Meet the Team: Nar S., Codecademy Senior Software Engineer

Everybody’s career journey looks different — even the journeys of our own team members! That’s why we’re so excited to share stories and advice from Codecademy’s Software Engineers, Data Scientists, Product Managers, and more to show people what it’s like to work in tech.

Today we’re spotlighting Nar S. , a Senior Software Engineer on Codecademy’s Engineering team who’s been with us for two years.

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Tell us about yourself! How’d you end up working in tech?

“Like a lot of millennial kids, I was on Neopets.com coding for the first time. I was not content using pre-made layouts because I wanted a unique layout! Those CSS, HTML, and baby jQuery skills carried over to Myspace and eventually the basic websites I made for friends.

I didn't pursue coding as a career initially because my worst grade in college was from a gen ed Computer Science course (C+). I excelled in the "lab" portion of the class, which involved building websites (A+), but I failed in the written portion (regurgitating memorized computer science terms). So instead I pursued law but it wasn't for me. As a law school dropout, I was trying to decide where my career should go next.

I stumbled upon Codecademy which reignited my excitement for coding and led me to wanting to do it as a career. I self-studied for 6 months with Codecademy and other online resources. Eventually, I attended a coding bootcamp which hired me for a fellowship to teach front-end workshops to beginners! Six months after that, I got my first full-time Software Engineering job at Vimeo!”

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Tell us about your role. How would you explain your job to a stranger?

?“The most challenging part of my job is the most rewarding part as well —? which is working with new technologies I have never touched before.

Learning on your own, you are able to deep dive at your leisure, but at a job you have to learn what you need to complete the feature FAST. However, once you get over the learning curve, you come out with a whole new skill which is very rewarding.

Since joining Codecademy, my favorite projects have been adding dark mode to our learning environment, adding AI to our post-quiz review feedback, and implementing performance optimizations throughout the site.”

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What advice do you have for people interested in a role like yours?

“To do my role, I would tell people to build a simple application from front-end to back-end and to make it public. This will make you stand out as a Web Developer and also give you exposure to infrastructure and cloud practices, which are unavoidable today.

In regards to front-end skills, React is the king of front-end right now so definitely learn that framework in addition to HTML and CSS. You’ll also need to understand how JavaScript handles asynchronous requests under the hood. And learn TypeScript since many employers require it now.

For back-end, I would recommend learning Flask and Django with Python — or any back-end language and framework of your choice. Just know how to build APIs, a database, and include GraphQL!”

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What do you wish you knew before you began your career?

“BUILD SOMETHING! Online courses and documentation should of course be supplementary but will not mean anything if you don’t put it into practice. You learn a lot more by doing and you will have a lot more work to show employers. Also, networking is incredibly important. Get involved in local coding meetups and make good connections along your career journey.”

Looking for programmers to connect with? Join one of our coding clubs!

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What’s something you want to learn next?

“I want to get more involved in infrastructure or DevOps so I am going to build an app with cloud components included and CI/CD as well.”

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What’s your favorite Codecademy course?

“I took the JavaScript course TWICE back in the day. (The course is much larger now!) I also took a React course, which helped a lot in my first job. The HTML/CSS courses were definitely a good starting point as well.

More recently, I am taking the cybersecurity course.”