Sean Mangosing is a current student at Rithm School who is making the transition from working as a web designer for a small design firm in Emeryville to full-stack web development. Outside of his rigorous hours at Rithm, you can find Sean spending time with his family at their home in Point Richmond, listening to a wide range of music on Spotify, or getting some good old fashioned line dancing in at a country bar.

Tell us a bit about your background in programming and how you decided you want to become a professional web developer.

Before attending Rithm I was a web designer. My exposure to code was always minimal as once a design was signed off, it was handed over to the developers. There was and is always something unfulfilling about building this concept in your mind and not being able to see it through. This is what sparked my interest in becoming a developer. I wanted the ability to be a part of creating a feature from concept to production. Not only helping design the look and feel for something, but build how it will function.

How did you decide that you wanted to transition away from your career and attend a bootcamp?

Being partially in the field I began to teach myself coding. At some point I hit a wall that is probably all too familiar with ‘self taught’ coders. I went on a couple interviews with some larger companies and I continued to hear the same thing. I seemed to be a good fit with their community but I needed to improve my coding skills. My self-taught experience of learning little code snippets on how to make a plugin work, along with copy and pasting someone else’s code wasn’t going to get me to my dream job. In order to become a first class developer I needed to change the way I was going. I found Rithm before their first cohort even started, at one of their hosted meetups. Immediately I knew I where I needed to be.

Is being in a bootcamp what you expected? In what ways?

Attending a bootcamp is everything I expected and more. I knew it was going to be very fast paced and challenging. From day one you hit the ground running and are being pushed out of your comfort zone. More specific to here at Rithm, the small class sizes and class community is amazing. Every day we as a class are helping each other with issues or problems that someone may have. The instructors are always available to answer any questions that we as a group or you individually have.

What is your dream project? How would you use your web development skills to contribute?

This is a hard one, being that I am an active person and coach Crossfit in my spare time. Finding a project that helps people live healthier lives or help improve people’s lives and/or lifestyles period would be awesome. On top of that, I love teaching people and sharing knowledge that I have, so finding something in the education sector would be pretty cool also.

What would you share with anyone considering attending Rithm School?

First off the teaching staff here is amazing. They really take the time to explain concepts in ways that best suit not only the class in a lecture but an individual person they are explaining it to. Second, code everyday and don’t be afraid to break something. No matter how big or small, spend at least an hour a day coding something. It will help you get comfortable with the material you are going to be learning. If you are following a tutorial be sure to try to do it on your own after. You may not remember everything or you may break something that you were previously working on, and that is ok. Sometimes the best way to learn is to break something and experiment.