First week at LEAP Program Blog

I couldn’t believe it when I was accepted for the LEAP Program, especially as one of my whiteboard interview questions didn’t go very well. It was really hard for me to say goodbye to everyone at Ergometrics, because I had been enjoying both the work I was doing there and the people I was working with so much, but I really feel like this was a once in a lifetime opportunity to really challenge myself and move from “web developer” to “software engineer”.

It was really exciting to hear that three of us would be working on the Azure Compute team, where we will have the choice of two projects - one in data analytics for Azure usage, the other one being working at the intersection between Azure and Node.js. After two months of bootcamp-style classroom work, we will move to our different sponsoring teams throughout Microsoft, which include Xbox and CRM. At the end of the four-month program, we will all present the results of our two-month projects to the rest of LEAP.

Another goal of the LEAP program is to continue to expand access to learning coding to underdeveloped countries. We were given a Raspberry Pi that we've installed Node and Apache on, and the Founder of LEAP and our classroom teacher, William Adams, said that one of his goals was to make everything that we learn self-contained on the Raspberry Pi. Because RPi's are so cheap and because that way learning coding won't be dependent on internet access, this can also create a way to teach coding in parts of the world without reliable internet access.

One thing that impresses me about the LEAP Program is that they take a really nuanced view of what “diversity” is - I guess that my international experience and work as a translator/academic really does count for something after all.

Another big surprise this week has been finding out that there are actually 6 Coding Dojo alum in our cohort. We’re all going to go take a group picture today. What are the odds of that! Coding Dojo must attract people who are really motivated to learn three different stacks.

A year ago, I was learning how to iterate over an array and console.log all the numbers from 1-100. Now after being in the field for a year, I can’t believe all of the great people that I’ve met and all of the fascinating projects I’ve been able to work on. And now I have a chance to be a SOFTWARE ENGINEER AT MICROSOFT!!! Hard work really does pay off, especially in this field.