The teacher who landed a developer job before finishing the course

The school's unofficial IT person

Natalie Lazaroo spent nearly a decade in classrooms before she wrote a line of code for a living. She took a degree in early childhood education, taught preschool for six years straight, then moved to an international school, where she taught primary students for about three more.

The turn came through her own timetable. One of the subjects she taught was ICT, and the syllabus included general coding through Scratch, the block-based program built around cartoon sprites. Standing in front of children explaining it, she noticed something about herself: she was good at this.

It fit a pattern she already knew. She was the tech-savvy one on staff, the unofficial IT person colleagues came looking for whenever anything technical misbehaved. Put those two things together and a thought formed. "That's where I decided, hey, coding is actually not a bad career, and I'm pretty good at it."

Part-time, because the bills don't stop

She joined Sigmaschool's part-time programme in September while still teaching full time. Quitting to study was never seriously considered. She had to work, she says plainly, because she still needed her income and there were bills to pay. Taking three clean months off to focus on nothing but the course was a luxury that didn't exist.

The discipline to learn on top of a job had been building since the pandemic, when everything moved home and online. That period taught her what self-driven study actually requires: set aside the time, put in the focus and the effort, and give yourself a deadline you take seriously.

Underneath it sits a personality trait she names without drama. "I'm the kind of person who does not like to leave things hanging and unfinished. I have to finish it." The course was going to get finished for the same reason her marking always got done.

“If you think you want to jump into tech, I think you should just go for it. It is not easy, but it's not impossible. If you put in the effort, definitely you can code.”

Hard, but not impossible

She went in without illusions, partly because nobody sold her any. When she first got interested in the course, Harris at Sigmaschool told her upfront that it was going to be hard. He was right. Juggling work and studies at the same time was tough, and she is careful never to describe any of it as a bed of roses.

What she discovered on the other side of that warning became the sentence she now repeats to others: it is challenging, but it is not impossible. The difference between the two, in her telling, is momentum. "You just have to keep the momentum going. You can't stop. If you stop, you definitely forget."

The other survival mechanism was the community. Encouragement came from peers in exactly her position, working all day and studying at night, who understood why some weeks moved slower than others. You only have to take a small step and a little effort to reach out, she says, and Sigmaschool and its students are willing to help if you ask for it.

Three hours a night, a lot of coffee

Her routine was fixed. Work ran from 8 until about 5. Then came a break of an hour or so for dinner, and after that, coding: at least three hours a night. She tried to hit that number every day, and she is upfront that it wasn't easy and that a lot of coffee was needed to make it happen.

What made the hours bearable was not being alone in them. The people who helped her came from everywhere: some from the full-time batch, some from her own part-time batch, familiar faces who remembered her from a class and picked the conversation back up whenever they crossed paths again.

But the help had to be asked for. Peers won't come to you, she says; you need to approach them. What she admired most was that when she did reach out, people were willing to help with any question she brought, however basic it felt to type out. Every time she asked, someone answered.

The Nintendo Switch clone

Her most memorable moment came about a month in, with the first real project she ever built in HTML and CSS. She was put in a group of three, and the task was to clone an existing website. The trio settled on the Nintendo Switch site, and recreating it turned out to be genuinely fun.

The finished clone did something no exercise before it had. "It's like, now I really know what coding is like for real, and I really made something out of just code." It was the first time syntax on a screen turned into a thing she had built and could point at.

Asked for the opposite, the most painful or draining moment of the whole journey, she comes up empty, and not out of politeness. "Everything after that is a challenge, but in the end it turns out good. So there's really no pain." Once you've built something and felt proud of it, the labour behind it reads differently.

JavaScript, and the impostor in the room

The hardest skill to pick up, no contest, has been JavaScript. Her explanation is specific: the difficulty isn't any single concept, it's that one question can be tackled in so many different ways, and you have to hold all those possibilities at once. Her conclusion is just as specific: once the foundation of JavaScript is solid, everything built on top of it becomes easy.

The doubts came anyway. There were times, she admits, when the impostor syndrome kicked in and the voice in her head said she wasn't good at this, that the people around her were super smart and getting everything so much faster.

Her counter is the observation that saved her nights. It looks like everybody else gets it and you don't, but actually you're not the only one who doesn't; quite a lot of people are quietly stuck on the same thing. Remind yourself of that, she says, and the fear clears up fast.

