My Revature Story: Army Vet Applies Teamwork and Grit

As a U.S. Army veteran, I thrive on two things: camaraderie and hard but rewarding work. At Revature, and in the tech career it has opened up for me, I have found both.

To call a Revature training program challenging would be a serious understatement: as an associate, you have just a few weeks to learn skills that college computer science majors get years to master. Luckily, I was able to call upon the discipline I learned during my military service. I put real effort into getting up early, being present and attentive in class, making detailed checklists for what I wanted to achieve, and following them to ensure success.

Just as important was an inbuilt sense of team spirit. At Revature, you are always learning and doing as part of a batch of students. In my cohort, which focused on big data, we sat right next to each other and worked together on real-life problems from a real-life business—not just theoretical ones like you might tackle in school.

In fact, finding ways to solve these challenges was so compelling that we often found ourselves continuing the discussion and brainstorming after class—further building the strong bonds that helped us get through a tough but rewarding experience.

After training, I was assigned to a project with one of America’s biggest retailers, in a part of the country where I had not lived before. Again, it was like the military, where you might get orders to report to a new base, but always with a point of contact there to support you. I went to the same company as another member of my cohort, and we even moved into the same apartment building. On top of that, it turned out that there were already a lot of other Revature people working there. We all supported each other—something that became especially important after the pandemic forced us to work from home.

The work remained just as challenging—and just as rewarding. We were tasked with processing huge amounts of data from the retailer’s thousands of pharmacies, joining the dots between patients, pharmacists, providers, and insurance companies. On a technical level, the project required a deep understanding of how parallel processing works—something that, thanks to Revature’s intensive training, I certainly had.

Determined to show my managers what I could do, I volunteered for projects and worked after hours. It paid off. Not only was I hired permanently; I won awards for my work, and wound up being promoted faster than some of the computer science majors who had been hired around the same time.

Earlier this year, I started a new job working for a startup spun off from a project by Alphabet, Google’s parent company. The startup is also in the healthcare space, but with a different focus: we help people in disadvantaged communities access care. I could not be more proud of the opportunity to use my coding skills for a higher purpose. My experience shows the breadth of what you can do with a Revature qualification, from a huge retailer to a close-knit startup and everything in between.

Building a tech career has taken hard work; but I couldn’t have got my foot in the door without Revature. Honestly, I can’t thank the company enough for what it has enabled me to do. My advice to anyone considering Revature: if you are looking for an easy life, look elsewhere. But if you have the grit, if you are prepared to put in the work and see your efforts rewarded, go for it.