There is something special for me about the road-trips my partner and I took while we lived in Ireland.
We traveled along the Irish coast, often leaving on a Friday right after work.
The feeling I had when we left Dublin's busy streets and reached the countryside was special - I knew we were bound to places where we could really disconnect, the sheep population would seriously outnumber the human one and I would be able to see nature's beauty in all her power.
Working at CodeOp has been an empowering experience for me.
Working in a StartUp environment means I have had the chance to learn many things very quickly, and I was able to discover new skills that I never knew I had - who would have thought only one year ago that I would be acting in a short movie?
I think all the stories of our former students are special, but if I have to chose one, it would be one of the students of our first cohort.
She didn't have much luck with her work life before the boot camp, and she kept to herself throughout the first half of the program.
Already during the boot camp, it was powerful to see how her confidence grew and how much of her personality started to show in everything she did. But what was most powerful to me was witnessing how securing a good job has led her to change many aspects of her life. She's out there now, the only female developer in the office, and rocking it. She wants to mentor other women, she wants to support the community, she wants to learn more - she's an inspiration.
As I don't have any previous experience in technology, I would choose the part-time Full Stack Development program. Given my part-time work as a photographer, learning how to create web applications would allow me to provide an extra service to some clients like designing a wedding website for example.
In my opinion, what makes CodeOp unique is the atmosphere of openness to feedback among the staff and the students, and how committed we are to not only giving our students the best possible education but also to creating a strong community of people wanting to diversify the tech scene.
I feel especially proud of my team when I think about how far we've come since last year: it was only 3 of us when we started, and now we have a growing number of professionals that are involved with the program at different levels.
From my Office Manager's perspective, I think the most important factor in being a successful company is caring. Caring about what the staff needs and what the students need. It goes from telling your boss to shut down the computer for 20 minutes and take a walk outside, to buying emergency chocolate croissants when the students are having a particularly hard day.
A successful business to me is one that values the well-being of all the people involved with it.