From Fashion to Software Engineer with Alison Yoon [Podcast #130] [Video]

On this week’s episode of the podcast, freeCodeCamp founder Quincy Larson interviews Alison Yoon. She’s a Software Engineer who started off in fashion design and taught herself to code using freeCodeCamp.

We talk about:

– What it’s like to work in fashion. “You’re surrounded by exhausted, unhappy people.”

– How she used freeCodeCamp and the 100DaysOfCode challenge to learn to code and start her software development career

– How she learned English and how to work on engineering teams in the UK.

– How she’s leading the Korean translation effort for the freeCodeCamp community, with 10,000s of people now reading Korean articles each month

Can you guess what song I’m playing on my bass during the intro? It’s from a 1985 song.

Also, I want to thank the 9,779 kind people who support our charity each month, and who make this podcast possible. You can join them and support our mission at: https://www.freecodecamp.org/donate

Links we talk about during our conversation:

– freeCodeCamp’s Korean edition, including Quincy’s “Learn to code and get a developer job” book translated into Korean: https://www.freecodecamp.org/korean/news/learn-to-code-book/

– Alison on Twitter: https://twitter.com/aliyooncreative

– Devil Wears Prada trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ZOZwUQKu3E

Chapters

0:00:00 Introduction and Background
0:10:41 Transitioning from Fashion to Tech
0:33:49 Transitioning to the UK and Finding a Job
0:45:06 Working at Octopus Energy and Kraken Technologies
0:52:02 From Graphic Design to Web Development
0:58:26 The Benefits of Pair Programming
1:21:51 Making Programming Resources Accessible through Translation