The elegantly-dressed managers looked shocked. They were sitting behind a small desk in the pristine, newly-constructed office room where Hristo Goumnerov had asked to meet them. They were shocked because he’d had the audacity to do something nobody else had done before – he demanded that they keep their promises.
‘The working hours, the medical insurance, the deals with the union, all the stuff they told me in our interview which turned out to be untrue, I asked them to make good on it,’ says Hristo, looking back on that fateful day. ‘A week later I received a letter telling me I was no longer welcome at the office. That’s when I started looking for a coding bootcamp.’
Hristo was not the sort of person you’d normally expect to sign up for a programming course: he held a BS in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Massachusetts, and an MS in the same subject from Texas A&M University. He already had tangible skills in coding and mathematics, and after his education, he worked in the USA and in Europe as an engineer in sectors like energy, aerospace, material science, and others.
‘I returned to Europe because I missed the culture,’ recalls Hristo. ‘But when I came to Germany, I discovered all the talk about the “shortage of talent” in tech was actually a myth. It was not the talent that was lacking – it was good jobs, good salaries, and good working conditions.’
It was this desire to be treated by his bosses with transparency and respect that led Hristo to stand up and demand that they follow up on their promises. When that led to his termination, he returned to an idea he’d been nurturing for a while.
‘I kept my pulse on the market. I could see that things like data science, artificial intelligence, machine learning, were all very much on the rise. Someone with the right skills could be very useful to society and earn a good salary there. In the meantime, the sectors where I worked, like the nuclear industry, were quickly being shut down in Germany. I knew it was time to make a move.’
Never one to enjoy sitting with idle hands, Hristo went straight to his local job agency and looked into the state-sponsored courses available to someone who wished to upskill. He researched a number of options, and finally signed up for the WBS CODING SCHOOL Data Science Bootcamp.
‘In my initial calls with the school, they warned me that bootcamps are highly intensive, full-time commitments,’ says Hristo, with a bemused smile. ‘But with my background, I found that wasn’t the case at all. I had fun at the bootcamp, but I wouldn’t say I was challenged.’
With the Data Science certificate now in his hands, Hristo started looking for jobs – and this time, he cast his net wide. He looked for jobs outside of Germany, back in his native country of Bulgaria. A few turned him down. But one company in the financial sector gave him exactly what he was looking for – a job in which he could work independently, making his own decisions, managing his own assets, and not having to rely on ‘promises’ by his contingent manager.
‘There are many stories of people taking coding bootcamps who used to work as waiters, or athletes, or other unrelated things,’ says Hristo. ‘But a bootcamp isn’t only for career changers. Even for people with qualifications in tech, a smart student can make really good use for them.
‘My advice to people with that type of background is to do some careful market research. See which industries are on the rise, and then ask yourself what it is that you want to do for the next five or so years. If there is an alignment between what you want to do and what is emerging, that’s the time to think of a bootcamp.
‘Above all, I would say don’t be lured by the money alone. Industries that are attractive now because they pay well are likely to become saturated quickly, so that by the time you get in, the salaries could drop. Instead, look at the future, at the industries that will be relevant tomorrow. Stay ahead of the game.’
Indeed, Hristo’s decision to take a bootcamp was itself the direct result of a high-risk decision.
‘Confronting my superiors was a gamble, and it led to the longest phase of unemployment in my life since I started working,’ he says, ‘but it was also the right decision. I said no to working conditions that I did not like, I reskilled, and now I’m working in Bulgaria. I am doing what I want, how I want, as I want. I am home – and in more than one sense of the word.’
Hristo Goumnerov graduated from a WBS CODING SCHOOL Data Science Bootcamp in July 2023, and he is currently working with Artificial Intelligence models in the financial sector.
