In today's episode, Callie chats with Launch School TA Srdjan as he shares his journey to and through Launch School. He generously shares about a wide range of experiences, from how his cats lovingly torture him to what scared him the most as a student/TA at Launch School. He shares lessons learned from being a student, and what he believes makes a genuinely good Capstone student (it's probably not what you think). There's also plenty of jokes and laughter — and who knew Srdjan could laugh ? You...
Sep 27, 2021•56 min
In today's episode, students from Women Who Code share what the group is, what the meet-ups are like, and how they've found a sense of belonging and community. These students talk about the importance of having a supportive community while going through the ups and downs of online learning at Launch School. They generously share their thoughts and experiences through their time spent in wwcode: Elizabeth talks about how and why wwcode started Dana and Bernardette share insights on what it's like...
Sep 01, 2021•22 min
In this episode, siblings John and Adam Isom come chat about their journeys working together through Launch School. Adam had completed a different coding bootcamp and was in the midst of completing his CS degree when he switched to focus on Launch School. John walked away from a college scholarship to study CS to do Launch School. Why did they do that? How did it work out? Give this episode a listen to find out! In this conversation, we chatted about: * Attending college vs getting a job straigh...
Aug 13, 2021•58 min
Today's episode is the first of a new series called Bytes: a collection of sound-bites from the Launch School community that answer a focused question. A question we've all asked at some point or another is why should I go to Launch School? Maybe you're past that point, or maybe you're still trying to figure it out. Either way, listen in to hear the voices of eleven different people from the Launch School community share their answers to that very question. There's also something new at the end ...
Aug 05, 2021•17 min
Previously in Season 2, Chris talked with Gabe, Ben, and Arthur to share their story on how they, as a group, supported one another through the Core curriculum. That episode highlighted the importance of community and friendship. In this episode, Gabe, Ben, and Arthur are back with us to share more! They update us about their journey through Capstone, the job hunt, working as software engineers and meeting each other in person for the very first time. Gabe, Ben, and Arthur take us through their ...
Jul 20, 2021•57 min
In today's episode, Launch School students Jenae and Mandy interviewed Barbara Oakley. Dr. Oakley is no stranger to Launch School students — her Learning How to Learn course is a required part of the preparation to being a student! The conversation has many gems, including what it’s like being a woman in STEM and how programming is a form of art. She generously shared her own journey of learning how to learn, why “follow your passion” is actually not great advice, why taking your time greatly im...
Jun 15, 2021•1 hr 7 min
In this episode, Staacy and I held a Zoom Q & A. I was happily surprised by the wide-range of topics that we got to dive into. Questions ranged from knowing if you’re on track for Capstone, when and how to get a job, how your age affects a career in tech, how to know if Launch School is for you, and how the Deferred Payment Program works. Whether you’re new to Launch School, been here for awhile, or trying to figure out if you should try it, I shared a lot about why we do what we do and how ...
May 15, 2021•1 hr 7 min
In this episode, I caught up with Liz, Jesse, and Katarina to chat about another peer-led community group at Launch School called "The Social Network". We previously chatted with The SPOT community leads here on the podcast, but The Social Network differs in that its mission is geared towards social events and having fun. Last month, The Social Network put on an amazing Conference on Study Habits. I have never heard of a conference on studying before, even though studiousness is the primary attr...
Feb 14, 2021•1 hr
Welcome to another episode of the Launch School podcast. This is a slightly different episode in that it’s a recording of a webinar we did a few weeks ago about our Deferred Payment Program (https://medium.com/launch-school/announcing-our-deferred-payment-program-f29eb08e64fb). Now why would we include a webinar in the podcast? Well, the reason is because this webinar is actually a panel of Launch School students and the conversation is mostly about their journey through Launch School, so I thou...
Nov 19, 2020•1 hr 1 min
In this episode, I caught up with Leena, Rodney, and Christian who started a peer-based study group within the Launch School community called SPOT, which stands for Study, Practice, Overlearn, and Teach. This is, arguably, one of the most important topics for us as a mastery-based learning program. I’ve been observing this group for a few months and have been blown away by their organization, professionalism, quality of the study sessions, quality of the session leads, and in general the culture...
Nov 01, 2020•44 min
Welcome to Season 2, Episode 7 of the Launch School podcast. In this episode, I had a chance to chat with Sunny Beatteay, a senior software engineer at Digital Ocean and Capstone alum. This conversation was recorded a few months ago back in March, 2020. Many of you who hang out in the Launch School chat room have probably seen his name there. Sunny is always amazing to speak with because he’s so open and willing to share. Despite all his achievements, he has no ego and I hope through this conver...