Thirty replies, three interviews

Her plan was set from the start: finish the front-end module, then begin applying for jobs without waiting to graduate. Her first move was to borrow a map. She had heard the success stories of other Sigmaschool students, so she reached out and asked them directly: what process did you follow, what did you do, how did you do it. Then she picked up from where they left off.

After that came the unglamorous part. Take the chance, build the portfolio, get everything ready, and submit as much as you can, then keep submitting. The numbers were sobering: over a span of about three months, roughly 30 companies replied, and only about three of those turned into formal interviews.

She admits the ratio wore on her, sending out so much and hearing back from so few. The lesson she extracted is the one she now hands to anyone in the same trench. "Don't give up. There will be someone who would believe in you and your persistence to learn and the desire to keep growing."

Interviews in every format

Even from three interviews, she saw the whole spectrum of how companies test career switchers. Some handed her a paper test. Some sat her at a computer and said, build this for me, this exact layout I'm asking for, right now.

Others skipped tests altogether. They simply said show me your project, then asked general questions off the back of it, things like how to inspect HTML. And if they liked what they saw, they gave her a chance.

Did she manage to answer everything they threw at her? No, she says, without dressing it up. She got hired anyway, which may be the most useful data point her story offers anyone who assumes an interview has to be aced to be passed.

The boss who would invest in her

In October, a little over a year into the part-time course, she resigned from teaching. The plan had worked in exactly the order she designed it: bootcamp, front end, applications, offer. The following month she was at work in her first tech job, at The Techno Set, a Zoho partner where the team builds systems for startups and small businesses.

She actually had a few acceptances to choose from, and the deciding factor wasn't title or pay. It was whether the person hiring her intended to see her grow. "Sometimes they don't believe in you in the initial stages. But if the boss is interested to invest in me, train me up and really lead me and guide me, that's a good start, because it's your first job." A first job, as she sees it, is supposed to be where you learn and explore.

The arrangement itself is hard to label, and she says so. Technically it's an internship, but her boss has told her his goal is to keep her long term and grow with her, the way startups do. Her first impression was a welcoming environment, and one month in, still officially onboarding, she refuses to pretend she knows the future. Asked whether she'll stay or move once she graduates, she answers honestly that she can't say yet.

Still a student at night

The job didn't end the studying. She has just started the back-end module, aiming to finish by December, which means the coding-after-dinner routine continues, only now with an employer who knows all about it. Notably, that employer was never concerned that she hadn't finished the course.

What they cared about instead were the skills nine years in education had already built: the visible desire to learn, and the fact that she doesn't shy away from asking questions when she's unsure. "That's actually one of the key elements that will get you hired," she says. "The persistency to learn and to ask."

The final project used to make her nervous, because she had no idea what to build, even as other students kept telling her the idea just comes to you. Now it has come, from an unexpected direction: it will be tied to what she's building at work, and her boss is excited about it.

As for where she lands within tech, she refuses to force it early. The role exposes her to a mix of everything, and she hasn't yet chosen between front end, back end and UX. "I always believe, try it first and you'll know." Tech is wide and vast, she says, and everything needs coding in some measure; once she finds the part that gives her that firm assurance, she'll commit to it properly.

What nine years of teaching transferred

Ask what she gained beyond the code itself and she says there are too many answers to pick from. Pressed, she chooses two, crediting her working years as much as the course: problem solving, and listening.

The second one she defends like someone who has managed classrooms. "If you're new to a company, your bosses would really appreciate your listening and your effort to work. That's what they're looking for, and it's something very hard to find these days." She agrees with the observation that too many people want to voice their opinion without listening first, and that simply not doing that makes you stand out.

She also thinks starting work while still studying is the honest preview of the career itself. Tech is not a mundane job where the learning ever stops; trends change fast, there's something new every day, AI, cloud, everything evolving, and you have to stay updated with it. Learning at night while working by day isn't a temporary hardship. It's what the job is going to be like anyway.

Just go for it

On the degree question, she only speaks for herself, and her answer is arithmetic as much as ambition. She's a working adult many years past graduation, and she cannot devote three years to a computer science degree and go through that whole process again. The bootcamp was the more reasonable idea, and the proof kept compounding: it was faster, and she had a tech job before the course was even finished.

Her advice to anyone hovering over the same decision is the shortest sentence she owns: if you think you want to jump into tech, just go for it. Not because it's easy, she is clear that it isn't, but because it's not impossible, and the gap between those two is closed by effort.

That is the understanding she says the whole journey gave her. Put in the effort and you can definitely code, whoever you were before. She taught preschool for six years and primary school for three. Now she's a developer, and still finishing her homework at night.