Mandy Arola

Mandy has been following developers & tech companies at meetups since 2016. She is NSS’s chief content wrangler, a.k.a. marketing manager. When she’s not writing blogs, managing social media, pestering instructors & graduates for content, or attending meetups, you can find her traveling the world or at home with her beloved dog Lola.
Find me on:

Recent Posts

Take A Risk... Start A New Career | Bryan Duplantis - Cohort 9
Jan 15, 2018
Bryan Duplantis had a long career in the television industry before he decided to give software development a try. Prior to bootcamp, he had no knowledge about software development and no understanding of the work that goes into building a website. He is now a technical business analyst and IT support manager. Read More

Topics: Alumni, Student Stories

Is The Effort Of Designing For User Experience Worth It?
Jan 11, 2018
Designing for user experience can save time and money. But how do you build support for designing for the user? Consider the return on investment, or ROI, of UX. A great video that breaks down the ROI of UX is from Dr. Susan Weinschenk. She shares how UX addresses the top 3 reasons software projects fail and several benchmarks to use when measuring ROI. Read More

Topics: UI/UX

Day Cohort 21 And Evening Cohort 5 Graduate to Kick-Off 2018
Jan 10, 2018
On Tuesday we graduated 25 new full stack Ruby developers and 15 new full stack C#/.NET developers. Check out their websites and podcasts. Read More

Topics: Student Stories, Hiring?

A New Financing Option With Skills Fund
Jan 5, 2018
We’re excited to announce our partnership with Skills Fund. Skills Fund offers a simple, transparent financing solution that allows students to focus on what matters- gaining skills and getting hired. Read More

Topics: News

2017 Wrap Up | A Year Of Growth
Dec 19, 2017
As 2017 comes to a close, we wanted to take a moment to reminisce about all of the great things that happened this year! We've added new programs and instructors, but our favorite thing about 2017 is the transformations our students have made. Here are a few highlights. Read More

Topics: News

From A Dead-End Job To A New Career | Graduate Spotlight
Dec 8, 2017
Cohort 20 student Sam Staff was working odd jobs as he searched for a career. His family and friends suggested software development and Sam was drawn to the creativity of it. Software development has given Sam a platform to make a difference. Here is his story... Read More

Topics: Student Stories, Hiring?

The Journey Though Coding Bootcamp | Reflections from Dr. Teresa Vasquez
Dec 5, 2017
We ask all of our students to blog weekly about what they’ve learned. This practice serves two purposes. First, it’s an easy way for students to start applying what they’ve learned week one. Second, when the learning gets tough, students can pause and reflect on how far they’ve come. We asked Cohort 21 student, Dr. Teresa Vasquez if we could share her blog and she graciously agreed. Throughout her blog Teresa shares the challenges she’s faced in an open, honest, and encouraging way. Read More

Topics: Student Stories, Learning

Nodevember Brings Opportunities For NSS Alumni
Nov 29, 2017
We spent the last two days hanging out at Nodevember meeting developers from around the country, catching up with alumni, and listening to a lot of great talks! A few of those talks came from our alumni. We heard from Delaine Wendling on D3, Matt Hamil on ReactVR (both from Cohort 15 which graduated this past January), and Aimee Knight from Cohort 4 gave a keynote on debugging stylesheets. Read More

Topics: Alumni, Community

The Learning Doesn't Stop When You Graduate | Seth Dorris - Cohort 10
Nov 27, 2017
Seth Dorris was an Army Captain prior to joining Cohort 10 at NSS. He’s now is a full-stack developer for Sierra Trading Post and the learning hasn't stopped...from databases such as PostgreSQL, SQLServer, MySQL, and MongoDB, to technologies such as Node.JS, ASP.NET, Angular and React. Seth offers advice on defining your career objectives and coding outside of work to grow your skills faster. Read More

Topics: Alumni, Student Stories

Early Adopter | Sam Walton - Cohort 1
Nov 20, 2017
When a student considers attending NSS today, many of them spend a lot of time researching the school. They look at reviews on Course Report, read our blog, comb through every page of our website, and talk with our graduates. But five years ago, none of that existed...well we had a website with a few blogs that read more like social media updates than blog posts, but there were no reviews or graduates to talk to. In fact, even the idea of a coding bootcamp was still a new concept. So who were these early adopters that decided to take a chance on NSS as part of our very first cohort? Read More

Topics: Alumni, Student Stories