Nicole Archambault is a self-taught web developer and the creator of La Vie en Code, a podcast, blog, and online course dedicated to helping other self-taught web development students, via Medium
I entered the tech industry in 2015, when I was unexpectedly let go from my job at a mobile POS app startup. I stood outside on the corner, genuinely unsure of what my next steps would be.
I had attempted a major in Computer Science at Wellesley, but was ultimately discouraged because I just couldn’t keep up with the abstract information I was expected to retain.
Getting started
After being let go, I decided to teach myself to code. I’d always loved dinking around on the web. I built my first online blog at 14 or something, and was over the moon when some random blog rating account gave me a 10/10. Ah, simpler times.
I decided to use a platform I’d heard of, based in Portland where I was, called Treehouse. They told me that I could learn the skills to get a job in web development, and I believed them. I had no real solid goal, but I knew I had to take action SOON.
I flew through the material, because Treehouse’s video-based learning platform allowed me to pause, go back, speed up, slow down—all features I’d never had available to me in a classroom setting.
I started a little blog called La Vie en Code. I wrote random things in it—what I was working on, thoughts on a particular technology. My early posts are hilarious. I was so damn happy just to be learning.
About a month later, I discovered a Facebook group called Ladies Storm Hackathons.