Sarah

Sarah is from England and lives in Norway! 🇳🇴 She moved there in 2019 and stayed for the adventure and to enjoy the Norwegian countryside. She likes running trails and ice bathing ❄️ - as well as cooking, songwriting, watching arthouse movies, gaming, and cuddling with her cat! 😸

She has a bachelor's degree in Music 🎶 but the competitive industry led her to work in hospitality for several years. Sarah found that the job required a high level of interpersonal skills, resolving conflict, and meeting customer needs. She also had responsibility for cash flow.

Sadly she was laid off during the Covid pandemic and found herself with lots of free time. ⏰ Sarah found SheCodes while searching for online coding resources!

"I decided to focus on up-skilling myself...SheCodes opened up a whole world of opportunities...the fact it was a community built to support and teach women to code made it very approachable to me."

"SheCodes had a supportive, open community that was focused on building a portfolio, this was a huge plus for me."

Sarah had been searching for career-oriented coding workshops that gave her the chance to build her own portfolio of projects. It's essential to back up your experience with evidence and show employers what you can do!

"I loved my SheCodes experience, Matt was a great teacher and it was amazing to have all these inspiring women in similar positions to myself undertaking the same journey."

Sarah built two sophisticated projects for SheCodes Basics and SheCodes Plus - a landing page about a personal passion and an interactive weather app. Great work Sarah! 🙌

"I especially loved the weather app I built- as a UX Designer I include it on my CV to show potential employers that I have a good understanding of code and how to communicate with developers."

SheCodes represented the first step in Sarah's tech career - learning how to code gave her the skills, experience, and confidence to pursue a career in the tech sector. It also helped her make an unexpected discovery!

"SheCodes changed my life by opening the door into tech that I never knew existed for me. In particular, it was the section of the course on UX/UI Design that introduced me to this field. It led to me pulling off an amazing career transition from waiter to UX/UI Designer in 18 months."

Coding is a skill that can be applied to many different roles in tech. It demonstrates to an employer that you're able to communicate with web developers on their level. It can also show that you have a wider interest in web development beyond one specific field. Sarah was successful in showcasing her passion for UX/UI design with the help of her portfolio! 🤩

We're thrilled that Sarah secured a job as a UX/UI intern at a small startup in the summer of 2022!

"This helped me build my practical working experience. Now I'm taking my next career step, and I'm super excited to be starting a new role next year as a UX/UI Designer for a scale-up working in the FinTech industry."

Sarah's career is going from strength to strength - her responsibilities will involve participating in product development discussions, taking a role in the process, feature prioritization and software architecture. She will work in a cross-functional team of around ten people with diverse skillsets.  Congratulations Sarah! 🥳 

Sarah's advice, for any women reading, is that if you're not sure about entering the tech sector - don't doubt yourself!

"If you're ready for a challenge and to embrace the journey that a career change into tech takes, do it! We need more women! If you're anything like me, a career in technology never felt like an option when growing up. SheCodes made me feel included and provided a community of inspiring women undertaking similar journeys. More women should know that tech is an option!"

Sarah's SheCodes Basics Testimonial

“I've really loved taking part in the SheCodes Basics course. The course is engaging with its concise tutorials, where you can put what you've learnt to use straight away in the exercises. The format of the course has helped me to hold myself accountable, I love the deadlines and knowing that I'm working towards a final project where I can put everything I've learnt to use! I've been wanting to start my coding journey for 12+ months but have been stuck in tutorial purgatory until I found SheCodes. I feel that I'm really making progress and the community on Slack makes asking for help, and engaging with the SheCodes community, very easy.”

 
Sarah's SheCodes Plus Testimonial

 “The SheCodes Plus course has taught me and challenged so much. I found this course comprehensive and substantial, and it also took me out of my comfort zone and enabled me to learn much more JS than when I started. This course was particularly good because I have been able to add my new knowledge to a project that I am proud to include in my portfolio! Putting the knowledge we learnt to practice in the final project was incredibly rewarding and I can't wait to start reaching out to potential new employers!”