At 47, Sean looked back and decided he’d never really had a career.
“It’s been a rough ride,” he said. “I tried to get into tech in my 20s, I went to college for computer science. I liked what I learned for a while, but when I got to Java I just lost all interest in it.”
He finished a year of college, then went looking for jobs. He hop-scotched across office admin positions for years, but never felt it come together. Something had to change.
“A friend of mine who does a lot of career self-improvement had been looking at Salesforce, and had suggested it as a path for both of us to improve,” he said. “She found Calbright for us to do the free course together.”
Sean enrolled, and excelled. “I burned through most of the course in a month-and-a-half,” he said. “Then I got derailed working a temp job that sucked up most of my time, so I didn’t take the class up and finish again for another few months.”
Because Calbright is flexibly paced and student centered, that wasn’t a problem: he was able to pick right back up without penalty.
“Calbright was a good experience, being able to work remotely on it and at my own pace is great,” he said. “The team’s supportive, but I like to study independently. I’m a ‘find my own way to do it,’ kind of guy. I encountered road blocks, but I went digging through the materials which were provided for me and I got through it.”
He finished the course, it was time to look for a job. A Calbright staff member sent Sean an invitation to apply for a full time, paid apprenticeship at Bitwise Industries, a new Calbright partner organization.
“I figured there must be a catch,” Sean said, “but I got on a Zoom meeting, and I started to get more optimistic about it.”
He applied for the job, and got it. Now he’s working in tech. “I’ve always known I should be doing something like this,” he said. “I just couldn’t ever figure out how to find the right path to get there.”
More importantly for him, “Bitwise is really genuine, they are what they present themselves to be, and that makes a big difference. I want to work someplace like that.”
That’s the kind of career he wants.
