An Elite Job Now in Reach: Alex Gould’s TripleTen Story

Cliches about aspiration abound. Shoot for the moon and you’ll land among the stars! If you can dream it, you can do it! Never give up! These formulations have become trite through overuse, but repetition hasn’t rendered their core messages untrue.

And remembering their fundamental import matters because people can get the idea that a top-tier job is unattainable. It requires knowledge they don’t have; it’s asking for experience they lack.

But, of course, you can always learn something new. And you can find the positions that will give you experience.

That’s what brought Alex Gould to TripleTen. Here’s how he joined the bootcamp and gained the skills that are setting him up to land an elite job.

Founding a background in ambition

When he was young, Alex spent time with his grandmother. To occupy him with something useful, she enrolled him in extracurricular coding lessons. “It was just coding in DOS, drawing pictures by indicating coordinates through DOS. That was my first introduction,” Alex said, referring to the Microsoft Disk Operating System that was first released in 1981.

When he started learning, he was seven years old. 

Whether because of his age or because DOS was already an antiquated operating system by then, he moved on. In college, he studied philosophy and then went on to graduate from law school. He climbed the ranks and eventually landed a prestigious job in downtown Manhattan.

But that interest in tech his grandmother had instilled never quite went away. According to Alex, while he was in that position, he found that he wanted “to pursue a passion that I have for technology and for software. What's more, I wanted my skills to be relevant, and I wanted to be marketable.”

He tried a free bootcamp, but it didn’t stick. Then, he discovered TripleTen.

The intersection of economic feasibility and quality instruction indicated that TripleTen was the right choice for me. Alex Gould, TripleTen grad

He joined.

Discovering a penchant for data

Since TripleTen didn’t offer a bootcamp in DOS, Alex needed to choose a new path in tech. Data analytics, which is now a part of the Business Intelligence Analytics bootcamp, seemed right to him. “Data analytics was the perfect complement of technology and the humanities. It was what I had under my belt already.”

Mastering the material was a challenge, but when he encountered difficulties, tutors were there to help.

Any time I came to a roadblock in my studies where I would have problems with syntax, maybe it was a comma, period, or semicolon that was missing, I could always rely upon the people in charge of my cohort. Alex Gould, TripleTen grad

The advice went beyond just how to polish up his code, though. “One tutor would go above and beyond. He would give me personal advice — how to break into a certain position and what kind of approaches would work best.”

Thanks to the assistance of this tutor, Alex also integrated machine learning into his final project. He was keen to explore this approach even though it was usually reserved for data scientists. “I was stubborn. I was incorrigible. I wanted to include it because employers would see that although I’m a data analyst, I have some exposure to machine learning.”

So he finished the program with something extra, too.

Building to that top-tier job

Tech wasn’t the only thing Alex found himself interested in. Trading was buzzing in the back of his head. “I developed a deep passion for capital markets, options trading in particular.”

So when he graduated, this combined with his new skills in tech to form the foundation of an ambitious project. He’s now working to unite the two in subsequent roles. For many of these jobs he’s interested in, impeccable know-how is a prerequisite. “You need to have high-level coding skills under your belt to be considered for such positions.”

But thanks to TripleTen, he has a solid basis from which he can pursue a top-level job. And he’s already following this path. “That’s my next step. In the meantime, I’ve been applying to positions that precede those positions.”

Our pitch to you

If you, too, are looking for a part-time bootcamp that will jumpstart your journey to an elite job, then check out TripleTen’s Business Intelligence Analytics bootcamp.