Gian Andrea wasn’t sure what to expect. It was early in a cold January of 2023, and he was sitting in the lounge of a modern art museum, his laptop whirring softly before him. A few days before, a friend had told him about this new tool called “ChatGPT” that could putatively answer any question he had.
Now, curious to test out this magic box, he was about to ask ChatGPT what he should do with his life. And he had no idea what it would come up with.
Gian Andrea’s 2023 was kicking off under something of a cloud. “I was unemployed at the time,” he says, looking back. “I honestly felt very anxious, like I didn’t have a clear path ahead of me.”
He was 30 years old, and it was not the qualifications that he was lacking – in fact he held a degree in Physics from the University of Genoa, in Italy, and a PhD in Theoretical Physics from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology in Germany.
“The thing is,” he says, “companies don’t really care how many titles and honoraries you hold. If you have no experience, if you cannot code, they’ll just get someone who does. With the specific skills I had, it seemed like my options were teaching… and not very much else.”
Well, no use putting off the question any longer. He punched into the keyboard a comprehensive list of his qualifications and experience, and asked ChatGPT what jobs he should be applying for.
The answer came, as it so often does with these Large Language Models, in the form of a list. At the top of it was a position he had not considered:
Data analyst/scientist.
The next item on the list was similar in kind: Data visualization specialist.
It was a suggestion that made him think. “I was aware of Data Science as a discipline, naturally,” says Gian Andrea. “But it was something very different compared to what I had been doing, and I had little experience working hands-on with code. At the same time, it was also a job with some relation to the scientific work I had been doing, and a big part of it was the visualization of the results, which had been one of my favourite parts of my studies.”
In the end, Gian Andrea did not take long to be convinced. “I thought it over for 2 weeks. I knew I needed to build some more job-oriented skills, and that I wasn’t too old to change careers. And so I decided, yes – this was what I was going to put my energies into.”
Starting another degree after so many years in academia was out of the question, but fortunately, the increasingly popular new format of the coding bootcamp was an option.
“I found perhaps 6 different schools that looked viable,” says Gian Andrea. “I ended up going for WBS CODING SCHOOL as it looked really professional, starting from the website. I had a conversation with one of their admission managers, Emily, and my impression was excellent.”
And so, in March 2023, Gian Andrea followed through on ChatGPT’s idea and signed up for a Data Science bootcamp. It was the beginning of a whole new chapter in his career.
“In retrospect, to think that the bootcamp lasted only 4 months seems crazy,” he says with an amused smile. “I learned so much! The bootcamp was challenging, but within my capabilities. And it was nice to be working with classmates, after such a long time studying by myself.”
When the end of it came, things got emotional. “On the final stand-up with the whole class, one person started their farewell speech, and then broke down in tears. It didn’t take a minute before all the rest of us were crying as well!”
Then came the moment he had been worrying about since that cold morning on the first of January: job-hunting.
“I was very proactive about it,” says Gian Andrea. “I was sending CVs around already during the bootcamp, and I was very active on LinkedIn as well. In fact, that’s how I met my current boss – she engaged with one of my LinkedIn posts, and we stayed in touch after that, until she ended up calling me in for an interview.”
Gian Andrea’s efforts paid off: in October 2023, two months after he finished his bootcamp, he started his first day on his new job as Data Science Consultant in Munich.
He now has a busy schedule – indeed, he found time for our interview in the evening after a long day at work. And so we wrap up our conversation with a question as simple as it seems obvious: for someone who already had a degree, a Masters and a PhD, what could a bootcamp possibly give him that he did not already have?
And the answer is terse:
“The skills for the job.”
