Cleared for Career Takeoff: Dillon Arnold’s TripleTen Story

You have to make a decision. The rest of your life is hurtling down toward you, and soon enough, you’re going to have to choose what that’s going to look like. The only thing is: the most likely option also seems to be the most tiresome. But still, the future can’t be delayed, so what should you do?

If you’re Dillon Arnold, you take back the reins and redirect your journey towards something rewarding, fulfilling, and most importantly — engaging.

Here’s how he did it.

Choosing the right heading

Dillon initially dreamed of becoming a pilot. While he was still in high school, he completed ground school, and as he toured colleges, he focused on schools offering a major in aviation. However, because of medical reasons, he wouldn’t qualify for a commercial license under the FAA’s strict regulations. So that left the question hanging: what should he do? Well, going for a career in finance seemed like a worthy option, so he went to school and got an associate's degree in that field.

But then he started considering going for a bachelor’s degree, and something was off. “I had to sit down and really ask myself, ‘Do I want to settle with this?’” he recalls. After his studies, he found himself uninspired by the prospect of a career in finance. ”The lifestyle and the typical accounting life was just really boring.”

Throughout his studies, he’d also been working at a telecom company. He started as the guy who comes to install the internet in people’s houses and then progressed to designing fiber optic cable plans for his company’s construction teams. “Pretty much what we did is use mapping systems to create designs for the construction teams to bury their fiber.”

It didn’t demand every last iota of his attention, so he would watch YouTube on his second monitor as he worked. One day, an ad for TripleTen came up. It sparked his curiosity.

Computer science always stood out to me as a degree I wanted. But like a lot of people, I was just kind of scared to do it. I've always heard that it was just super tough and so I just never did it. And then the ad popped up two years later in my life when I really needed to make a decision on what I wanted to do. Dillon Arnold, TripleTen grad

It was a case of finding the right spark at the right time. He enrolled.

The skills to power a pilot’s pivot

He was launching a tech career without any coding background. In fact, he himself admits, “I came in not even knowing what HTML_{Becoming an HTML/CSS Developer} was.” But he dug in and started studying within the TripleTen Software Engineering program. 

He even started playing around with a small portfolio project on the side to make sure he locked in the latest lessons. “It was like my own little playground. If I learned something, and I wanted to see how it worked with other tools and stuff, I would just add it to that portfolio,” he said.

That doesn’t mean everything was smooth, though. He was balancing a full-time job with his studies, and initially, he struggled with pacing himself through the bootcamp. “Time management was pretty tough,” he said. However, once he instituted organization_{3 Strategies to Balance Your Life and Studies Like a Pro} in his schedule and took time to review everything he’d learned, he found himself back on track.

And that pause to reflect was important, as was the guidance he found at TripleTen. “With code, I found JavaScript the most challenging,” he recalls. But the TripleTen tutors were there to lend a hand when he needed it: “I had a lot of great experiences with the tutors. Whenever I needed help, they were there.”

That meant he was primed and ready for a code jam. During this collaborative coding session, he and his fellow TripleTen students came together to program a project that was perfect for him: a flight tracker.

We created a flight tracker that allows you to track flights at airports. I think we did five different countries. And then you could filter by state and then all of the airports in that state. That was really fun. Obviously, that's right up my alley with aviation. So I was like, ‘I love this.’ And it was awesome working with other people for the first time. Dillon Arnold, TripleTen grad

It all led to him becoming a senior student, someone who lends a hand to people fresh to TripleTen. “I really enjoyed it. I found myself getting really involved,” he said. He was far from the person who was uninspired by two more years of prepping for a future in finance.

But what next?

Watching his career ascend

That excitement fueled a hard-nosed dedication to finding a job. During the phase of the bootcamp entirely focused on the job search, he built a rigorous schedule. On weekdays, he’d alternate between doing coding challenges and working on side projects — but each day, he’d make sure to send in job applications.

He wasn’t doing this all on his own, though. The TripleTen team reviewed his resume, checked in on his progress every week, and helped him hone his portfolio. But the thing he truly appreciated was the mock technical interview. “I was just as nervous going into that as if I was interviewing for a normal job, which is super odd, because I knew it was just practice,” he recalls. “So the mock technical interview was huge, and just coding in front of somebody and explaining it to them. It was really nice. It was super beneficial.”

During this time, he’d also been working his network_{How to Network (and Stay Sane)}. He connected with the web manager at the company where he was designing fiber optic plans. “I started chatting with him and essentially just waited until a position opened up.”

That didn’t mean he was a shoo-in. “I didn't have the position right away. I still went through the very formal interview process.” But because of the know-how he gained and the get-hired job interview skills he’d mastered, he landed the job.

And, based on his career so far, it’s only going to keep him engaged.

I’m doing the work I enjoy for eight hours a day now. It's just non-stop learning, and I really enjoy that. Dillon Arnold, TripleTen grad

See if tech is your next journey

Want to give your career wings just like Dillon did? See what tech career is right for you in our quiz.