On having more job options and finding the lifestyle that suits you
Jaycee was in the remote January 2017 cohort. Before Makers, she was a technical consultant, and now works for Immersive Labs
The winners of the Women in Software Power List were rising stars in the UK’s coding community. Jaycee Cheong was one of them, due to her incredible trajectory in tech described by the below nomination:
Since joining Immersive Labs, Jaycee has gone from individual contributor to manager in less than a year. She has has proven her ability to exercise technical leadership and team management to foster an inclusive and safe environment for developers to thrive in.
In her own time, Jaycee is also an organising member of Women Who Code Bristol, Codebar Bristol and Bristol Tech Volunteers, while also having ran several Global Diversity CfP workshops, in 2018, 2019 and 2020 respectively.
Jaycee’s role at Immersive Labs has enabled her to contribute to the delivery of a practical and engaging cyber security upskill platform. However, it is her passion for the tech community that has seen her embrace her own self-development, by doing away with traditional classroom-based learning and proving the capabilities of on-demand cyber security training.
Jaycee’s mission for her immediate future is to learn more about building an inclusive and positive space for underrepresented people in tech to grow and bring their best selves to the industry.
Giving back to the tech community, be it through informal talks, coaching or mentoring, is at the heart of Jaycee’s motivation. In her own words, ‘happy teams make great working professionals, who in turn make excellent products’.
We are very proud that Jaycee trained at Makers. We caught up with her to talk to her about her experiences.
“Before Makers, I was a technical consultant focusing on project management. I worked with developers on the job, and coming from a social science background, the mix of technical and social aspect of the development work was very attractive to me.
I was fortunate to have found my first developer role in Bristol on week 10 of my training at Makers. Since then I’ve worked as developer, tech lead, engineering manager and in May, I’m going to join Bryter as a cloud infrastructure engineer, working fully remote.
The benefits of training remote at Makers…
You have the extra challenge of being able to communicate effectively (written or verbal) and I can promise you the effort will pay off.
Being an effective remote student and worker means you have more options in the job market and finding the work-life balance or lifestyle that suits you.
The time I would’ve spent commuting, is switched to other mindful activities, such as cooking and yoga at home.
When it came to getting to know my cohort…
I really enjoyed our end of week retro, where we used to stick around to chat about our weekend plans.
After each pairing session, we’d have a short debrief of how the session went, and it was always great to hear what others were feeling, and helped me to share my views.
I also ran a few workshops on the weekends for extra peer tutoring and that helped me build relationships with my peers.
The challenges of remote is there is a temptation to keep going.
I made the effort to shut the door on my home office at the end of our learning hours, to create the physical barrier between home and work life.
There would always be times I felt stuck and it took me a while to ask for help. Sticking with the pairing schedule was incredibly important.
There were times we’d have someone in the cohort without a pairing partner, we invite them to join our pair. It did take a bit more effort, however it was important that no one got left behind.
My advice for others considering a career change into tech
Talk to others and ask plenty of questions! I’ve found it super useful to attend meet-ups and talk to other developers or anyone who is going through the career change.
There are many Twitter conversations such as #CodeNewbie and other form of Q&A online, and I’ve emailed role models in the tech industry, and received so many useful tips and advice.
In fact, feel free to reach out to me on Twitter, as I’m always happy to help!
