Eric Leung grew up in Oklahoma and learned a lot of math in high school. His friends wanted to go to medical school and he originally planned to join them. But instead he got interested in the emerging field of bioinformatics – math applied to medicine. After 6 years in graduate school, he made the big decision to leave without completing his Ph.D. But he was able to transition into the field of data science, and he now works as a data scientist at Disney. Eric and I met up at a public...

Today I'm joined by Patrick San Juan, a software engineer who first learned to code in his 30s. I've known Patrick since the early days of freeCodeCamp. He has always been a positive, supportive force within the community. Patrick grew up the son of first-generation immigrants from the Philippines. His family didn't have much money, and what they did have, they plowed into his education. He studied economics at the University of California at Santa Cruz, then went to work at a charity...

Today I'm joined by Malindi Colyer. Among her many skills, she's a Python developer and AI engineer. Malindi grew up on a farm in rural Kansas, in the middle of the US. She trained to become a diplomat, and volunteered overseas. But along the way, she discovered a love of math and computer science. That passion has landed her jobs in New York City, London, and San Francisco. I met up with Malindi in downtown Manhattan to learn all about investment banking, and how she modernized her...

#94 Killing Cancer with Machine Learning with Dr. Amit Deshwar  Today I'm joined by Dr. Amit Deshwar. He uses machine learning to discover new drugs to cure various diseases including cancer. He's a scientist who works in the growing field of Computational Biology, and has risen through the ranks at the Canadian biotech company Deep Genomics. During College, Amit got two internships at Google as a platform engineer. He then decided rather than working in big tech he wanted to go back to...

Today I'm talking with programmer legend Jeff Atwood. Jeff co-founded Stack Overflow with Joel Spolsky back in 2008. And software development has never been the same. Jeff also co-founded Discourse, a beloved forum tool used by Apple, Roblox, and of course the freeCodeCamp community. And Jeff is a prolific writer through his blog, Coding Horror. I met up with Jeff at his home in the San Francisco Bay Area, and interviewed him in the room where he builds so many of his software projects. We...

Today I'm talking with Sean Smith, one of freeCodeCamp's earliest graduates. Sean's also a prolific open source contributor, having helped develop freeCodeCamp's original React curriculum. Sean grew up in Tenessee and was an avid outdoorsman and rock climber. He went to college hoping to become a doctor. He even interned at the National Institutes of Health and published in the Journal of Virology. But one day he decided to leave the field – with no clear plans for the future – Leaving his...

Today I'm talking with Sasha Sheng. She's a software engineer who worked at Yahoo and at Facebook. During her 9 years working at big tech companies in San Francisco, she worked on mobile apps and AI systems. Sasha grew up in rural China, and was the first person in her family to attend university. She studied hard and was able to get into one of China's most competitive schools. She was able to move to the US and finish out her Mechanical Engineering degree at University of Michigan. When...

Today I'm joined by Shawn Wang, AKA Swyx. I first interviewed Shawn in 2019. Back then, Shawn had quit his $350k a year finance job and taught himself to code using freeCodeCamp. He was working as a full stack engineer. It's a wild interview that you should go back and listen to... after of course you finish listening this. Now a lot of people thought Shawn was crazy leaving finance. But this dude knew what he was doing. He has now risen through the ranks as a developer at tech startups. And...

Today I'm interviewing a long-time friend and role model of mine, Megan Kaczanowski. We met up in Brooklyn to talk about her journey into information security. She studied economics at University of Michigan before working in finance in New York City. But her ambitions lead her into cyber security – first as a threat analyst at a credit rating agency, and later as a Security Architect at a bank and a startups. Over the years, she's volunteered at charities around New York, and she's...

today I'm joined by Brian Douglas. He's a software engineer who's worked at tech companies like GitHub and Netlify. And now he's an entrepreur runs his own startup – OpenSauced.pizza. Brian grew up in a small town in Florida, and his family was the only black family in town. He worked hard in school and earned a full scholarship to Florida State University, where he studied business. He started off working in sales, but gradually taught himself how to code. It took a while to get into the...

