← Back to the blog
Working lifeChapter #21

🥊 Box well. The knockout comes on its own

How I went from finishing a bootcamp to working in backend at a fintech.

Laura MontironiApril 24, 20269 min read

🚀 Closing one chapter (and opening another)

A promise is a promise.

This blog was born out of a personal need. A way to let off steam. A way to keep a record of everything I am going through in this career change which, even if from the outside it might look like just “a new job”, on the inside has been much more than that.

Because this did not start when I finished the bootcamp.

It started before. Long before.

🧠 Where I actually come from

All that mental noise — feeling that I had chosen the wrong career and that I was not moving forward — went off when I became a mother.

And that is putting it mildly.

Motherhood set off a lot more than that. Basically my personality, my goals, my plans, my hobbies… everything that had to do with me as an independent person was left in pieces.

From inside that hole I decided to change direction and come up for air.

That is why I did the bootcamp.

Because the bootcamp gave me back the will to live and to grow professionally. That is not a nice line for the blog. It is exactly what I felt.

For a year now my mind has been set on closing this chapter, on reaching the goal, on making this career switch that lets me keep growing. And every single day of that year has had one thing in common: not stopping.

💼 The job hunt was a job

The moment the bootcamp ended, I started looking for work as if it were my job.

Because it was.

This was my process, and I did it for a lot of openings:

  1. I read the job ad
  2. I ran my CV through a scanner to see how well it matched that specific ad
  3. If the match was below 80%, I gave the CV to Claude and asked it to re-describe and reframe my experience — without inventing skills I do not have — so that the match went above 80%
  4. Ads in English, CV in English. Ads in Spanish, CV in Spanish
  5. A cover letter tailored to every single ad. No exceptions
  6. Once I had applied, I looked on LinkedIn for the recruiter who had posted the ad and messaged them directly

And on top of that, LinkedIn Premium (I activated it for free). I got every bit of value out of it.

I posted content at least once a week, even when I did not feel like it. I connected with every IT recruiter I could find. I followed tech companies. For every role I applied to, I connected with the CEO, the recruiter, software engineers, frontend and backend people.

I made my message consistent across LinkedIn, my CV, this blog and GitHub. They all tell and describe the same story. Which happens to be my real story.

And I think I managed to turn it into my most valuable personal branding asset.

🔢 The numbers (because they matter too)

These statistics cover roughly the month and a half after finishing the bootcamp and starting to look actively:

+40applications sent
+30recruiters contacted directly
~9replies received
4processes with a technical interview

Behind every number there is much more than you can see from the outside.

I also learned something curious about job hunting: when you write to companies directly, you almost always get the same answer: “Register on our website and apply there.” So you do, of course. But a lot of the time that database feels more like an endless archive of CVs that die right there.

With recruiters the dynamic is different. If I had to put numbers on it, I would say roughly 3 out of 10 reply. Some to say there are no junior positions at that moment. Others to keep your profile for the future. And in a few cases, to start a real conversation.

But there is one thing that weighs more than all the rest:

Not giving up.

🧪 The processes that changed how I see myself

Some of the processes I went through did not stop at a quick interview. They forced you to face how you think, how you structure code and how you solve real problems:

It was not just about “making it work”. It was about understanding the why.

Facing all of this radically changed the very critical way I always look at myself. And I told myself something I had never said before:

“You have just finished a bootcamp. Five months ago you knew almost nothing about this world. And now you are able to defend a technical challenge in front of people with years of experience.”

This is not for everyone. Doing this takes guts.

Little by little my confidence is coming back. I am also realising something important: even though there have been pauses in my professional life, the ambition is still intact. Sometimes it is hidden. But it shows up in every challenge, in every interview, in every problem I try to solve.

💻 What I learned along the way

1️⃣ Learn less, but better

You do not need to know everything. Trying to cover too many languages is a trap. Picking 3 or 4 and going deep is far more valuable than knowing a little of everything.

2️⃣ Do not let what you do not know overwhelm you

Code is infinite. There will always be something more complex, more optimised, more “pro”. And that is fine. You do not need to master it all to start adding value.

3️⃣ Trust that there is a place for you

There will be a company, a team, a project that needs exactly what you can do today. It is not magic. It is persistence.

4️⃣ The real learning starts once you are working

Courses look nothing like reality. In the real world there is legacy code, decisions you do not understand, pressure, absurd bugs. But it is also where everything falls into place.

5️⃣ Do not compare yourself to anyone

Especially not to what you see out there. The only comparison that matters is with your version from yesterday.

🎯 Box well. The knockout comes on its own

Job hunting is not entirely fair.

We like to think that everything depends on our abilities, on how much we studied or how much we know. But reality is more complex. Getting an opportunity often depends on the context too, on where the company is at, on the interviewer’s empathy, on how well you happen to tell your story that day, and even on the mood you walk into the call with.

That said: luck is something you have to work at too.

There is a line I keep repeating to myself:

“Box well. The knockout comes on its own.”

I am not exactly a boxing fan. But the metaphor explains very well what I mean. Work does not appear out of nowhere. Opportunities have to be created. You have to study, write, reach out, insist, try again.

But if you do your job well, something inevitably ends up happening.

✉️ The job offer that did not exist

There was a company that, for reasons that are hard to sum up briefly, had always been on my radar.

One day I saw that their CEO was going to speak at Talent Arena in Barcelona. And I thought: why not?

I wrote to him directly. Without many expectations. Just introducing myself.

Two days later he asked me to send him an email, and he put me in touch with the Tech Lead of the finance team.

From there the process began:

And just like that, almost without realising it, the opportunity appeared.

But what makes me believe in myself the most, what gives me the most faith, is this: this job offer did not exist. I created it myself.

When you want something that badly, in the end the universe lines up and it happens. That is not a self-help line. It is what I lived.

🔗 When two worlds come together

This opportunity closes a very big cycle of transformation.

Because it brings together two worlds that have always been in my life:

And I am now working in backend inside a fintech.

Honestly… I could not have imagined a better fit.

There are still days when I struggle to believe all of this is happening. But I also know it did not appear out of nowhere. It appeared after many hours of study, many doubts, many attempts, many messages sent.

It appeared after I kept boxing.

🤝 An important part of the journey

During the bootcamp I was lucky enough to meet people who pushed me further than I thought I could go.

If you want to read more about that part of the journey:

👉 My story at Upgrade Hub

🌱 This is not the end

This, as I always say, is only just beginning.

For example, I have to learn a new language. In this case, Ruby. And I take it for what it is: another mountain to climb, another chapter that begins.

Looking back, what I take most from this whole process is:

There were moments when I thought I would not be able to do it. Moments when I did not understand the code. Moments when I doubted whether this world was really for me.

And even so, I kept going.

Something is happening that a year ago I would not even have dared to imagine. And here I am. Ready. 🚀

Topics

#fintech#backend#hired