S24:E5 - Balancing Parenthood and Programming (Phoebe Voong-Fadel)

Today, Saron talks with Phoebe Voong-Fadel, a self-taught Frontend Developer at the National Foundation for Educational Research. After having transitioned from a successful 14-year career in Higher Education in 2017, Phoebe made the courageous decision to pursue coding full-time while balancing the responsibilities of being a mother to her two children. Along with learning about her experience balancing learning to code and being a mom we talk to Phoebe about her passions that extend beyond her professional role. She actively contributes to the coding community by writing articles for freeCodeCamp and mentors early-career developers. Show Links Partner with Dev & CodeNewbie! (sponsor) Udemy React The Collab Lab Paired programming OpenLayers Front-end Development Python CS50 JavaScript #100DaysOfCode freeCodeCamp HTML

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[00:00:05] SY: Welcome to the CodeNewbie Podcast where we talk to people on their coding journey in hopes of helping you on yours. I’m your host, Saron, and today we’re talking about going from a career in education to learning to code while raising young kids with Phoebe Voong-Fadel, Front-End Developer at National Foundation for Educational Research.

[00:00:23] PV: Before you sign up for any kind of like bootcamp, just try the free resources first because it is quite a financial commitment to actually go for a bootcamp. Just find whatever learning style suits you. So it may be like Udemy courses. It may be YouTube. It may be a bootcamp. So I would say just find what style you like to learn, and if that particular style suits you, then go for it.

[00:00:45] SY: On this episode, Phoebe talks about raising two children while learning the code, how she landed her first developer role in her experience with The Collab Lab after this.

[MUSIC BREAK]

[00:01:02] SY: Thank you so much for being here.

[00:01:03] PV: Thank you for having me, Saron.

[00:01:04] SY: So let’s start from the beginning. What career were you initially interested in?

[00:01:08] PV: Well, I kind of fell into a career really. So I did a history degree, which is completely unrelated to what I’m in now. But yeah, just kind of like fell into a career in higher education and did that for 14 years. Always had a feeling that possibly it wasn’t the right career for me, but I enjoyed it, moved up the ranks. So I can’t afford, used to work with a range of students from master’s programs to undergraduate programs, switched careers a few times within the university I worked in, which was Imperial College London, ended up in project management for IT projects at one point, and teaching and quality department. So yeah, it ranged a bit.

[00:01:47] SY: So you went to undergraduate for history. What was that like for you? What were you planning on doing with that degree?

[00:01:53] PV: I don’t know, to be honest. I kind of studied what I enjoyed and in a way what I was good at. So I really enjoyed English and history at school, but I also enjoyed IT as well. So it was kind of one of those sliding door moments, which one should I choose? So I ended up going for history purely because I enjoyed it, but I didn’t really think beyond that in terms of career, which probably wasn’t wise, but being a student and all that. So yeah. So I just sort of did what I enjoyed.

[00:02:19] SY: And then you got a career in higher education. Tell me more about that. What did you do?

[00:02:22] PV: Yeah. So I kind of started off at King’s College London. I worked with undergraduate students, kind of program management. And that was kind of like the day-to-day care of students. So it was kind of almost like client facing and it’s just taking care of their needs, making sure the courses were running smoothly, just administration really. So that was kind of my first job and I kind of stayed within that field within the university and kind of moved up, sort of moved to different programs, ended up at Imperial, looking after MBA students for a while. Pretty much that was it.

[00:02:53] SY: So how did we get from that work, which you did for 14 years, which is a pretty good chunk of time, over to front-end development? How did that leap happen?

[00:03:03] PV: It kind of happened quite slowly in a way. I kind of always felt that I didn’t know if I was doing the right kind of career. It’s kind of one of those things when you fall into it, you kind of stay in it, probably out of fear in a way that you don’t want to possibly lose your job, lose your income, and then jump to something else, which may not pan out. But yeah, I mean, I started thinking about it in 2010, ’11. So I spoke to my manager back then and he was very supportive about career development. So he said that if you want to do something a bit more technical, perhaps speaking to the learning technologists within the department. So spoke to my colleague and she recommended a HTML course. So I went on that for three days and sort of applied it here and there when I got back on the virtual learning environment, which was called Blackboard. So I did that for a bit, but it kind of never went beyond that. And yeah, so I just carried on and then I think it got to the point where if I didn’t take the plunge, I would never take the plunge. And that was in 2017.

[00:04:03] SY: What happened in 2017 that made you decide that that was going to be the pivotal year?

[00:04:06] PV: I think it was the birth of my second baby, so my daughter. So I thought, “I’m going to go on maternity leave. I have a choice about whether I should go back or not.” And yeah, so I just thought, “Okay, I’ll try a bit. Let me go and find a platform that I can use.” I mean, I used Codecademy when I was back in 2011, but my husband, who sort of acted as my mentor, he sort of recommended looking at freeCodeCamp. So he sort of reviewed the curriculum and said, “You know, you might like this one. Try it out.” So I did. And then I thought, “Okay, I’m going to go for it.” So I gave up my job and just carried on studying really.

[00:04:47] SY: How did it feel to quit what you were doing to let it go and to go full force into this new territory, this new lamp?

[00:04:54] PV: It was frightening. It was really scary.

[00:04:56] SY: Yeah.

[00:04:57] PV: I think it’s kind of more of the, “Can I do it? Am I capable of doing it? What if it all goes wrong?” And the time that you’ll be out of your job so that you can pursue this new career. So yeah, it was just absolutely frightening. But there’s a part of you thinking, “If you don’t do it, then you regret it.” So I thought no matter what the outcome was, at least I say, I’ve tried it. I’ve done it. So lucky for me, I did succeed.

[00:05:20] SY: How did you feel about freeCodeCamp? What was that learning like for you?

[00:05:23] PV: Yeah, I mean it was good. It was quite nice how you had like the editor kind of how… you can see how it renders on the page. So it was kind of like instant feedback. It was broken down into small exercises. So it was kind of like, “Oh, look,” you get a nice little tick when you’ve done it. And I think that kind of instant feedback was nice. I suppose one thing that the platform was lacking was sort of more interactive videos, which is kind of how I learn. So I would combine it with like YouTube tutorials. freeCodeCamp also do sort of video tutorials. But for me, I would sort of delve into other sort of mediums to help me learn. But yeah, it was well structured, so I just followed that.

[00:05:59] SY: What made you decide to do that versus a paid program, a bootcamp, maybe going back to school? What made you decide to go down the self-taught freeCodeCamp route?

[00:06:10] PV: University wasn’t an option. I did think about possibly going back and doing like a three-year degree, but it’s very expensive and three years out of my life when I’m in my 30s, for some that’s a possibility, but for me it kind of wasn’t really feasible. Bootcamp was an option. I mean, I didn’t rule it out, but because I suppose I had the privilege of having my husband as a mentor, he kind of guide me and kind of gave me pointers, what I needed to cover to become a front-end developer, what skills I need to have. So I had that. I’m very lucky. So I was able to learn at home self-paced. And mainly because I had the guidance and someone sort of helping me, but had I not had that, maybe a more structured program is better. But yeah.

[00:06:56] SY: So you decided to take the plunge during your maternity leave. If you didn’t have that maternity leave option, do you think you would’ve eventually gone to coding?

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