From Customer Service to Payroll Analyst: Drew Self’s TripleTen Story

It was good enough. Sure, the career wasn’t exactly what you wanted, but everyone needs to make compromises, don’t they? And after all, bills come due. You’re going to need the cash to cover rent, gas, and groceries.

So you went for a stopgap. Then another stopgap. Then another. Finally, it hit you: maybe these jobs weren’t “just for now.” And maybe you realized you didn’t like the direction your career was heading.

‍Drew Self can empathize. Here’s how TripleTen helped him stop up the stopgaps and move into a new tech career that’s more than good enough — one that he’s investing in long-term.

When “good enough” stops cutting it

For nearly four years, Drew had been working customer service roles in automotive sales and maintenance. “I was the main point of contact from customers and did the flow from the front to the back — getting all the information from the customer to the technician, and then back from the technician to the customer,” Drew said.

It wasn’t ideal. “I was almost to the point of burning out on working with customers,” he said. See, when something went wrong, he’d be the guy picking up the phone to hear about it — at whatever decibel level the customer felt most appropriately expressed their disappointment.

In that time, he made some advancements in his career. But even when he switched companies, it was more a lateral move than a strategic one — and his commute barely changed. In fact, the distance between his previous place of work and his new one was only 500 feet.

He was eminently realistic about where he was and why.

The job I was working was meant to be a stopgap until I found a new career and something I wanted to do long term. Drew Self, TripleTen grad

And more than that, he had an international family — his wife was from Brazil. That meant an ability to travel was crucial for them, so the inflexibility of his role was another factor he was looking to change. At that job, “there was only so much time that we could spend out of the country with her family, or anywhere else that we may want to travel,” he said. “So we had a hard conversation. If we're ever going to be able to travel like we say we want to, then something's got to change.”

He got to researching. He initially considered getting another degree, but dismissed it: “I didn't want to go back to college and take out more student loans and then spend years and years and years of time.”

So he checked out online learning options. Guiding the career change himself with sporadic and smaller lessons felt insufficient to him, but when he came across an ad for TripleTen on Instagram, he was intrigued. He read up on reviews, checked out what people said about TripleTen on Reddit, and was sold.

He enrolled.

Giving his know-how a tune-up

Specifically, Drew joined the Business Intelligence Analytics (BIA) bootcamp. He’d taken our quiz, which suggested BIA might be the path for him, and the result resonated with him.

I really enjoy operations, but I also enjoy numbers. BIA was just a great mix of both of them. Drew Self, TripleTen grad

Starting out, the bootcamp wasn’t too difficult for him. He had experience with spreadsheets, so the first lessons augmented and polished the skills he already had. He even found himself applying this new knowledge in his day job, and he could see that what he was learning was useful in the real world. 

Specifically, the new techniques he learned at TripleTen helped him discover that, despite the company’s auto service quotes being based on a mileage estimate of 100,000 miles, the real average mileage for cars showing up at the shop was 115,000 miles.

It was nice being able to actually apply what I was learning. Drew Self, TripleTen grad

And yes, he was working while he was studying. He had talked to the shop owner, who agreed to let him leave an hour and a half early every day so he could study — the later afternoon hours were slow anyway. But in addition to that extra time during his evenings, Drew also set aside hours on weekends to make sure he was staying on top of things.

Then, as the material got more complex, he found himself needing to really lock in. SQL_{Data Analytics 101: All You Need to Know about SQL} was a particularly challenging piece of tech for him. “The SQL sprint was definitely the toughest for me,” he said.

The tutors were there to help. “I asked many questions during tutor hours and had a couple of one-on-ones set up to try to understand the deeper concepts,” he said. “Sometimes, it's just the way it's explained. The first time you don't understand it, you just need to hear it a different way, and then it clicks. And that was how it was for me. I just needed somebody to word it in a different way, and it all made sense.”

With that hurdle handled, he was ready to move on to the next phase: Career Acceleration. It was a part of the bootcamp he still appreciates. “What really set the bootcamp apart for me was actually the Career Acceleration,” he said. 

For him, it was like a bonus program.

Basically you have the BIA bootcamp, and then you follow it up with a whole separate Career Acceleration bootcamp. Drew Self, TripleTen grad

As part of this, he improved all his career-search artifacts — his resume, cover letters, LinkedIn, and portfolio. Basically, his career coach_{Career Coaching at TripleTen: What It Is and How It Helps You Land a Job} helped him with anything attesting to his bona-fides. She even hosted practice interviews based on vacancies he was in the running for. This helped him show up thoroughly prepared: “Some of the questions I was asked in my mock interviews, I was actually asked in my interview with who is now my leadership team at Dollar General.”

And yes, he mentioned his current leadership team — he landed a job with his new skills.

Shifting to a new career

As soon as Drew got on Dollar General’s radar, the interview process went quickly. He passed the initial screening interview, where he proved he had the knowledge the hiring team was looking for, and he also showed he was a cultural fit. 

Then, in the subsequent conversations, the questions got more specific. However, thanks to TripleTen’s project-based teaching approach, he was prepared. 

What helped me stand out were my projects that I had listed and could touch on to prove that I had experience in the programs that I would be using every day. Drew Self, TripleTen grad

One of these formed the backbone of a more in-depth interview: “She used the link to one of the projects, had me pull it up and walk her through what the project was, what the task or question was, and how I got to where I got.”

As Drew described his approach, he proved he was the guy for the role. After one more conversation checking in on his goals and long-term plans, he was hired: “That interview was on a Friday afternoon, and not the next Monday, but the following Monday, I got a call saying that I got the offer.”

The only reason it took that extra week? The hiring manager was on vacation.

Now, he’s a payroll analyst at Dollar General, where he’s using his new skills in analysis to make sure all the company’s drivers are paid properly. He’s no longer the guy calming irate customers misdirecting their frustration, and he’s finding meaning in his work_{Tech Jobs for Good: Why Business Intelligence Analytics Matters}.

I'm working with numbers all day instead of customers, and can really see the impact I'm making with the payroll team. Drew Self, TripleTen grad

It’s no longer a stopgap role, and he’s got big plans for what comes next. “There’s infinite room for growth in a company of this size,” he said.

And although he’s not yet working completely remotely, he’s using his more flexible schedule to learn his wife’s native language and get ready for a future full of traveling: “I'm actually studying Portuguese a couple of days a week. On my flex day, I can start Portuguese class the second I get off work because I'm already at my home office.”

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Looking for other grads who made the change just like Drew? Check out more of our student stories.