How They Did It | Anne Huynh From Social Worker to Front-End Web Developer
This is a summary that accompanies the original interview published on Work In Progress Podcast. Here we highlight our favorite parts from this conversation and some useful resources at the end of the article. The full interview is here.
“If you are struggling, can’t seem to find hope in what you do, and becoming bitter or pessimistic… I’d say do yourself a favor and change careers now — before your career changes for you.”
— Anne Huynh
Besides another inspiring career change to bring to your attention, this conversation with Anne was so much fun and so inspiring! Her bubbly personality and positive outlook on life really shone through in the interview and I would love it for you to go to her episode to enjoy this episode!
Tell me about your current job as a front-end web developer
Currently Anne is a front-end web developer at a transportation engineering company in Texas. They build custom applications and website for the Texas Department of Transportation. Languages she uses at her job: HTML, CSS, javascript, jQuery, Bootstrap, Leaflet.
Her work is roughly 80% individual and 20% collaborative. There are weekly code reviews where they each pick a feature that they’ve been struggling with and have it reviewed with the entire team. The process sounds intimidating, but Anne assures the supervisors do an excellent job giving guidance instead of criticism.
Tell me about your career as a social worker
Anne worked as a social worker for 4 years and she grew unhappy. There was a lot of paperwork which did not bother her in the begnning but it started to get to her as she progressed further in the career. The day-to-day work became uninteresting and the repetitive paperwork exhausted her. As a result, she took her job for granted and her performance slipped. She felt like she was sabotaging her career and the dissatisfaction overflowed to other aspects of her life.
In what ways is front-end web developer different from your jobs before?
Anne felt that before she was “a gear among other gears to turn things along” but as a developer, she gets to create and make things happen; there is more individuality and freedom to choose how to execute.
Tell me about your transition
After leaving her career in social work, she hopped around different jobs while trying to figure out her path: she tried telemarketing (it was brutal) and customer support. She didn’t like them.
Until a cousin reached out to her and convinced her to try coding. In the beginning she laughed off the suggestion, because with her psychology degree from a liberal arts college she felt that she had nothing to do with tech. She gave it a try nonetheless and found that she really enjoyed being able to “create” things online.
During this exploratory period, she did free resources she found online: freeCodeCamp and Codecademy. Then she applied for bootcamp.
Time wise, it took Anne about 6 months after leaving social work to figure out that she liked coding, 6 months of part-time bootcamp, and about 2 months post bootcamp to land a job.
Tell me about the bootcamp you attended
Anne attended the part-time UT Austin Coding Boot Camp that lasted 6 months. After applying, there was a phone interview, a test to asses logic and problem solving skills, and an interview. Classes were held on Tuesdays, Thursdays, Saturdays and Sundays for 8 hours each day. On tuesdays and thursdays there were 25–30 students in her class and on weekends it is joined with another class of 25–30 students.
Students came from a variety of different backgrounds and she found herself in the middle of the age range.
Like other bootcamps, hers provided with extensive career planning support that not just dedicated specified time to review resume and answer questions but also responded to texts and emails in off hours.
Job Application Process
Aside from the numerous one-click applications on LinkedIn, she applied to 85 openings and interviewed at 3 companies. After receiving an offer and considering the counteroffers, she made her decision. This part of her journey took 2 months, and she wasn’t idle during this time: she interned, went to network events, meetups, coffee chats with friends and mentors. She was able to build experience and a vocabulary that allowed her to speak confidently when interviewing and networking.
Anne attended 1–2 meetups a month, had 1–2 coffee dates a week, messaged colleagues/friends/mentors once a week via email/text.
Work In Progress Question: what does your next career look like?
Anything goes! since going from social work to tech was such a big change, her next career could be anything! She will likely lean in on the design side (UI/UX) and use her psychology degree to help her design something that’s user friendly. Or she will be a hermit!
When asked what experience she needs to obtain to get into UI/UX, she mentioned: wireframing skills, Adobe XD, Sketch, typography, graphic design, Adobe illustrator, etc. She also recommended a book Don’t Make Me Think, Revisited: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability by Steve Krug for further reading.
Lessons we learned from Anne
- Change before change happens to you
- Consider taking interim jobs when you go through the change (while figuring out what you want to do next or just going through bootcamp and need to supplement income)
- Tech is unique because you can try out some free resources online to get a glimpse into what the job is like. This gives you more hands-on experience than just asking or shadowing people at work
- Networking build confidence and help you present yourself better during interviews; these can be treated like practice interviews
How to reach Anne
- anhuynh.atx@gmail.com
- Anne’s website
