October 7th, 2022 Revature

Meet Thomas. He ended his two year job hunt as a QA engineer

When asked to sum up Revature in three words, Thomas Payton responds with vigor: “Jumpstart your career.” Here he speaks from experience.


Thomas enjoyed success in college, graduating with a major in mechanical engineering. But, he soon found out, “college [by] itself did not prepare me for a career.” Like many recent grads, he wanted to get into coding, but found that every employer in the space wanted experience. After hunting for more than two years without receiving a job offer in his target industry, Thomas decided to take a chance on Revature.

The training was intense, with weekly pop quizzes, mock interviews, and long hours of coding practice. And it didn’t stop with technical matters. As Thomas says, “Revature prepped me very hard for real experience.” That meant teamwork, interview skills, how to stay cool under pressure, and even how to dress for success. Thomas excelled at all of it. Looking back, he describes this as “a great confidence booster.”

He carried his newfound skills and confidence into his Revature placement with a Fortune 500 IT services company, where he worked as a quality assurance engineer. There, Thomas impressed his managers so much that they hired him even before his Revature contract ended.

“I never would have had that experience without Revature,” Thomas says. “I wouldn’t know where to start to learn all the things I did. But being there with other people wanting to learn, going through the same thing, was an amazing experience and it did change my life.”