Dev Apprenticeship @ IBM for one year in USA (as a 3x College dropout SWE with no degree)

what's up phonies
a lot has happened since my last
apprenticeship update in july 2019
so i think we're doing for an update
this is your first time hearing about
software engineering apprenticeships or
software development apprenticeships i
highly recommend that you check out the
links in the description there to my
other videos on the subject
and i mean i couldn't recommend it more
okay especially for someone with no
degree you know self-teaching themselves
an apprenticeship will really get you
give you that leg up and if you want to
hear about future updates about you know
post-apprenticeship life hit that
subscribe button and i'd really
appreciate it so you know we can stay in
touch all right so i'm going to answer a
few questions that i've been getting
about
all right so i'm going to answer a few
questions that i have been getting since
i posted that initial video the first
one is going to be
have you finished the apprenticeship and
i'm happy to report
okay
i'm happy to report
that i have
and this is what the certificate looks
like once you've graduated
yeah i finished in february 2020 and it
took me about seven months to finish the
program and it really just felt like the
hugest weight lifted off my shoulders
because as someone who dropped out of
college three times
and i mean i still have never finished
it felt really good to finally finish
something you know
and it really you know motivates you to
keep going and it makes you feel like
you're going in the right direction
another question that i've gotten is
um pretending to if everyone graduates
so they're wondering if everyone
graduates and get the job after
you know and this is something that we
struggled with a lot during the
apprenticeship we didn't really know and
you don't really know until
after actually after you've finished and
you get hired full time
most of our cohort was hired i'm pretty
sure as far as i know it's a very rare
case where someone doesn't make it
into a full-time position after you know
they've invested so much time and energy
into your apprenticeship so as long as
you're putting in that time and effort
into you know going through the
curriculum correctly and just you know
listening to your manager and going
through the steps necessary that they'd
be necessary for you to
move to the next step then you're gonna
be fine so another question that i've
gotten is what do i do now after the
apprenticeship
so after the right after the
apprenticeship i was given the
opportunity to join something called the
data team and what we do there is that
we perform data migrations for
businesses
so we take
businesses data and we move it into the
cloud basically
and specifically in the
sap
infrastructure so i feel like i got
really lucky because i really enjoy full
stack development that includes like you
know using javascript
for the front end and i i'm getting to
use javascript for the back end too
which is perfect so i'm getting full
stack development with my preferred
language of choice
and also get to use sql to do you know
business analysis on data data sets and
things like that for businesses to you
know give them some insights into their
data so i feel like i'm getting a good
taste of you know data science world and
the full stack development world
which i mean i couldn't be happier with
so another question i've gotten is that
if
another question i've gotten
is asking whether you have to go into
programming
so with these apprenticeships it's their
technical roles but not all of them you
know necessarily have to do the
programming so my cohort actually went
into management or you know just other
roles in organization like finance and
things like that so whatever you go in
with whatever your strengths are you
know you can play those to your
advantage whenever you finish the
apprenticeship
so you're basically taking what your
existing skill set and complementing it
with technical skills is the
apprenticeship worth it that's another
question that i've gotten and i would
have to absolutely say yes it is worth
it especially for someone with no degree
like me
and other people in my cohort also had
no degrees whatsoever and we're doing
great
in fact some of my cohort got basically
poached while they're in the
apprenticeship so you know i didn't know
how what kind of weight ibm had on a
resume but i mean if they're getting job
offers while just in an apprenticeship
then you can see how you know worth it
would be to have ibm on your resume in
general like you get a stable job
afterwards and even if you don't get
hired on full-time
just having the apprenticeship and the
then the certificate really helps you a
lot
do we have to work at the office during
the pandemic
so i feel really lucky that we were able
to work from home they asked us to work
from home starting from the beginning of
the pandemic we're one of the first
companies in louisiana right now to
enact that
and it's been great it's been like a
dream come true basically because i'm
more of an introverted type of person
and
not having a commute and being able to
work in the comfort of you know my own
privacy
it has been amazing
but i know i'm gonna have to go back to
the office eventually and uh everyone i
think everyone's gonna be going back to
the office at some point this year
hopefully at the end of the year but who
knows