How Dillon Made a Career Change Without Changing Employers

Wanting a career in a growing industry, Dillon Arnold felt the drive to begin a software engineering career in 2024. Encouraged by TripleTen’s moneyback guarantee, Dillon enrolled in the Software Engineering Bootcamp and later the Data Science Bootcamp to fully prepare himself for the demands of a rapidly evolving tech landscape. Dillon shares how he balanced the online bootcamp while working full-time, and how he networked within his current company to land his first software engineer role! 

What inspired you to start a software engineering career in 2024?

I was working fully remote as a Fiberoptic Design Engineer when I saw an ad for TripleTen, which looked awesome. I was interested in computer science when I was in college, but I thought it would be too hard because of the math involved. I liked the software engineering lifestyle and the ability to work remotely. I wanted to be part of a growing industry.

Why did you choose the Software Engineering Bootcamp at TripleTen?

I learn best by doing, so something that stood out about TripleTen was hands-on learning. As a student, you're working inside a code editor to learn concepts, and that's really what sold the bootcamp for me.

Was TripleTen’s money-back guarantee important to you?

It was quite important because I was spending so much money. I initially wasn't worried about getting a job, but as I got into the job market, I realized it might be tough. It was very nice knowing that I could fall back on the money-back guarantee if things didn’t work out. Luckily, I never had to use it!

You took out a loan to cover your bootcamp tuition. Would you recommend that path to others considering financing their bootcamp tuition? 

TripleTen offers a few payment options, but I ended up getting a loan through a third-party provider. A lot of factors go into deciding if a loan is right for you. With TripleTen’s money-back guarantee, I felt good about getting the loan because I could get that loan paid off by TripleTen if I didn’t land a job. If I did not have the money-back guarantee, I would have thought more about whether taking out a loan was a good idea.

With my loan, I didn’t have to start paying it back until three months after I graduated from the bootcamp. This was really nice because I was able to secure a higher paying role before needing to make payments on the loan. 

What did you learn in the Software Engineering Bootcamp?

You start by learning HTML and CSS because that is essentially a given for a lot of development roles. Then we got into JavaScript and frameworks of JavaScript. JavaScript can do many things on the web and server. It's a very powerful technology to know. We learned React, Express.js, Node.js, MongoDB, and a ton of very essential tools for front end and server-side development, such as NPM, Postman, Webpack, etc. 

What was a typical day like in the software engineering bootcamp?

I was working full-time at the time of the bootcamp, so I worked my job during the day and then spent time in the evening on the bootcamp. My wife was going to college, so it was pretty easy for us to both have that dedicated time for our studies. TripleTen says to commit around twenty hours a week to the bootcamp. I would also work over the weekend on my projects.

What did you end up building for TripleTen's CodeJam? 

I love aviation, and I went to ground school for a couple of years to become a pilot but was not able to because of medical reasons. For my CodeJam project, I built a flight tracker with my group. It was fun to build because it allowed us to grab data from an API that pulled in when flights landed, when and where they departed from, and at what gate in the terminal they would be. 

You’re now enrolled in the Data Science Bootcamp at TripleTen! What prompted you to add data science to your software engineering toolbox? 

AI and machine learning as well as Python and SQL are very prominent, and it’s where the industry is going. If I want to have a steady career, I realized it's inevitable that engineers will need to understand AI. To try to keep up with everything that’s changing as much as I can, I decided to learn data science skills.

How did TripleTen prepare you for the tech job hunt?

The career support was great and the mock interviews were very helpful! TripleTen does a lot of preparation with your resume, cover letter, and LinkedIn account. They gave me a lot of good feedback on my resume. Overall, I had quite a bit of support from the career coaches. I met with them once a week and each meeting had a different focus. For example, one meeting was about my resume, and then others focused on how to write a good cover letter and my job search strategy. I attended five meetings before getting my job. 

You were able to move into a software engineering role at the company you were already working for — What was the interviewing process like?

My path to getting my first tech job was a little different than others. I networked with the engineering manager at my current company to build a relationship and see about joining their team as a software engineer. I then had to wait about six months before he referred me to the manager of the web team. The manager of the web team reached out to me shortly after and encouraged me to apply for the first open role on his team.  

The interview was more conceptual than technical. I didn't have a whiteboarding interview, but they were interested in the projects I built at TripleTen. During the interview, they asked me questions about JavaScript and other technologies. It was important that I knew how to talk about these technologies and the projects I had built. 

While interviewing for a software engineering role at your company, were you also sending out resumes?

Yes, I sent out about a hundred applications and got one interview even though I wasn’t done with bootcamp! 

Was your company, ALLO Fiber, comfortable hiring a bootcamp graduate for a software engineering role?

My manager is a self-taught engineer! There’s also quite a few engineers at my company who completed a certification program sponsored by my company. Those engineers started at my company in IT or technical support. It seems to be common at my current company to come to software engineering from an untraditional background.

What kinds of projects are you working on now as a software engineer?

We have a software development team with software engineers, cloud engineers, and data scientists, but I’m part of a newer development team that’s focused on front end and web development. I work mostly with front end development right now and a little bit on the server-side. My team's main product is our company website. We work with the marketing team to create pages and components that align with strategic goals to bring in sales for the company. We also work on marketing campaign pages, so if they're running a special campaign, we build out those components and pages. 

Are you using what you learned at TripleTen on the job?

Yes, I use HTML and CSS every day, and I use the JavaScript framework, jQuery, so it helps to know JavaScript. We also use PHP for server side and back end, which we did not learn at TripleTen, but learning other languages makes it easier to learn a new language. 

At this point in your new tech career, was TripleTen worth it for you?

It was 100% worth it for me, so much so that I've gone back to TripleTen to learn data science! I'm a strong believer that if you put in the time at a bootcamp and build side projects, you will get recognized and get an interview. 

You’re now a Software Engineering Tutor at TripleTen! What's your advice to incoming students on making the most of the bootcamp?

I can confidently say that you won’t be noticed if you don't have something that makes you stand out. Employers are no longer looking for just a cool portfolio. They’re looking for a cool portfolio plus some side projects, especially if you don't have a degree. Apply the skills you learn at the bootcamp to build something that makes you stand out.

Find out more and read TripleTen reviews on Course Report. This article was produced by the Course Report team in partnership with TripleTen.