How an External Communications Manager is now on the road to becoming a Front End Developer
Mariana graduated from a SheCodes Workshop in February 2019, SheCodes Plus in May 2019, and SheCodes React in April 2020.
🙍♀️ Before SheCodes
Mariana is from originally from Lisbon, Portugal, and still lives there today. She studied economics in university and has had various job roles over the years in marketing, events and communications. Her most recent job was an External Communications and Events Marketing Manager at Unbabel, an artificial intelligence powered human translation platform. In her role, she was responsible for managing the company’s communications and liaising public relations, employer branding, and merchandising. She often had to bridge all teams when managing events such as the company’s annual customer conference. She often worked closely with the design and development teams.
Mariana definitely wore many hats in her job roles over the years. She has never worked in a tech role, though. She didn’t become interested in coding until 2019. She heard about SheCodes through a couple of friends and colleagues and decided to go for it.
“It was the beginning of 2019 and we all like to set those big hairy audacious goals for the year, and during the first quarter, we're still very much committed to working towards our achievements. I heard about SheCodes and decided to give it a try, clueless if coding would be something I would connect with or not.”
👩💻 Her SheCodes Experience
SheCodes was the first coding course that Mariana ever tried. Turns out, the SheCodes format was just what she was looking for. After going through three SheCodes workshops, she's gathered that SheCodes has many attributes that set it apart from other online coding courses out there.
“I believe SheCodes stands out from other coding courses for the following: a close relationship with the SheCodes team, the SheCodes platform, weekly milestones, and a sense of community on slack.”
Mariana has been a dedicated member of the SheCodes community since February 2019. She has successfully completed a SheCodes Workshop, SheCodes Plus, and SheCodes React. When asked what her favorite parts of SheCodes were, she referenced the online technical support to get coding help and the SheCodes Slack community.
“Luckily, I've been through SheCodes introduction workshop, SheCodes Plus and SheCodes React. What I enjoyed the most was the sense of community and continuous online support from the SheCodes team, who promptly helped us solving our coding problems.”
“SheCodes Plus came as an interesting escape from my day-to-day at work, while exploring an opportunity to put my personal projects and ideas into something real. After SheCodes Plus, I started to be able to add small coding tasks to my job description at work. Finally, I decided to participate in SheCodes React, motivated by my web developer colleague who always kept me going to learn this framework. I was able to learn a lot about React and finally understand how it works, something that I couldn't when I did SheCodes Plus.”
Check out Mariana’s amazing SheCodes React project. It’s funny and functional 😏
🙋 How SheCodes has Helped to Change Her Life
SheCodes allowed Mariana to improve her work and also open up new career possibilities. When she was working as an External Communications Manager, coding allowed her to take on new responsibilities at Unbabel, increase her productivity, and communicate better with the development team.
“After SheCodes Plus, I gained the trust of my team's frontend developer and I started to take ownership of some tasks related to the company's website that had to do with my responsibilities.”
Recently, Mariana has left her job at Unbabel and is seeking new opportunities, possibly as a developer. Her coding future is sure to be bright. She has wonderful personal and professional goals for her coding future.
“I'm taking advantage of this moment in life to deepen my knowledge and potentially do a career shift sooner than expected.”
“In the short term, I would like to implement small projects such as a very dynamic resume and another personal idea I haven't yet defined. In the mid to long-term, it's my ambition to start working as a frontend developer for meaningful companies, or kick start a remote career.”
👩💼 Advice to Future SheCodes Participants
Even though there are free coding courses out there, Mariana thinks that SheCodes was very worth it, not just for the coding knowledge you gain, but also for the other benefits you gain such as sharpening your creative and analytical thinking.
“I guess in terms of pricing, there are many free courses… I didn't mind paying for SheCodes because of the trust I have in the program and, mostly, its mission.”
“This is an amazing program, whether you want to do a career shift or not. Most importantly, you'll train skills that sometimes we don't actually train at our work such as logic, problem-solving, etc. This is what kept me going. Start with a free express class and move to other SheCodes programs as you see fit.”