Jul 23, 2020•1 hr 8 min
In this episode, I asked one of our very first Capstone graduates to share with us what’s been going on a few years removed from graduating Capstone. Michael joined Launch School in 2016, finished Capstone in 2017, and is now making a “quarter of a million” at Facebook working on the Oculus VR team. We always talk about Launch School being a long-term investment, so now we get to see what the returns on that investment can look like years down the road. I loved this conversation because despite ...
May 17, 2020•43 min
In this episode I got a chance to speak with Nick Calibey, a Capstone graduate and software engineer at TimescaleDB. We talked about how he went from getting his Masters in Theological Studies to now working on Cloud Infrastructure making 6 figures all working remotely from Tulsa, Oklahoma. Nick is one of the first remote people we took into Capstone, so the remote job hunt is a topic we focused on in this conversation. Now this episode was recorded late 2019; it is now April, 2020. At the time ...
Apr 18, 2020•48 min
I asked Gabe, Ben, and Arthur to come on the podcast today to share their story about how they, as a group, are supporting and helping each other through the Core curriculum and talk about the importance of community. To me, they’ve cracked the code with regards to mastery-based learning. There are so many positives to mastery-based learning and if you’ve been listening to the podcast and following what we’re doing at Launch School, you know the results we’re seeing and how employers are respond...
Mar 28, 2020•45 min
I catch up with Sasha Prodan, who describes her multi-year journey to her high-paying software engineering role. Sasha arrived in the US as an immigrant, worked retail jobs to support herself, and spent 3 years completing her transition to a software engineering role in San Francisco.
Mar 09, 2020•55 min
Capstone graduate and frequent Launch School Tech Talk speaker, Julius Zerwick comes on the podcast to chat about his Software Engineer job at DigitalOcean, software salaries in NYC, the importance of soft skills, pros/cons of coding bootcamp vs Launch School, and his upcoming book Make Sense of Distributed Systems from Manning.
Feb 07, 2020•48 min
In this first episode of Season 2 of the Launch School podcast, I chat with Capstone graduate Tannr Allard about his reflections on going from leaving college to a $120K job to working in blockchain development.
Jan 20, 2020•43 min
In this episode, we speak with Letladi Sebesho, a South African developer who recently completed all (well, most) of the Launch School courses. He talks about how Launch School compares with his computer science courses, his job hunt process, and also how he's been doing now that he's been working for a few months.
May 07, 2017•22 min
In this episode, Jay Shenk talks about changing career goals from an aspiring clarinetist to a programmer and how he applies what he learned as a trained musician to programming. Jay’s been at Launch School for around a year and shares some advice and tips around how to make the most out of your Launch School experience.
Apr 02, 2017•29 min
Terry Lee came on the podcast today to talk about her experience so far at Launch School. Terry has been at Launch School for about a year and has aced every assessment so far. She talks about her previous career as a product manager, getting laid off, and then doubling down on her own education. We also talked about her recent participation at a hackathon and how she contributed despite not knowing the technology stack being used.
Mar 15, 2017•26 min
Naveed is has been learning at Launch School for around a year and has been an outstanding student so far. He's nearing the end of the curriculum and stopped by the podcast today to share his story. We talked about the unique challenges of Mastery-based Learning from a remote village in Pakistan. He has to deal with issues ranging from consistent internet connectivity to pricing -- you won't believe what he's had to do to pay for his subscription to Launch School.
Feb 27, 2017•37 min
Darren Burgess stopped by the podcast to talk about his experience at Launch School. Before starting at Launch School, he spent many years as a Filemaker Pro developer and even attended a different coding “bootcamp”. We talked about the learning process he’s been on and why he almost left Launch School.
Feb 13, 2017•33 min
Rachel is currently in the "Advanced" phase of the program, having completed all back end and front end courses. She stopped by to share her experience so far at Launch School. We talked about: her art and philosophy background and how that's affected her programming journey balancing Launch School with a fulltime job Women Who Code and women in tech her experience going through the Advanced courses the importance of gaining confidence in what you do...
Jan 24, 2017•31 min
In this interview, Tommy Caruso shares with us his strategy of balancing a family, kids, finishing up his Computer Science degree, and Launch School all at the same time. Oh, and he’s also interning in his spare time. We had a great time chatting about time management, study habits, and the sacrifice it takes to really learn things to depth. Listeners may also be interested in his take on comparing his Computer Sciences courses with that of Launch School.
Jan 09, 2017•47 min
One of our students, Karl Lingiah, took time to answer some questions and talk about his journey so far at Launch School. He shares his ideas on learning in general, and specifically what his experience has been so far at Launch School. Note: we had a sub-optimal internet connection, so the audio is not the best, but the full talk is still worth a listen.
Jan 04, 2017•36 min
