Refashioning a Career in IT: Pedro Fierros’s TripleTen Story

The phrase “a job in tech” is slippery. The person you call when your computer refuses to cooperate and the person who installs internet equipment in your house both have jobs in tech. But they’re not building or testing code before it’s released. And yet they’re so close. 

So what if they want to reskill to get that new, more in-depth role? 

Pedro Fierros has an answer: take the plunge and enroll in a bootcamp. Here’s how he joined TripleTen to gain the skills that are setting him up to transform his career.

Code-adjacent and eager for more

Pedro is an IT technician. As Pedro explained it, “Anything that goes wrong, it is my job to reach out to you, get to the bottom of it, and fix it for you. Even if you don't know what's going on. That's my job to figure out and to get working.”

Got a technical problem? He’s the guy you call. So in broad strokes, he is indeed in tech. But there is a fundamental difference between resetting passwords and testing the password authentication system to make sure it’s robust before anyone even uses it.

Pedro aspired to achieve that second realm of responsibility. It helped that his friends already in tech were encouraging him to pursue quality assurance_{QA Engineer: A Quick and Easy Guide to the Job}, or QA. “They expressed to me that they felt that I would be talented in that space.”

They highlighted that his background set him up well.

My friends mentioned to me that the particular skills that I had that would be beneficial in QA were problem solving skills and analytical skills, which I had already been using on a day-to-day basis in the IT field. Pedro Fierros, TripleTen grad

After all, knowing how to solve issues is just a couple steps away from knowing how to keep them from happening in the first place. And this is what QA is all about—poking and prodding tech products to uncover weak points that coders can then patch up. It was a natural pivot; someone who’s been handling end-user problems as much as Pedro definitely knows how programs can break.

So he started looking into pursuing this path. Bootcamps seemed to be the way to go. As he researched, he came across TripleTen. The more he read about it, the more he liked it. “I didn't know how well I would do in a bootcamp. It's the first bootcamp I had ever done. And going to TripleTen’s websites really answered a lot of the questions that I had about bootcamps in general and really calmed my nerves as far as what I was going to expect from the bootcamp.”

He enrolled in TripleTen’s QA program.

Going from fixing problems to preventing them

“Progressing through the bootcamp was very inspiring to say the least,” Pedro said. “There is one thing about the bootcamp that I will remember for a long time to come, and that is just the great community that is fostered by TripleTen.”

This community was key because, later in the program, Pedro encountered challenges. “One of the reasons that I took the bootcamp for QA is because I am not very strong when it comes to coding or programming. So when it came down to integrating the small part of coding and programming into the bootcamp, that was something that I personally struggled a lot with.”

But the tutors made sure he had the resources to master the new knowledge.

Our instructors were very well versed, and in some cases would have multiple teaching sessions on a particular topic that I reviewed multiple times until I finally had a eureka moment with the material. Pedro Fierros, TripleTen grad

When he needed support, the community had his back. When students were in a rough patch, they could reach out to each other to talk. “We all just kind of got together and said to each other, ‘I'm struggling in this area, I'm struggling with these concepts here,’ and although we couldn't solve each other's difficulties, there was that extra sense of community there.”

So, even though he was simultaneously working a full-time job and studying QA, the strain never seemed too great.

Dreaming big: what comes next

He also appreciated the career prep_{How TripleTen’s Career Center Helps You Land a Job}. “I learned a lot about how to present myself in interviews as well as how to present myself in my resume.”

He revamped his LinkedIn profile, started getting more views, and although it hasn’t led to a position in QA yet, it did help him land a new job as an IT technician. “My LinkedIn profile definitely played a hand in me becoming visible at the right time with the right people to get me to where I am today.”

And in his day-to-day work, he’s applying the knowledge and skills he gained at TripleTen. “There's plenty of skills that I learned in the bootcamp that have improved my ability to be a better technician, specifically, the skills in automation,” he said. In fact, what he learned helped him “put together and design a couple of automated processes that end up saving a lot of time both from a technician perspective and an end-user perspective.”

But that doesn’t mean he’s not still eager to get that QA job_{QA Specialist: Career Opportunities and Salary Potential} his friends said he’d be perfect for. “I'm very much planning on pursuing a QA role down the line. I am looking for the best opportunity for that.”

Our pitch to you

If you, too, are looking to revamp your career into something deeper in tech, then check out our QA bootcamp.