This content was created by Girlboss in partnership with General Assembly.
Did you know: The average worker makes five to seven career changes in their lifetime. It’s not a question of if you’re going to have a career change but when.
So, we tapped the brilliant minds of Rebekah D. Gordon, J.D., the UX design and strategy lead at JPMorgan Chase and a General Assembly bootcamp grad, and Candace Rogue, a UX educator, designer and developer, and a UX lead instructor at General Assembly, to debunk the biggest myths about making a career change into tech—using their own first-hand experiences.
Rebekah originally wanted to be a neuroscientist, but failed a chemistry course in college, so she pivoted to political science. During her undergrad, she started a digital marketing firm before going to law school and becoming a lawyer. Early in her law career, Gordon realized she missed doing creative work and wasn’t ready to give that up, so she left her high-paying lawyer job and enrolled in a full-time 12-week General Assembly’s UX Design Bootcamp, where more than 40,000 alumni from full-time and part-time courses have acquired the skills they need to make a career change or advance their careers to find a career they love that also loves them back.
Candace also had a non-linear career path. She started out in fashion, working as an operations manager for Saks Fifth Avenue and a merchandising coordinator for Levi’s and Adidas. Her UX career began during her fashion days: Rogue did a software engineering bootcamp with another online course provider, then she joined General Assembly as an instructor through a friend that she used to work with at a startup.
These two UX powerhouses are proof that it’s never too late to start your tech career. Trust, they’ve been there.
Myth: You can’t become a UX designer in three months.
Rebekah: “I always tell people, ‘You're probably more of a UX designer than you think.’ Have you ever looked at a product and you’re like, ‘This is wrong. Who designed this?’ or are like, ‘I cannot live without this product.’ It’s because someone thought about their audience. It’s really about the needs of the consumer, or the designer, or the business. So, of course you can become a UX designer in three months, if you are in touch with the psychology [behind] it and even with your own experiences in business, marketing and branding.
What General Assembly did really well was put language to what I already knew. I was given the technical terms, the processes, the ways of working—that was incredibly helpful. Every week, we're working with a team, we're showing decks, we’re presenting, we’re prototyping, we’re designing. It was a lot. I don’t remember schooling like this. But especially in today’s industry, it’s important to sharpen your skillset.”
Myth: A bootcamp investment is not worth it.
Rebekah: “Delayed gratification is important. What are you willing to sacrifice for three months, for the rest of your life? Although I had a career in design and digital marketing, I knew I still needed to sharpen that skillset. I could have easily said, ‘I don't need that investment. I can just go on YouTube and Google free workshops.’ But you still need that [learning] environment to be truly cultivated for where you're going. It's similar to training for a marathon. I have already built this muscle. I'm not getting winded. I'm not getting anxious or overwhelmed, because I sat in that same training environment for three months. It's body training, it's mental training, it's stamina, it's teamwork, it's collaboration, it’s refinement—that investment is incredibly worth it. Because it really makes the difference when you walk into your next employer.”
Myth: You need a four-year college degree to work in tech.
Candace: “This is absolutely untrue. There are so many certifications and programs—some that are free, some that are paid—that you can gain very meaningful job experience, knowledge and skills that are going to really serve you when trying to look for a job in the design and development world. So, it's really about massaging that network, saying, ‘Hey, I'm here. I have this set of skills, and this is how I can serve your business and how I'm looking to grow within your business. College is such a traditional way of getting knowledge, but bootcamp gives you community and mentorship. Having that one-on-one experience with an instructor/a built-in mentor—that experience is bar none. We also have real-life clients that you can get on-the-job experience with. And that is something that a lot of hiring managers are looking for.”
Myth: My current work experience will not be valuable as a bootcamp grad.
Rebekah: “I've been a creative and a professional creative for over 10 years. I had this legal background, so I was always analyzing, always looking at data, always doing discovery. Working in the law firm taught me to work fast on my feet. When I finished my portfolio, and when I changed my LinkedIn, and put it all together, the recruiter [from JPMorgan Chase] reached out to me the next week.
It’s so valuable to have different careers because now I can talk to different people in the room and understand their language. I can talk to developers about certain solutions that we need quickly. I can talk about CSS and HTML codes, so I can make those quick changes. I've led a company, so I have some level of sensitivity to what stakeholders might be thinking about. Having other career paths gives you more of a leg up because it makes you more empathetic to the people that you'll be working for in the future.”
Myth: Making a mid-life career pivot in tech is too difficult.
Rebekah: “Look at your skillset and translate it to the UX terminology or to tech terminology. That was literally my exercise with my LinkedIn page. How do I translate my legal experience? How do I translate my digital marketing experience? That exercise makes the pivot so much easier. You just need to work with someone who can help you translate your career into terminology that the industry understands. You're just changing the language. It’s never too late.”
Myth: If you’re a woman of color, tech isn’t for you.
Rebekah: “We need more diversity. Technology is taking over, and the people that are building it might be building it with biases. We need people with different perspectives at the table to think about those audiences that are also valuable to the business. We need more diverse voices. You're valued here, you're needed here in this space. Throughout my career, I've been so used to being the only Black woman or the only Black person. And I'm grateful that I've been conditioned for those spaces, but I'm like, ‘Dang, I wish someone else was in here.’ There are so many communities, especially today, where you can join and be a member and have that community to really support you through your process.”
Myth: AI will take over all tech jobs.
Candace: “If we go in with the mindset of, ‘How can AI help me and my job?’ I think those are the people who are going to survive and do very well in this business. If it’s not AI, it's going to be something else later down the road. So, for a UX writer, that might look like: understanding how to write AI prompts to get better feedback from ChatGPT, or prompting AI to help me get deeper insights in the user interviews that I'm doing. There's so many different ways that we can utilize it. I want to make sure I implant into all of my students to think about how it can help, not that it's hurting your chances.”
Myth: The tech industry is currently very unstable.
Candace: “It’s never going to be a stable thing because it's ever growing. That's the whole point of it, right? It’s made to continue to make our lives easier and more robust. What's new? What's coming up? And how can I be a part of it? I don't want to get left behind, so how can I be a part of the movement?”
We know a career change is a big decision, with big rewards if done with a plan! We’re not saying you need to enroll tomorrow—we’re saying you can start making a plan by getting answers to your bootcamp questions by hopping on a call with a General Assembly admissions specialist who has helped many career changers get to a job they love that also loves them back.
