How a tech consultant boosts her coding skills with CodeSignal Learn

Whether you’re trying to break into tech, prepare for the job search, or level up in your current role, it helps to know that you’re not alone in your journey to build your technical skills. That’s why we’re sharing stories from learners like you: to motivate and inspire others in their learning endeavors.

Our latest learner story comes from Abbey Helterbran, a recent college grad and, now, full-time tech consultant for a software service company. Abbey took courses on Pandas and data analysis on CodeSignal Learn to refresh and level up coding skills that she uses on the job.

What did you want to learn?

“I graduated in May with a degree in management information systems. In August, I started my full-time job. I work as a tech consultant for a software service company, so I still do some coding. A lot of it is more client-based work and configuration, but coding is definitely a big part of my job.

Because I knew that coding would be a big part of my job, if I had extra time in my first few months, I would practice different coding skills on CodeSignal and in [my company’s] own system, using our own language. That’s what really led me to becoming a more frequent [CodeSignal] user over the past couple of months: knowing that building that skill would really benefit me later down the line in my current role.”

How do you like to learn?

“I really value interactivity, especially when you’re learning a technical skill. In the past, I have tried to learn via static sources where you just read information and then have to use it for yourself—and for me, that’s just not successful. I don’t really think that’s a great way to learn coding. I think that the best way to learn something that you’re going to do hands-on is through a platform where you can do it hands-on.”

What was learning with CodeSignal like?

“The first thing I noticed was that the types of lessons available are very relevant to the tech scene right now, and to things that people in my field and similar fields would be interested in. I took a class in college about using Python, Pandas, and Seaborn for data analytics, so I did that lesson [in CodeSignal Learn] first, which was nice because I had somewhat of a background in it—but that was college, and I have not taken it in a couple of years. I really enjoyed the examples that were given in that [Learn] course, and I enjoyed working with Cosmo*—it was very helpful to my learning experience.

And, I was really impressed by the type of feedback that Cosmo would give you about your code. It’s honestly kind of insane to me that the feedback is so targeted and so specific. There were even times where, for example, if I didn’t change a variable name, I would get feedback like, ‘you did this well and completed the task, but you may want to consider changing the variable name for context for yourself, because it’d be better to know what the variable actually is.’ Feedback like that was honestly better than the humans that I’ve worked with and gotten code feedback from.”

*Cosmo is our friendly AI-powered tutor and guide built into CodeSignal Learn.

What’s next for you?

“I’m very early in my career. I’ve only been a professional for 8 months now. But my company functions in a data analytics space—a blend of HR and data analytics. So learning about data analytics is never bad for me because I do touch it in [my role], even if I don’t do it myself. Depending on where I want to go in the future, if I wanted to make a career move, these skills would be very useful to me.”