Philip Turkiewicz graduated Juno College's Web Development Bootcamp in 2020. Here's how they changed careers in just 9 months, what it’s like coding Juno's website, and advice for anyone looking to make a change!
You're probably wondering how I got here...
Before Juno, I was an Event Supervisor at Union Station in Toronto. It was my job to supervise any event, marketing activation, or performance that we were hosting inside the station. It was an amazing experience! I learned a lot about how to collaborate with all types of people, solve problems on the fly, and get parking officers to stop ticketing my vendors. Useful life skills!
The live events industry in Toronto is an intense one. Along with all the positives comes a chaotic schedule, long hours, and late nights. After three years, I was feeling like I didn’t have a secure future. Would I still be meeting vendors at 5:00am when I’m 40 years old? I always thought that coding could be a good fallback career, and I started making plans to learn some skills online and see how it goes.
Then the pandemic hit and I got laid off.
Like many people, this pandemic gave me the mental space to reflect on my life. Do I really love events or am I just here because it pays? I was able to clearly see the goals I had for my future, ones that I had been stumbling towards without nailing down the specifics. I wanted stability, career growth, and a career that interested me. I didn’t know for sure if web development was the right choice for me, but it felt like a good path.
I wanted stability, career growth, and a career that interested me.
I still wanted to get some proof first, which is how I found Juno. I had heard about HackerYou from some arts friends who had made the jump in the past, so it was the first place I looked. I attended their free Coding 101 Workshop, in person (I know, how novel!), and had a pretty good time! Yeah, it wasn’t life-changing but it was really fun. Look, I made a pretty website! The button changes colour, isn’t that cool! I showed a lot of my friends what I had made, and at the time I was still hmm-ing and hahh-ing, but looking back I think that’s what sold me on the career change.
I come from an arts background where I was constantly showing people the cool and weird things I had made. I was drawn to art because I love sharing my ideas with other people and seeing their reaction. After many years in the events industry, I had lost that feeling of creating and sharing with others. This was the first time in years that I felt excited to share something that I built with others.
This was the first time in years that I felt excited to share something that I built with others.
Changing careers with Juno's Web Development Bootcamp
From there, Juno took care of the rest. The path you follow from Web Development to Bootcamp felt like a safe, incremental way to solidify my commitment to this career. I started with the Intro to Web Development course because I still wasn’t sold. It was during that course that I fell into Juno’s amazing community. My instructor Shangni Hu was hilarious and so knowledgeable. I assumed actual coding would be boring and difficult, but she showed me how creative, exciting, and fun it can be. After that course, I knew that development was where I wanted to be.
Committing to an intensive Bootcamp program was a big leap. It was a lot of money for me. I was nervous that I couldn’t turn it into a career and would just end up wasting my own time and money. This is again, where I fell back on Juno. Seeing the hundreds of successful students, having many discussions with the mentors in my class, reading all the statistics and comparing and contrasting and wondering: does it actually work?
Yes, it works.
It’s not a 100% guarantee (what in life actually is, though) and it requires so much perseverance and resilience from students. But what I saw from my research was how much support and guidance Juno was providing their students. I felt like, “well if they can do it, so can I.”
And I’m happy to say that’s exactly my experience of Juno's Web Development Bootcamp. I met many incredibly talented and smart people who were in the same position as me (specifically, I need to get out of my terrible job so let’s hail mary as a developer). Our instructors not only cared about teaching us the skills, but also about our wellbeing and our successes as people. The Career Services felt like I was being told the realities of the difficult job market that out-of-touch boomers assured me was actually just my fault for not working hard enough. I learned so much and built some incredible projects that I am still so proud of (shout out to my Drag Name Generator).
Every step of the way, it felt like Juno had already figured out the best path and I just had to show up and follow it.
Every step of the way, it felt like Juno had already figured out the best path and I just had to show up and follow it. For someone who is often overwhelmed by choice and irritated by vague promises, this was such a relief.
Life after Bootcamp as a developer
Post-Bootcamp, I was ready! They said the job search would be hard, but I had quickly become the greatest developer who ever lived (I did make a Mad Libs app in React after all) and I was certain I could find a job immediately.
I didn’t.
But! I learned what it meant to hustle for a space in this industry. I was sending out resumes to every position I could find. I was cold emailing fancy developer people with the confidence of someone who had just learned some skills 3 months ago and was ready to work. I was doing phone interviews (okay just two, but they still count!) trying to be as charming and intelligent as I could sound while being stuck inside a shoebox apartment.
It was difficult work, and to be honest I hated it. But it taught me a lot about myself, specifically my resilience and determination to go after what I wanted. It also showed me a glimpse of the industry: sometimes obtuse and cold, but also sometimes surprisingly warm and supportive. Like the technical lead whose tech test I failed miserably (code didn’t even run) but he still took time out of his day to walk me through the problem and wish me the best on my job search. It was intense, but I felt supported by my friends and the Career Services team.
And then I saw that Juno was hiring a developer, applied, and got the job. Thanks Juno! Always looking out!
My post-Bootcamp experience isn’t exactly typical because I got hired at the place that taught me everything I know. But my journey leading up to this position has taught me how important it is to make connections with people at Juno. Our community is so strong and supportive. I wouldn’t have known about the position if my friend hadn’t told me they also applied, or if one of my instructors hadn't encouraged me to go for it anyway even though I thought I wasn’t experienced enough.
And this experience is so common to many Bootcamp grads. I often encourage grads to think of it like a marathon, not a sprint. You’re not in direct competition with your peers, you’re in competition with yourself. Push yourself to send that final cold email, that last-minute application, that extra 10 minutes looking over your cover letter. It can be done! Running sucks, and so does applying for jobs, but it’s worth it when you cross the finish line!
I often encourage grads to think of it like a marathon, not a sprint. You’re not in direct competition with your peers, you’re in competition with yourself.
Anyway, since Bootcamp I’ve had a pretty wild ride here at Juno. I’m a pretty small development team of one, so I’ve been able to work on projects that I never thought I would touch as a junior, and I’ve had more ownership over the codebase than I expected. I was barely 3 months into the job when I was asked to refresh our site’s navigation menu (the code I wrote still haunts me to this day). It feels like I’ve done everything (build new pages, set up Google tag manager scripts, write data migration scripts, update the website packages, investigate every bug under the sun) and yet I still get new issues every week that require a whole new level of research and experimentation.
Some parting advice...
When I reflect on my journey to get to this moment, I don’t often think about the difficulties of getting here. Yeah JavaScript is confusing, and styling using floats is so irritating (there is a float being used on the Juno site and I will take its location to my grave), but those moments don’t stick out in my brain. Instead, I think about how two years ago I didn’t know what my path was or where it was taking me. It felt like I should instinctively know what direction to take, and that wasn’t happening. So, kinda arbitrarily, I picked a direction that I thought would be fun and followed it. I made a decision about my life and I stuck with it. And I’m so glad I did.
If you’re waiting for a sign, looking for a direction, or hoping for a change, here’s my advice to you: make that sign for yourself.
If you’re waiting for a sign, looking for a direction, or hoping for a change, here’s my advice to you: make that sign for yourself. Pick a direction that “seems cool.” Change happens after a thousand footsteps; the first one isn’t going to feel all that different from the one before, but at some point you’ll end up in a different part of the world thinking, “huh, how’d I get all the way over here?” Ugh, how did I get so self-help life advice-y. Let’s end on a joke!
What happens when you give a developer a nav, a ul, and four lis?
Nothing, they’ve already built the menu using divs.
This is a terrible joke. Thanks for reading! Bye!
Learn more about Juno College’s Web Development Bootcamp
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