Taking Therapy from the Outdoors to Tech: Jake McCambley’s TripleTen Story

When Jake McCambley says he wants to help people, you believe it. Things you’ve heard millions of times before sound new, authentic, and unalloyed coming from him. This is likely because he has actually gone out and helped people.

In fact, care has animated his whole career — from his first job after college to now. The only difference is that where he once used his experience with the outdoors to lead people to healing, he’s now using code.

Here’s how TripleTen helped him take his therapeutic mission from the tree line to the command line and widened his impact.

Starting out

Immediately after graduating from college in 2015, Jake took a job working in wilderness therapy in Utah. He’d take groups on week-long camping trips to the desert, and during these excursions, he’d see just how significant the experience could be. 

“I have vivid memories of making fires with sticks in the woods and teaching other people how to do that. I’d see kids crying because they’d discovered something about themselves that was so transformative. It was really rewarding. It taught me a lot about who I am today,” he says.

However, his time with that company came to an end. In 2020, after working several part-time jobs, he ended up back in his hometown. There, he ran into a family friend whose son had attended a bootcamp.

“She was so thrilled that he had graduated from this bootcamp and then found a job and was really changing up his life,” he says. “That’s what initially put the thought in my head of like, ‘Hmm, I could learn to code. I could really do this.’”

Gearing up

“Coding was always something that I was interested in,” he continues. 

He started looking into bootcamps. Specifically, he wanted to build websites, so he thought a software engineering program would be best.

He read an article about TripleTen on Course Report, and it looked right to him. “It was affordable, it had a great schedule, and it had a great curriculum. And on top of that, the community really sold me.”

He enrolled.

The bootcamp was organized into sprints, two- to three-week long periods in which students mastered progressively more in-depth concepts through tasks and exercises they could approach as they wanted.

For him, this approach was key. “One of my favorite things about the education — and one of the things that most helped me become the engineer I am today — were the project-based sprints.” In addition, the sprints gave him something tangible. “By the end of the week, you have a full project that you can then show off in your portfolio.”

Rediscovering a path

As his time with TripleTen was winding down, he joined an externship, where he could get hands-on experience working in tech. He joined three separate projects, and the experience he gained was invaluable. “Those projects are very high up in my portfolio now.”

So he had the knowledge. He had the experience. Now he just needed to choose where he wanted to go. For him, just like when he graduated college, the direction was clear.

I wanted to work somewhere related to mental health or related to conservation, somewhere that I felt like was going to be doing good in the world.

He found Zencare and reached out to the company’s CEO and founder. “I wrote a cover letter to her just explaining, ‘Hey, I’m passionate about mental health. I’m passionate about building products that help people,’ and she responded, saying, ‘Let’s chat on the phone.’”

After the call, a team interview, a tech interview, and a few more conversations, he was offered the job.

Now, his penchant for care has been supercharged. He’s a software engineer at Zencare, and he is helping whole swaths of people find the therapy they need.

Best of all, his professional transition from the natural world to the digital world hasn’t forced him to give up on the outdoors. “I can go for a hike in the afternoon.”

‍Our pitch to you

If you, too, are looking for a bootcamp that will help you merge your passions with a career in tech, TripleTen is the place for you. Check out the programs we offer, and if you’re not sure which specialty to pursue, try our career quiz.

Check out Jake's story in his own words in this video.

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And if you want to hear Jake in his own words, check out what he has to say on our podcast.