Operation Code interviews with vets in tech Operation Code

She was always attracted to coding and pursued her interest while still in the service. Upon getting out, she went to the General Assembly coding school. She spent a year helping someone with their website and then landed a job at a startup in Des Moines, Iowa, which has a worker-safety system, with a badge that workers wear and a cloud service. Karla has a lot to say about resilience, self-confidence, and under-promising and over-delivering. Her story should be an inspiration to anyone who thinks they'd like to get into software but isn't sure they can do it. She did it and maybe you can, too!

Vincent started programming in the mid-90s when he stumbled across AOL punters and similar tools. At the age of 18, he joined the Marine Corps. His specialty for the Corps was "data network specialist." Vincent spent time in Bahrain and Djibouti, Africa, where he won a Navy and Marine Corps achievement medal for building the first defense message system network in the field. He was honorably discharged at the rank of Sergeant after 4 years. After being discharged Vincent pursued a career in academia. He was awarded a Master’s degree in 2012 in philosophy and cognitive science and went on to a Ph.D. program at UMass, Amherst where he taught philosophy classes and did research for his dissertation. He decided to leave academia in 2015 and return to programming professionally. Since returning to programming he has worked as a software engineer and lead instructor for the General Assembly web development immersive course and the React part-time course. He is now a senior software engineer at First Look Media. He loves to teach and spends a lot of time in the Operation Code Slack channels where he sometimes mentors. He also volunteers for Codebar, Code Nation, and Back On My Feet, where he exercises with homeless veterans and will be headed to Puerto Rico in March to help with disaster relief with All Hearts All Hands.

Ali Taylor-Cipolla is married to an Air Force vet of 14 years. Among her jobs prior to studying at the Microsoft Military Spouse Training Academy, Ali was the head chef at a fraternity at Mississippi State University, and a cook at a Popeye's on a military base in Germany. She and her future husband drove from London to Ulan Bator in Mongolia, which is 10,000 miles, in a $500 car. She's now learning the Microsoft cloud infrastructure and graduates very soon.

Seth spent 9 years in the Air Force, flying on transport planes to every continent but Australia. He spent his downtime on the flights studying technology, and after separating, went to Lambda School and then Hack Reactor. He's now applying his skills, especially Docker and Kubernetes, at one of the biggest names in technology. If you've ever wondered what students learn in a code school, Seth explains that in considerable depth.

Silas enlisted in the Army at age 17, served in logistics, and was deployed to Afghanistan. While he was in, he studied accounting, finance, and investing on his own, and when he separated, he was ready. He enrolled in the Veteran Capital program and built his sales and networking skills, and now he's just starting a new job at Lucid Dream VR in North Carolina.

Jeff is an Army vet who's had some tough times but he prefers to think about how far he's come. One day after moving into a Salvation Army shelter with his wife and two kids, they found out she was pregnant with twins! But now he's got a job helping victims of ransom attacks and moved his family into their own place. Jeff is also in a degree program with the University of Maryland. (Note: you will hear some background kid noise in spots. This is just Jeff's life right now.)