My Revature Story: From 100+ Rejections to Landing A Dream Job

I was born in the U.S., but grew up in Venezuela. In the local equivalent of middle school, I took a class called “Informatics.” At first, it was all about using Word, Excel, and so on. But one day, the teacher said, “We’re going to learn something called programming.” From that moment on, I was hooked. I could not stop thinking of the unlimited possibilities that coding might open up. And I knew beyond a doubt what I wanted to do for a living.

After high school, I studied computer science at one of the best private universities in Caracas, and earned a lot of praise from my professors. Then I moved back to the U.S. and looked for a job. In the space of a few months, I applied for over 100 positions. Only one company was kind enough even to tell me I had been rejected. From the rest, I heard nothing but crickets.

What was I supposed to do? A career in programming had been my dream since I was 13 years old. I knew I was good at it. But it seemed that, if you didn’t already have work experience or a degree from a brand-name school, you were out of luck.

One day in early 2017, my life changed. On one of the job boards I spent my life staring at, I happened to see an ad for a company called Revature. Honestly, it seemed too good to be true: they promised to train me, pay me for the privilege, and find me a job?! Then again, what did I have to lose? If it all fell through, it couldn’t be worse than 100-plus applications with no callbacks.

When I started the training, I soon realized how common my experience was: a lot of people had tried for dozens of jobs before taking a chance on Revature. Around week three, my cohort’s trainer told me that the then vice president of technology, wanted a word with me. Oh no, I thought. Was I in trouble? I knew I talked a lot. Was I asking too many questions?

It turned out the VP didn’t want to fire me: he wanted to hire me! With my appetite for learning, he thought I had potential as a Revature trainer. I accepted, and everything turned around so fast that I actually wound up assisting with the training of my own cohort!

Revature has scaled up quickly, too, from around a dozen trainers when I joined to many times that number today. It has been beautiful to see the business grow, especially because I know first-hand the impact we have on so many lives. Since joining the company, I have directly trained around 150 associates and have supervised the training of many more as I have gotten more senior.

My favorite part of the job is the same as ever: seeing the transformation in our associates. They typically start where I started, just five years ago: frustrated and stuck. But once they start the training, it’s incredible how quickly they progress. Recently, I saw that one of my trainees had become a senior developer at Microsoft. When I congratulated him, he responded with, “I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for you.” That made my day. Our associates have talent. They have dreams. But wherever they look, they have faced locked doors. Revature opens those doors, and they step through. It’s truly a magical process.