Journalism to Software Development

This is an extract from a video interview conducted with Code Institute graduate Merve. Merve is from Turkey and lives in Örebro County in Sweden. Merve, who has an honours degree in journalism, decided to change careers into software development. She now works as a full-stack software developer at Wiccon in Örebro. 

Why did you choose to change careers to software development? 

Since my childhood, I was really interested in design, and I did several websites from design platforms and designed several logos, which was quite interesting for me. While searching for a new career, the tech sector was really interesting, and it had lots of opportunities globally. I studied software development because it was interesting. You do not do the same thing continuously. You get to design. You get to build the system, and you get to build real-time, working websites and applications that are useful.

Why did you choose Code Institute? 

It was online. You can study wherever, whenever you want, and (on the course) you would be building five portfolio projects. I decided to search more about Code Institute and what it is and found that they provide a 5 Day Coding Challenge for free to see if I can do anything in this career, in this sector. 

How did you find the course? 

The course was very well structured. It had several support platforms, student support, tutor support, and Slack Community Support. I was able to find support whenever I needed it. If it was something technical, tutors were there to guide us, not directly give us the answers, but they were able to walk us through and we were able to find answers on our own. Student support was always there for any other queries that we had and if you had any trouble and wanted to get an answer instantly, we were able to ask. It’s (the Slack community) like a community Channel and students, alumni, mentors, everyone on that platform were able to guide us and help us through the problems that we had. 

What were the high points of the course for you? 

The high point of the course was it had five portfolio projects, which gave you the experience of real software development. It (also) provided opportunities for hackathons, which allows you to experience teamwork and scrum and agile work structure. Also, the course was online, you could study whenever, wherever you want. Everyone had individual schedules for themselves, which was really good for me. 

What do you do now? 

Currently, I work as a full-stack software developer in Örebro in Wiccom. 

Was the course worth it? 

Yes, the course was definitely worth it. I would recommend it to anyone, I did recommend it to my friends too, and two of them are right now taking the course. 

Take the free coding challenge

Want to try the free 5 Day Coding Challenge that Merve mentions in this interview? After one hour a day over five days, you can learn the basics of HTML, CSS and JavaScript. On successful completion, you’ll build your first-ever webpage! Register now through the form below.