How I Tripled My Salary in 1 Year
I grew up lower class in San Francisco. A six figure income seemed crazy and out of reach.
- Expectations of a Bachelor Degree
- Retail & E-Commerce
- Temp Agency Placement
- Coding Bootcamp
- Job Hunting as a Bootcamp Graduate
Expectations of a Bachelor Degree
During college, a life goal of mine was to make an $80,000 salary. That was a realistic goal for my Bachelor’s degree in Public Health Science, given that the average salary is between $45,000 to $90,000 depending on the position (according to careersinpublichealth.net).
Lost On The Career Path
Finding a job after college was not easy. Getting an interview was difficult, and of the few interviews I landed, none led to a job offer. I eventually ended up working at Macy’s as a Sales Associate in the home department, getting paid minimum wage with no benefits. I also returned to a job I did while I was a student at a small e-commerce company cataloging products and fulfilling orders.
Finding A Job Through Temp Agencies
With my career going nowhere, I quit my jobs, left my college town and moved back to San Francisco with my parents. Since I couldn’t land a job the traditional route, I signed up at a temp agency hoping to have the opportunity to demonstrate my abilities. A contract position doing tedious data entry at a local pest control company converted to a full time gig with growth opportunities.
As responsibilities opened up within the company, I was able to prove my capabilities and took on new roles. I went from Data Entry, to Accounts Payable, to Data Analyst and Database Manager. If there was a way to improve the data entry work flow, I would figure out how to do that through Microsoft Excel & Access automation. It was basically programming in VBA (Visual Basic for Applications).
Pest control is kind of related to Public Health. It’s necessary for businesses (especially food related) to have proper pest control in order to pass health inspections. However, my salary wasn’t even close to my target salary of $80,000. I would probably never get there if I stayed at the same company. Out of all the work I do, building out automated processes was the aspect that I enjoyed most. Computer programmers make a lot of money right? If I actually enjoyed the work, it was obvious that I should change careers. I didn’t study computer science in college, but a bunch of “web development bootcamps” had been popping up. That was my in!
Coding Bootcamp
After doing research on the many different bootcamps, the one that best met my needs was App Academy. They didn’t have up-front tuition which was important. I couldn’t afford $18,000 with my limited savings and student loan debt. Add on the fact that I would be unemployed throughout the duration of the program and until I land a software developer job afterwards - who knows how long that will take?
While App Academy is a 3 month bootcamp, it is still a big time commitment. The fee for AppAcademy is a percentage of your first year’s salary once you complete the program and receive a job offer. Your job application process is transparent to App Academy, using their application tracker. The tuition fees are waived if you are still unemployed after 1 year of applications.
Breaking into the Tech Industry
It took me 9 months after graduating the boot camp to get a full stack engineer job at a medium sized San Francisco based company (~500 in product & engineering). Every day was a grind - working on side projects, practicing algorithms, and submitting job applications (it was an App Academy requirement to submit 40 apps a week). After 1 full year of unemployment, I could finally see the light at the end of the tunnel. I was officially a software engineer!
In 1 year, I effectively tripled my salary. With the signing bonus, I was able to pay off almost half of my student loan principal immediately. For the first time in my life, I could contribute the annual maximum to my 401k and Roth IRA... What? You can’t contribute to a Roth IRA if your salary is over the limit? I never thought this was ever going to be an issue.