Today I'm joined by Sarah Shook is a software engineer who started out as a recruiter, then started learning system administration on the job at a school. She didn't finish university. She learned to code on the job, from studying freeCodeCamp, and from attending a short bootcamp that she won free admission to. And she did all of this while raising 3 kids. She is a career-long remote worker, and insists she will never work somewhere where she needs to be away from her kids. Today she runs...

Welcome back to the freeCodeCamp Podcast. I'm Quincy Larson, teacher and founder of freeCodeCamp.org. And I'm bringing you insight from developers, entrepreneurs, and ambitious people getting into tech. It's been 4 years since we published a podcast episode. It's good to be back. This is the first of three interviews I'm publishing this week – my interview with Danny Thompson. Danny's a bit a legend among career changers.  He had a kid early in life. For 10 years he worked at a gas...

Quincy Larson interviews The Changelog team about the history of their legendary open source podcast. Then they interview Quincy about the future of freeCodeCamp.

This week, for the last podcast episode of 2019, Abbey chatted with freelancer and content creator Jessica Chan - known as CoderCoder on social media - about how she got into tech and started her educational website and YouTube channel. We discuss tackling imposter syndrome, applying for jobs, learning to code and having realistic expectations, and how to handle criticism, among many other things.

On today's episode of the podcast, Abbey chats with software engineer Jackson Bates. Jackson used to be a high school English teacher, but gradually taught himself to code and landed a pretty sweet gig as a React dev, partly by chance. Today he works part time as a developer, part time as a stay at home dad, and volunteers his time with various open source projects.

Jeff Meyerson talks about competitive poker working at Amazon, and starting Software Engineering Daily. He shares how he got into tech, become an entrepreneur, and the many lessons he learned along the way.

Quincy Larson interviews Ruben Harris, who runs Career Karma, a social network for people interested in attending coding bootcamp. He also hosts the Breaking into Startups Podcast. Ruben talks about Y Combinator, growing up in Atlanta, and more.

On this week's episode of the freeCodeCamp podcast, Abbey interviews senior software engineer and prolific content creator Ohans Emmanuel. They discuss how he got into tech, how he ended up in Berlin, what goes into writing a book, and how he stays focused through it all.

On this week's episode of the freeCodeCamp podcast, Abbey chats with UX designer and musician Andi Galpern about how she creates engaging and unique experiences in the tech world. Andi shares stories about past jobs, how she started her company, her favorite moments from events she's produced, and how to break into the design market.

In this week's podcast episode of the freeCodeCamp podcast, Abbey chats with Harry Wolff, an engineering manager at MongoDB. Harry has been in the world of tech for over a decade, holding jobs in various startups before ending up at Mongo. You'll learn about his journey into management, how to start a meetup, and dos and don't for migrating from legacy codebases.

This week, Abbey chats with former elementary school music teacher Briana Swift about her transition into tech. Briana loved teaching, but needed a change, so she started teaching herself to code. After taking some free online courses and earning freeCodeCamp's full-stack certification, she landed a job at GitHub. In this episode, you'll learn how she got there.

In this week's episode of the freeCodeCamp podcast, Abbey chats with software developer and freelancer Kyle Prinsloo who lives and works in South Africa. Kyle had a good marketing job, but wanted more from his work. So he started freelancing on the side. Two years later, he went out on his own full time. And in this episode, he shares what has made him successful and his advice for aspiring freelancers.

In this week's episode of the freeCodeCamp podcast, Abbey chats with software developer and army veteran Jami Gibbs about her journey into tech. Jami majored in English in college, spent time in the army, and eventually found her way back to tech. She discusses hiring practices, job hunting, and work life-balance.

On this week's episode of the freeCodeCamp podcast, Abbey chats with London-based software engineer Linh about how she left the field of biochemical engineering, taught herself to code, struggled to get her first dev job, and now gets to work at LEGO.

On this week's episode of the freeCodeCamp podcast, Abbey chats with Princiya about how she changed careers, moved to Berlin, and worked her way up to a lead role. Four years ago, Princiya left her life in India and moved to Berlin for a job. Today she's working at a startup, speaks at conferences worldwide, and mentors young developers at her company.