Hello! I’m Alice and I’m an intermediate Software Engineer at Joyous. I would say I had a pretty roundabout journey into tech.

When I first left school, I went to study music. After a year, it was clear that wasn't the right path for me. From that, I moved to a Bachelor of Mechanical Engineering, which also wasn't a great fit, but I decided to stick it out. When I graduated I was sure of one thing, I didn't want to be a mechanical engineer.

I spent the next few years trying whatever seemed interesting. I did some work in radio, events, spent a year in New York City studying improv. I also fell into volunteering and working in tech education. I taught kids coding, Lego robotics, and co-founded a beginner web development course called Girl Code.

In 2019, I found myself back in New Zealand, broke from travelling, with no real plan for what came next. Through my teaching experiences, I had learnt some basic coding and enjoyed it. I had also met the folks over at Dev Academy Aotearoa. On a bit of a whim, I decided to sign up for their bootcamp.

Over the next few months, I discovered I really loved writing code. Soon after graduating, I landed my first tech role as a Junior Front-end Developer. A year later, I applied for a role at Joyous and here I am!

My favourite thing about my job is that I'm always learning and get to work with such a collaborative team. I tend to look for what’s interesting and what’s challenging and that’s exactly what I get here.”

You can download the book below 👇 - it's free!

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