For a lot of Americans, it probably sounds like a dream: A high-paying job in a growing field, with little training necessary. But that dream is coming true for many as the tech industry expands.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics expects technology-related fields to add hundreds of thousands of jobs by 2022. This boom is creating plenty of opportunity for people looking to enter into the industry -- even those without much experience.
Take Randall Kanna, for instance. The Sacramento native was working in marketing for seven years when she realized she was no longer being challenged by her work. So, Kanna enrolled in San Francisco-based program Dev Bootcamp -- an intensive course that teaches people to code within nine weeks of at-home study and nine weeks spent "on-campus" in Dev Bootcamp's SoMa loft space.
When News10 caught up with Kanna, she had just finished Dev Bootcamp's program and was interviewing for junior developer positions that were offering salaries between $75,000 and $85,000 a year.
"Almost every day, I have someone reaching out to me on LinkedIn, and I'm interviewing with a bunch of companies right now," she said.
Kanna's experience with Dev Bootcamp is far from unique.
"We have a lot of students that are on their second career," Dev Bootcamp site director Anne Spalding explained. "Our ages range from 17-50. And on the second careers, we have people who are actors; people who are cooks; people who were in professions like lawyers or doctors."
The program said 90 percent of its students find jobs in the industry within six months of finishing classes -- even though they have just 18 weeks of coding experience.
While Dev Bootcamp's program costs nearly $14,000, there are always ways to teach yourself how to code on the cheap. Sites like Codecademy offer free online tutorials, and in Sacramento, Hacker Lab hosts free or low-cost workshops on different programming languages. Sacramento resident Brandon Pugh has taken advantage of both of these options.
"A lot of my journey was on my own," Pugh explained. "At my own computer: Googling things, watching YouTube videos, finding out more about different languages, looking at job descriptions and looking at what languages they required you to know."
Using his new skills, Pugh was able to transition from a retail position to a job as one of the "Geniuses" at a local Apple store. As he continues to study, he's got his eyes set on a network security job at Apple. He said learning how to code has opened up a whole new world of opportunity for him.
"[I was] frustrated and looking at jobs that didn't pay enough, and I still was worried about if I could even get [those jobs]," Pugh said. "Compared to jobs that pay a lot more, that as long as I show that I have those skills, and that if I show I have the willingness to learn new things … It's just completely different."
