Austin Parker of Part-time Web Development Evening 16 found his way to the tech industry after years of working in event management and marketing. He has a Bachelor of Science from MTSU and has recently finished his Full-Stack Bootcamp at NSS. With a versatile career background, he's almost 3 months into his first job as a software developer after completing his year-long Part-time Web Development Bootcamp at Nashville Software School (NSS).
What was your favorite part of your NSS experience?
“Dr. T! She is the real deal. As far as my tech career goes I’d say that she’s my first real mentor. She’s extremely knowledgeable and is an expert at making difficult concepts graspable by newbies. The really impressive part is that she takes the time to connect with every student and while doing other things like managing a team of devs at work, winning (and/or placing) at Hackathons, doing podcasts, being there for her family and leading things like book club before class begins. The list probably goes on, these are just things I know about. I don’t get how someone has the energy and drive to do all that, but it certainly showed me that a lot is possible.”
What was your favorite capstone project and what about it made it your favorite?
“The idea for my front-end capstone came while watching the previous cohort present their capstones. I was trying to think of something that people (including myself) would actually use, and my idea was to make a “sight word game” for my 3 kids. The way it’s set up is that the parent gets on the app and picks a pre-made list, they cycle through the words of that list, and if their kid can read it, they select “right”; if they miss it, they select “wrong”. If the child gets all 6 of the words right, they get a badge for that list that is displayed on their home screen. There is also an admin side of the app where an admin can add new lists. I bit off a bit more than I could chew at first and Dr T helped to reframe the issue so that I could work through it. We still use it every now and then to go over words, and I’m pretty proud of how it turned out.”
HIRED
Austin Parker found a job before his cohort’s Demo Day and now works at Twin Sun Solutions as a software developer. “I’m really loving it. The company is awesome,” he shares. “I’m learning so much everyday working on projects and talking to devs that have way more experience than I do. I’m still coming to terms that I’m actually a developer.”
Get to know more about Austin’s NSS experience by listening to his podcast below!
Meet more of the graduates from Part-time Web Development Cohort Evening 16 by visiting their class website!
