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Without video games, Carmen Murphy’s life would look fundamentally different. When she was younger, her copy of A Link to the Past was in English, but she was growing up in Guatemala, so she needed to play with a bilingual dictionary at hand. It led to an easy decision — she wanted to fully understand the games she loved, so she committed to mastering English.
And years later, it was because of video games that she met her husband. Mutual fans of an Overwatch streamer, they both joined the streamer’s Discord and got to chatting. Chatting turned into long-distance dating — her partner lived in the US — and dating turned into a proposal and a wedding.
So she came to the US. In the new country, she made a plan — it was time to architect a career. What if she could join the industry building the experiences woven so intimately into her life?
Pedestrian cynicism and self-doubt might have discouraged her. But with the force of her audacity and the skills she gained at TripleTen, she landed a job in gaming. Here’s how.
Debugging her pathfinding
Starting out, nothing really clicked. Carmen got a degree in psychology because of a fascination with the human mind, but a realization set in. “I loved theory, but practicing psychology was very difficult for me,” she said. So she tested out other careers, freelancing as both a copywriter and a graphic designer before moving to the US to be with her husband.
She came to the conclusion that her degree wouldn’t help her land a job in the States, so she went with what seemed good enough at the time. She took a job packing macarons at a warehouse.
The hours were decent, but I didn't see myself there for a long time. Growth was a little bit limited, and I'm 31. I really really wanted something else for myself. Carmen Murphy, TripleTen grad
In addition, the conditions weren’t ideal. “I was always standing up for several hours. We had a very tight schedule for lunch,” she said. So when an ad for TripleTen appeared on her Instagram feed, she was intrigued. She’d always been interested in tech, but had held back: “I never thought that tech was an actual viable career path for me. I always thought that it was too complicated.”
But looking into the Quality Assurance (QA) program, she saw that making the transition with the bootcamp was realistic for her — both in terms of the skills she had already cultivated and the program’s price point. She took a look at other methods of building her QA chops. She’d tried self-guided study, but it felt unmoored, and other bootcamps didn’t call to her. “There was something that just kept bringing me back to TripleTen,” she said.
She followed that feeling and enrolled.
Committing to the tutorial
From the beginning of her QA studies, Carmen could tell it was the right field for her.
It just felt like it was the career that I had been searching for for many years and I finally was able to put a name on it. Carmen Murphy, TripleTen grad
And not only was the subject matter right — the way the material was taught also fit her much better than self-guided learning. Comparing the two, she said, “The major difference is just the sense of community. Because studying is fun, but studying with other people is for me more valuable.”
It’s not just that she’s among fellow learners, though. That community spirit extends into the expert assistance she can easily access. “Here at TripleTen, I can just ask a question and a tutor is going to try to reach me as soon as possible,” she said.
This guidance proved crucial for her as she took on what she found most useful to learn — test cases. Specifically, she appreciated the instruction in organizing the cases. “The first time, it was kind of a chore. I didn't understand why we were doing it, but by sprint four, I was so grateful,” she said. “It's just such a simple but fundamental step.”
But by that time, there was something else brewing — the job search. In fact, she’d already started revamping her career search assets: “Career coaching helped me learn how to rework my resume and how to work with LinkedIn, which is something that I didn't understand until recently how important it is.”
See, hers was among the first cohorts to take our new approach — starting their job-search preparation early instead of splitting the bootcamp into the learning phase and the career-prep phase. That meant that soon after she was exposed to test cases, she was already adding that expertise to her resume and connecting it to a career down the line. This gave her confidence in her new path. “I could see my hard work and all the hours that I had been putting into this course reflected in something physical. I could see them in my resume and be like, ‘Yeah, I know how to do this,’” she said.
There was one other thing she’d been assigned to do, though. She was asked to choose her target industries and find companies from those industries in her city. Video games immediately sprung to mind, and a few local businesses popped up. One was even fairly close by. “I was like, ‘Hey, that is not so far away from my house. Let’s see if they are hiring,’” she said.
A career level-up
Even though Carmen hadn’t finished her studies, she sent her resume in. Thanks to TripleTen, she had confidence she’d be a contender. “It felt nice to be able to say, ‘Hey, yeah, I know how to do manual testing right now. I know a little bit about how to work with Jira. I know how to do test cases,’” she said.
She landed the initial screening interview. Even over the phone, she began building rapport, easily answering basic questions and having a friendly conversation about Guatemala, where the interviewer had recently visited. It went well, and Carmen was told she’d hear back about the next round in a few days. That estimate was too high — she heard back the very next day and scheduled a conversation with the team lead. It turned out to be unlike any other professional discussion she’d had before.
The interview with them was probably one of the most comfortable interviews I have ever had. The team lead was very nice to talk to. But what I liked the most was that, because it's the video game industry, one of the most important questions of the interview was, ‘What's your favorite game?’ Carmen Murphy, TripleTen grad
Her answer? The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. Based on that game, she and the lead discussed the various ways she’d test the game. And reflecting on it, she thinks the confidence she brought to that discussion thanks to TripleTen helped her stand out. “Yeah, I know how to build a test case. I know how to work with consoles, or I’m learning. I know how to do a manual test,” she said, summarizing what was running through her mind.
When the interview was over, she didn’t expect anything. “I went to lunch and I was like, ‘I don't know if they're going to call me back. It will be really nice, but if not, at least it was a very nice interview. For being my first interview in this job search, it was very nice. I hope any other one that comes is the same.’”
She didn’t have to wait long: “I came back from lunch, I sat down at my computer, I got my email up, and I found a welcoming email.”
Now she’s a Game Tester making sure video games run properly. The specifics of her work are covered by an NDA, but she can share that TripleTen set her up well.
They use almost the same system that I have been taught through the bootcamp. Carmen Murphy, TripleTen grad
She’s still finishing her studies with TripleTen, but she’s already found the career she’d been looking for — and she’s exactly where she’d hoped she’d end up: “Just knowing that I am starting in an industry where I want to stay has made my life a little bit easier.”
