Launch School Podcast

S3E3: Bytes — Why Did You Choose Launch School?

August 5th, 2021  |  Season 3  |  16 mins 55 secs

A question we've all asked at some point or another is why should I go to Launch School? Maybe you're past that point, or maybe you're still trying to figure it out. Either way, listen in to hear the voices of eleven different people from the Launch School community share their answers to that very question.

S3E2: An update from Gabe, Arthur, and Ben on friendship and teamwork through Capstone, the Job Hunt, and as professional Software Engineers

July 19th, 2021  |  Season 3  |  56 mins 31 secs

Previously in Season 2, Chris talked with Gabe, Ben, and Arthur to share their story on how they, as a group, supported one another through the Core curriculum. That episode highlighted the importance of community and friendship.

In this episode, Gabe, Ben, and Arthur are back with us to share more! They update us about their journey through Capstone, the job hunt, working as software engineers and meeting each other in person for the very first time.

S3E1: Barbara Oakley on Learning How to Learn & How Fundamentals Make All the Difference

June 15th, 2021  |  Season 3  |  1 hr 7 mins

In today's episode, Launch School students Jenae and Mandy interviewed Barbara Oakley. Dr. Oakley is no stranger to Launch School students — her Learning How to Learn course is a required part of the preparation to being a student! The conversation has many gems, including what it’s like being a woman in STEM and how programming is a form of art.

S2E11: Q&A Capstone, Assessments, DPP, & 2020 Salaries with Chris

May 15th, 2021  |  Season 2  |  1 hr 7 mins

In this episode, Staacy and I held a Zoom Q & A. I was happily surprised by the wide-range of topics that we got to dive into. Questions ranged from knowing if you’re on track for Capstone, when and how to get a job, how your age affects a career in tech, how to know if Launch School is for you, and how the Deferred Payment Program works.

S2E10: Conference on Study Habits by The Social Network with Liz, Jesse, and Katarina

February 14th, 2021  |  Season 2  |  1 hr 19 secs

education, learn to code, learning, programming

In this episode, I caught up with Liz, Jesse, and Katarina to chat about another peer-led community group at Launch School called "The Social Network" and the recent conference they put on focused on study habits.

S2E9: Student Panel Discussion

November 18th, 2020  |  Season 2  |  1 hr 1 min

education, programming

This is a slightly different episode in that it’s a recording of a webinar we did a few weeks ago about our Deferred Payment Program. Now why would we include a webinar in the podcast? Well, the reason is because this webinar is actually a panel of Launch School students and the conversation is mostly about their journey through Launch School, so I thought it’d be suitable for the podcast.

S2E8: Community Learning at The Spot with Leena, Rodney, and Christian

October 31st, 2020  |  Season 2  |  44 mins 19 secs

education, learn to code, learning to code, programming

In this episode, I caught up with Leena, Rodney, and Christian who started a peer-based study group within the Launch School community called SPOT, which stands for Study, Practice, Overlearn, and Teach. This is, arguably, one of the most important topics for us as a mastery-based learning program.

S2E7: Sunny Beatteay on Landing a Dream Job and Getting Promoted

July 23rd, 2020  |  Season 2  |  1 hr 8 mins

education, programming

Sunny talks about his job as a Senior Software Engineer at Digital Ocean, how he got there, and how he got promoted so quickly.

S2E6: Michael Mentele - From Launch School to making $250k at Facebook

May 17th, 2020  |  Season 2  |  42 mins 45 secs

In this episode, I asked one of our very first Capstone graduates to share with us what’s been going on a few years removed from graduating Capstone. Michael joined Launch School in 2016, finish Capstone in 2017, and is now making “quarter of a million” at Facebook working on the Oculus VR team.

S2E5: Nick Calibey on landing a six-figure remote Software Engineer role

April 18th, 2020  |  Season 2  |  47 mins 42 secs

education, programming

In this episode I got a chance to speak with Nick Calibey, a Capstone graduate and software engineer at TimescaleDB. We talked about how he went from getting his Masters in Theological Studies to now working on Cloud Infrastructure making 6 figures all working remotely from Tulsa, Oklahoma.

S2E4: Gabe, Arthur, and Ben on the importance of studying together and community

March 28th, 2020  |  Season 2  |  44 mins 59 secs

education, learning to code, programming

Gabe, Ben, and Arthur share their story about how they, as a group, are supporting and helping each other through the Core Curriculum and the importance of community.

S2E3: Sasha Prodan - 3 year journey to software engineering

March 9th, 2020  |  Season 2  |  55 mins 10 secs

education, programming

I catch up with Sasha Prodan, who describes her multi-year journey to her high-paying software engineering role. Sasha arrived in the US as an immigrant, worked retail jobs to support herself, and spent 3 years completing her transition to a software engineering role in San Francisco.

S2E2: Julius Zerwick on path to Software Engineer at DigitalOcean, writing a book, and comparing coding bootcamps

February 7th, 2020  |  Season 2  |  48 mins 27 secs

education, programming

Capstone graduate and frequent Launch School Tech Talk speaker, Julius Zerwick comes on the podcast to chat about his Software Engineer job at DigitalOcean, software salaries in NYC, the importance of soft skills, pros/cons of coding bootcamp vs Launch School, and his upcoming book Make Sense of Distributed Systems from Manning.

S2E1: Tannr Allard - $120k job first, college after

January 19th, 2020  |  Season 2  |  42 mins 41 secs

education, programming

In this first episode of Season 2 of the Launch School podcast, I chat with Capstone graduate Tannr Allard about his reflections on going from leaving college to a $120K job to working in blockchain development.

Meet a Student: Letladi Sebesho

May 7th, 2017  |  Season 1  |  22 mins 24 secs

In this episode, we speak with Letladi Sebesho, a South African developer who recently completed all (well, most) of the Launch School courses. He talks about how Launch School compares with his computer science courses, his job hunt process, and also...

Meet a Student: Jay Shenk

April 1st, 2017  |  Season 1  |  29 mins 4 secs

In this episode, Jay Shenk talks about changing career goals from an aspiring clarinetist to a programmer and how he applies what he learned as a trained musician to programming. Jay’s been at Launch School for around a year and shares some advice...