Reigniting a Career: Linda Kovacs’s TripleTen Story

When Linda Kovacs was a young girl in Romania, she had her first taste of coding. A teacher offered her after-school lessons on multiple languages, and it changed her life. “When somebody asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, I always said, ‘I want to make robots.’”

So she began a career in tech. But over time, she found her expertise falling short; the tools of the trade were changing.

Here’s how she joined TripleTen, refurbished her tech expertise, and kept making that childhood ambition a reality.

A start in tech

After studying at a computer science university, Linda moved to Italy. There, she held numerous jobs such as journalist, interpreter, and translator. But the role that really spoke to her was all about tech. In it, she worked as a web developer, web designer, graphic designer, and IT consultant — a whole team wrapped into one. It sparked the interest she’d first discovered as a child, and she wanted to pursue it further.

This ended up bringing her to the US. She’d always wanted to live in America, and now she had a job that could take her across the Atlantic. Stateside, she worked as a software engineer and designer, but she began noticing something unsettling: the tech she knew how to use was slowly antiquating. “We are living in an era where every day software development is changing, and we always have to be on top of it.”

She decided to refresh her skills.

Revitalizing her knowledge

She started as many other people do: with free resources. But something wasn’t adding up. The courses just weren’t comprehensive enough. As she puts it, “I really wanted to have end-to-end training from beginning to end. The front end, the back end, databases, to put everything together.”

Then, as she was scrolling through Twitter, Linda found out about Women Who Code, an international non-profit that supports women who want to pursue careers in tech. Through them, she discovered TripleTen. She liked what she saw, and she decided to enroll.

It was the education she had been looking for. Also, thanks to the community, she had opportunities to refine her knowledge by helping others grasp it as well. “Even if you know something, when you have to explain it to somebody who doesn’t understand, you have to make it easy — that person has to understand it. When you make it easy, you also make it easy for yourself.”

And it wasn’t just the community that made her feel like she was gearing up for something more in tech. The career prep, specifically the aid she got in crafting a portfolio_{Secrets of a Stellar Portfolio: Guidelines and Checklist}, also played a vital role. “Having a website to include all my projects, and display them right away helped me in my hiring process, as I already had all the projects in place. So, not only can I show my activity on GitHub, but I was also able to display my projects.”

Back at the top of her game

That hiring process she mentioned? It was for Accenture, where thanks to the skills and knowledge she gained at TripleTen, she’s now working as a software engineer. She can’t share too many details of her day-to-day tasks because of an NDA. After all, Accenture is a multinational company that works closely with numerous governments and top agencies. However, she can say that she’s on the design team for a product related to 401k and retirement plans.

Looking back, she credits TripleTen and her work ethic for getting here where she is.

I just always follow through and here I am! The fact that I believed in myself, I worked hard to scale myself up, and I stayed motivated and persisted — it paid off in the end. Linda Kovacs, TripleTen grad

Best of all, this all helped her realize her childhood ambitions, and she’s now exactly where she wants to be. “Living my dream is a great motivator. It’s the thing that makes me get up and get ready for the job.”

Our pitch to you

If you, too, are looking for a part-time bootcamp that will help you land a career you dreamed of as a child, then TripleTen can help. Find out more about our bootcamp and stay in-the-know about launching a great tech career by signing up for our newsletter below.