Akyya Mayberry: From Cinema to VMWare

Welcome to Formation’s Fellow Spotlight, a blog series designed to introduce you to former Formation Fellows who have landed their dream jobs. Today we’ll meet Akyya Mayberry, an iOS Engineer at VMWare. With a background in film and education, Akyya pivoted her career to focus on tech and engineering when she felt empowered by fixing her own computers. She’s overcome many personal obstacles to get to where she is today. Here’s Akyya’s story.

Background

What is your educational/professional background prior to Formation?

I have two Bachelor’s degrees, one in liberal studies, and a BA in Cinema. My background is in education and film, so my earlier roles were working in education, freelancing in film, and working as a video director and editor. A few years before joining Formation I changed careers to IT, after learning to fix my own computer using YouTube videos. I went to junior college in San Francisco to get more skills and training and wanted to help others be less afraid of technology! To transition into software engineering, I completed a series of boot camps and online programs before finally finding Formation.

How did you find Formation? What other kinds of training did you consider, and why did you end up choosing Formation?

My experience with trying to find my first professional job as a software engineer was a huge challenge. I was ambitious and had a lot of opportunities to interview coming from top companies, but many onsite interviews catered towards more “traditional” backgrounds -- my bootcamps taught me how to code, but didn’t cover the computer science fundamentals needed for those interviews. Their goal was just to teach you how to program, make an app, and then you’re on your own to go get a job from there. I sought out Formation as I was seeking a program that would teach engineering fundamentals so I could be confident and strong in them without having to go back to university to get a degree in Computer Science. Since I was also considering going into iOS mobile development as I was really passionate about it, I was looking for a program to help me learn iOS skills to transition it to my new role. And as a working parent, I also needed something I could do online. When I found Formation, it was everything I was looking for, and the only program like it in my search.

Many onsite interviews catered towards more “traditional” backgrounds -- my bootcamps taught me how to code, but didn’t cover the computer science fundamentals needed for those interviews.

Fellowship Experience

What was your specific goal in becoming a Fellow?

I had two goals:

1. Learn core computer science fundamentals like data science and algorithms, be skilled at them, and be more competent and capable for coding challenges.
2. Get production quality experience on developing iOS apps, since I knew that would be a challenge in landing the role I wanted.

How did you work with the mentors?

From the iOS app side of the program, the mentors served as code reviewers. Since the engineering mentors work at top-tier engineering companies, I was able to learn production quality and standards from them, which I could not learn while working on my personal projects. A lot of the code I was writing at the beginning may not have been reusable, so having them review my code allowed me to strengthen my skills in developing code that could be used long term and by others. Mentors also taught me debugging skills, being able to understand the stack trace and coding fundamentals such as reference versus values. Overall, my experience with the mentors helped me refine my engineering skills to create great, workable code, and having access to mentors that had experience in the skills and companies I sought to work at was invaluable.

In regards to data structures and algorithms, the mentors were involved with many of the sessions. I learned how to methodically tackle algorithms from the mentors, as well as learning to communicate. It was really helpful to have the mentors coach me in speaking out loud what I was thinking about how I’d tackle a challenge so I was well-practiced and skilled for future job interviews.

What did you think of the tech platform?

I thought the learning platform was one of the strongest parts of Formation! I’ve done a lot of online learning and I’ve never had anything catered so well to the online learning experience. The platform structure is based on individuals, and the roadmap was catered to my experience, which made it even more effective to help guide my learning. Additionally, the personalized job hunt channel allowed me to directly reach out to a dedicated team that further supported me with job-specific help, tips, and emotional support. The whole process felt easy, valuable, and so supportive.

I also enjoyed that the Fellows were able to give feedback on the platform, which helped to develop different parts of the platform. Our experience mattered to Formation!

What were some of your major personal milestones?

One of my personal major milestones was passing the Algo Blitz in the shortest amount of time! They were my favorite for data structures and algorithms. My ability to complete it quickly because I really understood the concepts I learned throughout the program. I wasn’t just memorizing, rather, I was learning and applying what I learned to determine how to solve it, so that was a major win for me.

With Formation, I was able to achieve in 4 months what I had been trying to do for 4 years.

How did your interview skills improve with your Formation training? How did you benefit from practice interviews?

With Formation, I was able to achieve in 4 months what I had been trying to do for 4 years. Because of my training, I felt much more confident and was more successful at my coding challenges at onsite interviews, which included understanding core data structures and algorithms. At Formation, they really supported us with the mock interviews and lots of preparation on algorithms. I was able to bring that into my interviews and easily solve the first round of challenges I was given.

The Job hunt tracks how you approach the interview from the very beginning and the process throughout, including preparing what questions to ask for the interviews, reminders to follow up after interviews, and more, which I started incorporating into the job hunt. I did a lot of background research on companies. I was able to create a tailored cover letter for the position I applied to at VMWare, where I currently work, which spoke about my experience with the product. These are all skills I learned and honed while at Formation.

What was your actual job interview process like?

I learned to speak confidently about myself and what I am bringing to the table, which is something I learned through Formation. My time in Formation also really helped boost my confidence with code challenges, which I used to avoid. I was prepared and ready to go, and I realized my anxiety around them had decreased. Same with live coding, which was new to me. Working on it through Formation helped ease a lot of the nervousness I would have had otherwise. I was able to communicate well with the interviewer, which led to on-sites. On-sites are always stressful, but I found they got better.

More importantly than the hard skills, I really felt that Formation cared about our lives just as much as our careers.

Quick-Fire Questions

First code you shipped? Making changes to a tab icon-- the icon on the tab bar wasn’t the same size as the other ones and I fixed that.

Proudest moment? Getting the job at VMWare is a dream come true!

Biggest mistake? Wish I could have stayed with Formation longer! I was in a rush due to personal reasons, but I would have developed more skills had I stayed in the program longer.

Favorite “lunch and learn”? I loved “How I Learned DevOps Practices by Building,” with Cherry Hertz. She was pretty dope.

Favorite group session? I really loved the system design group sessions because I had only known about the monolithic, outdated ways of designing and managing applications. Through the system design sessions, I had the opportunity to learn about microservices and how companies like Facebook and Uber are built! I also had the chance to design apps, something I always thought was developed only by upper management.

Biggest surprise about Formation? Formation really takes special care to make sure we are well prepared both technically and mentally to be software engineers. More importantly than the hard skills, I really felt that Formation cared about our lives just as much as our careers. I will always appreciate what they have done for my career and my family.

Interested in becoming a Fellow like Akyya? We accept Fellows on a rolling basis. Apply on our site and take your engineering career to the next level.