after finishing the bootcamp and 10 months later my opinions are unchanged.
Do you think Le Wagon prepared you well to be a good candidate that companies are looking for?
Indubitably, most notably in the way that they teach you to learn. LW also has a very good reputation in the EU; many tech companies are familiar with LW and either have hired their alumni or gone to some of their job fairs, free training courses, or other events.
Did you ever try to find work in the US after Le Wagon?
Yes and no. I stayed abroad after completing Le Wagon for a few more months (more on this in the next question) and I was sustaining myself via my waning savings and odd-jobs. I applied exclusively to jobs in the EU the first 2 months, however once money got too low I started applying for jobs back in the US in anticipation of my return. When applying for the US, I mostly focused on positions in my previous industry because 1) they were freelance and therefore I wouldn’t have the awkwardness of quitting every-time I wanted to try for a move abroad and 2) I didn’t want to be comfortably-trapped in the US by a high-salary tech job. Companies in the US often pay a lot more for these jobs than in the EU (well, maybe just Germany), and I would be making somewhere around 15K more than I do here in Berlin if I were in the US starting at the same position. Keeping that wage gap and my ultimate goal in mind, I mainly chose to expand my coding knowledge myself via open-source projects, MOOCs, Code kata, and personal projects rather than by applying for a position in the US and getting back settled there.
I would love to hear about your process of looking for jobs in the EU in general.
It was pretty damn stressful, I won’t sugar-coat it. Immediately after the Le Wagon batch ended in July, I stayed in Serbia for a few months to work on my portfolio, do MOOCs, and apply for jobs in the EU. I went to Belgrade so as not to unnecessarily use the small amount of days left on my Schengen visa while still being close enough to fly back into the EU for any interviews that I may secure. Aside from applying to developer positions, I also applied for jobs in my previous industry, for which I have many years of experience. The feedback around these applications were double that of the tech jobs, however a largely positive initial interview would often come to a screeching halt once the topic of visa sponsorship was raised (more on this in a later post).
One thing that I found out pretty quickly is that a lot of the HR people did not seem to know that much about the process of visa sponsorship, often assuming that it would be a lot of work for the company or really expensive. When applying to jobs in my previous industry I took it upon myself to make and submit infographics of the hiring process for that country as it relates to the EU Blue Card, for which I am eligible. Once I started submitting supplemental material along with my application I began to get a lot more responses.
Ultimately I applied to my current position in August, returned to the US in September because I ran out of money and needed recoup my funds via another freelance gig, got the job offer in October, and moved to Berlin in January.
If you want to read more about ‘The Work of Finding Work’ or how the first 6 months working in tech have been going, I will provide more of my personal experiences in a later post that I will link here.
Are you in the EU now on a work visa?
Yes, I am currently on a work visa. The process varies from country to country but the only way I would be able to live and work here (non-freelance) in Germany was if my employer sponsored my visa. That being said, I had to secure employment first and then proceed with obtaining my visa. Now if I want to leave this company, I believe that I have a few months wherein my visa is still valid whilst I am looking for work. After that I will either have to get a job-seekers visa, remain in Germany (but now on the 90-day limitation that comes with my Schengen visa), or leave.
If you want to read more about the ‘Trials and Tribulations of Visa Sponsorship’, I will provide more of my personal experiences in a later post that I will link here.
