Join us as we catch up with Udacity students previously featured on our blog, to see what they’re working on today.
The end of a calendar year is traditionally a time for both reflection and prediction. At Udacity, our reflections and predictions focus on you—what you’ve done, and what you’ll do next.
Below, we revisit twelve Udacity students previously featured on our blog, to discover how things are progressing in their lives today.
January
“I’m 49 years old, and I found retraining my brain to learn something new was a challenge. I had to completely rebuild my thinking process, and it was—at times—really painful.”
Richard succeeded. He launched a new career as a software developer at a company called ClaimPilot, and was able to relocate his family to his favorite part of Texas. We checked in with Richard, and here’s what he had to say:
“Everything is going great! Still with ClaimPilot here in College Station, Texas. I’m doing more project management than coding, and the work is very fast-paced so it keeps me crazy busy. The project management side is very fulfilling. I’m playing a valuable role by keeping projects organized and on track, and I interact with people at all levels of our company, and the client companies, and the outside companies that our clients exchange data with.”
Congratulations Richard, all those hard changes are paying off!
February
“My partner and I recently relocated to New York city at the end of September for a corporate relocation, and after a week-and-a-half of applying like crazy to all kinds of marketing jobs, I just accepted a position as an assistant media planner in a healthcare marketing agency! I’m so elated right now, and so thankful I was able to achieve my goals through my learnings at Udacity.“
Such outstanding news, Kat!
March
“I’m actually working on three different apps! First is the finalization of my capstone project for the Android Developer Nanodegree program. The second is a business app that I’m working on with my husband (he makes the server-side part), and the third one is what I call a “learning app”—something I’m working on to practice new skills and gather more experience in coding. I’m actually building my own chat app!”
One of the great pieces of news we’d shared in the March post was that every single member of the BloodDroid team ultimately landed full scholarships for the advanced Android Developer Nanodegree program, and it’s amazing to now watch Melinda coming to the finish line!
April
We’re happy to report that Samuel is still very busy in his developer career!
“Today, I work at letras.mus.br (or letras.com for the English or Spanish version). It is the biggest song lyrics site in Brazil. Much of the site content is provided by a very active community that we moderate for approval. I’m a Back-End Developer and I have two main goals; the first is to work on database maintenance, and the second is to improve the contribution and moderation systems for the site. It’s very challenging because it’s a new programming language I didn’t know: Go. So I’m not using the tools, techniques, and frameworks I learned during my Nanodegree program, as I was doing in my previous job. But I’m really grateful for the quality of my Udacity learning experience, because I realize that I have the knowledge to communicate, to find solutions, and to learn these technologies, even though they are new to me.”
May
“I’m loving my job. As I am the only engineer working on a particular area of the product, I get to do a little bit of everything, not just front end. I guess I’m basically full stack at the moment, although I only know a tiny bit of anything. Still a ton to learn. It’s a great working environment and all my colleagues have been super helpful. I’m just focusing on learning as much as I can.”
“I’m loving my job.” Four of the most beautiful words in the world, and music to our ears!
June
“I have actually been working with my division, and it was just approved in the last month to hire a Data Analyst Co-Op. Depending on performance, they would be brought on full time. I made the pitch to our recruiting department to look at non-traditional locations for someone who can bring impact to business results right away (with Udacity as an example of that avenue).”
It is so wonderful to see Andrew being such an advocate for Udacity learners, and we recently learned that he is actually working directly with our Alumni team to source a graduate of our Digital Analyst Nanodegree program for the open role on his team!
July
“My new role at Automation Anywhere is focused on developing new products and bringing them to market in a way that resonates really well with our customers and partners. I love the work here; we are a fast-moving company that tries to find innovative solutions to challenging business problems. The future promises a hyper-digitized, hyper-connected economy that will entail humans and intelligent machines working together, creating new types of jobs altogether that will leverage the strengths of a human (creativity, ingenuity and innovation).”
August
“I started reading more and more about machine learning, and became excited about all its different potential uses. I thought it would be useful to know about the techniques, tools, and tricks of the trade in machine learning so that I could use them in my job. I was really excited about how machine learning could be used to find patterns, and make predictions about data that you couldn’t analyze by hand. ”
Antal remained with his same company after graduating from his Udacity program, but he moved to a new and exciting role, and was able to start working on machine learning and data science challenges, courtesy of what he’d learned in our classrooms. We checked in with Antal recently, to see how things were progressing:
“I am continuing my work as a Data Engineer at Eurofins. I am learning to use new tools like RapidMiner (a data science platform that unites data prep, machine learning, and predictive model deployment) to be more effective at my job. I have also been working for the past month on implementing an algorithm to classify drug compound toxicity signatures.”
Keep on learning Antal, we love it!
September
As the founder of a company, you now have responsibility for finding talent to work in your business. What are you looking for in recruits, and how can applicants impress you?
As a Udacity graduate myself, I can confidently say that Udacity graduates are already self-motivated, perpetual learners—which is highly valuable for any startup. Beyond that, I’d be looking for optimism, grit, and an eagerness to get involved and take on challenges. I also want to see things you’ve done—a prototype you’ve built, or an article you’ve written, or an open-source contribution you’ve worked on where you can explain its relevance to what we do as a company.
October
Here are the posts that Jamaal was recently featured in:
- Walking the Walk: How to go from learning the skills, to using the skills, to successfully changing careers
- Talking the Talk: Discover the mindset shift that leads to successful career change
- Networking with your Network: Walk it, Talk it, Work it
November
“Employers don’t care where you went to school. They care about what you’ve done in the past (doesn’t matter if it’s at work or on the side) and what you can bring to the table. I had to compete with people with PhDs for my current AV job but I got the job because of the whole package of skills that I bring rather than theoretical knowledge in a single niche topic.”
Ricardo is living proof that there is more than one way to establish a path to career success, but it’s also important to remember that while the paths may differ, what those paths ask of those who trod them is the same—commitment, dedication, determination, grit, tenacity, and a relentless willingness to meet obstacles with effort. And as to Ricardo’s own thoughts on the reaction to his post?
“The blog changed my life completely. People and recruiters are constantly reaching out with new opportunities, and I’ve been receiving a lot of messages and compliments from people who want to accomplish the same thing. I’m very happy to know that somehow I helped a lot of people to be motivated to accomplish their goals and dreams.”
December
And so here we are in December! Despite barely being halfway through the month, we’ve already had the honor of sharing stories about wonderful lifelong learners like Lucia Gonzalez and Robin Stringer, and we’re already looking forward to sharing updates on their successes in 2019’s End-of-Year wrap!
We’re also really looking forward to a more imminent milestone—in a recent post titled “The Audacity to Change,” Udacity Co-Founder and Executive Chairman Sebastian Thrun noted that by the end of this year, nearly 65,000 people from 160 countries will have graduated from Udacity Nanodegree programs! Together with their predecessors, these graduates will be part of one of the most dynamic and engaged alumni communities anywhere in the world, and even as I write this, our graduates are making connections, sharing resources, and creating opportunities for one another.
This is the true spirit of Udacity in action. This spirit has been everywhere in evidence throughout 2018, and it will be again in 2019. A spirit of community, of support, and of potential—recognized, and realized.
To all of our students past, present, and future, we say to you: Here’s to the year of learning that was, and the year of learning that will be!
See you in 2019!