Brooklyn native AnnMarie graduated from The City University of New York (CUNY) Medgar Evers College with a degree in English in June 2017.
While in school, AnnMarie worked in the university’s Emerging Technologies Department. “We were building and standardizing online courses and structuring them in a way that would be beneficial for the effective transfer of information from faculty to their students,” she says.
That experience sparked her interest in a technology career, but without any experience in coding and software development, she wasn’t sure how she’d break into the field.
Then she found out about Revature.
Immersive Training in Cutting-Edge Technologies
“Revature kind of appeared out of the ether,” says AnnMarie. “It kind of materialized in front of me as an opportunity, and I pounced on it.”
Her journey began with a two-week intensive course that provided a basic foundation in coding.
“I had no coding experience, so that was a big challenge,” she says. “There’s a learning curve, but I told myself I would overcome it.”
After excelling in the foundational course, AnnMarie entered Revature’s 10-week immersion training, which prepared her to work successfully in an enterprise-level environment.
“What I think is amazing is that I didn’t just grow in terms of technical skills,” she says. “Personally, I gained so much from the experience that I have no idea if I would have gotten the skills—or how long it would have taken me to get them—outside of this group.”
“Revature has afforded me this extraordinary chance to do something I may otherwise have never gotten into.”
Revature Opens Doors to New Careers
At the end of the training, Revature helped place AnnMarie in a sought-after position with a large systems integrator. Today, as a Technical Analyst, she works on key projects for a top five financial institution. “I do ETL, which is Extract, Transform, Load. We basically manage the transformation of data – from databases, data warehouses, that kind of thing – and put them into usable formats for downstream applications to consume,” she says.
AnnMarie notes that her training didn’t stop with Revature. She continued to learn on-the-job, but also found that her nontraditional background contributed immediately to process improvements.
“Revature was literally a launchpad. It gave me what I needed to get a foot in the door, to go from graduating with an English degree to Revature and then to land in a career where, at the same time I’m building my technical skills, my team lead is really keen on using my soft skills, my organizational skills, my analytical skills.”
Closing the Technology Gender Gap
AnnMarie came to Revature through a partnership with the City University of New York (CUNY) and Women in Technology and Entrepreneurship in New York (WiTNY). The initiative was one of several designed to increase the number of women working in technology.
A result of the partnership, seven women with various backgrounds came together in September 2017 to begin their journey to becoming highly-skilled Java developers.
“That’s something that really excites me about what Revature is doing, in trying to get more women in the technology field,” she says. “The people who dominate the work industry aren’t the only people consuming the services that they provide, so the more you know about your consumers the better you can tailor your product to them.”
“Diversifying the tech industry is all about getting the people who are actually using the programs to build them. They know what the consumers think like, what they’re looking for, and can build programs that are tailored to that,” she says.
Advice to New Associates
For those considering Revature’s immersive training program, AnnMarie offers some advice: “Don’t come in with any illusions that the training is going to be easy, even if you have coding experience. Know that it’s going to be a huge challenge. Be prepared to fail 100 times. Check your ego at the door. Come in ready to work and ready to learn, because there’s so much to learn. Expect a crash course in real life. You can’t get through it by yourself.”
“You’re going to forge relationships with the people you come in with, really learn how to work together. Come in with excitement. Be enthusiastic. It’s definitely worth it,” she says.