Alumni Q & A with Chad Musick

For Chad Musick, it was never a question about whether or not he had an interest or a passion for technology, but when he was going to have the opportunity to pursue it. After 15 years in Greenville's restaurant industry and the reality of COVID-19, that opportunity finally presented itself. Keep reading to learn more about Chad!

Tell me about yourself and your first exposure to the computers/tech industry.

My father was an early adopter of computers and home technology. He was immediately fascinated by it and even learned to program using BASIC for his job. He taught me and I wrote my first computer program when I was ten. It was very simple but I was very proud of it. 

As I got older I was always interested in computers as a hobby, but I didn't have the skillset to take it beyond that. When COVID-19 presented challenges at work, it became clear that I needed to decide on my career and life. I knew it was going to mean investing in the time, effort, and money to make it happen, but I needed a change.

Finding a way into the computer world has always been in the back of my mind. To make the leap from the Service Industry job to coding for a Linux distribution - that would be a dream job. But I didn't have the skillset to even ask for this job. COVID pushed me over the edge to make this decision. 

What was your experience like during the 12-week boot camp?

I started the immersive program in January 2021. That first week was terrifying. In a good way! I went in with a ton of confidence, but those first couple of days took all of that away. They design it that way on purpose. Mady dives right in. I learned more in that first week than I had in my entire adult life. At first, I was thinking I had made a mistake, but that is the whole point of the immersive course. It's completely overwhelming, terrifying, and encouraging. It's this incredible, complex cauldron of emotions. I'm glad I did it. 

Tell me about what you are doing now at ScanSource? 

I'm one of the coders on the creative team in the marketing department. In other words the designers draw up a layout for a webpage and I code it. There's a lot more to it, but when people ask me what I do I say I'm a corporate web developer.

What was the transition like from CCS to working at ScanSource? 

It required a complete recalibration of my brain. Code school is so all-consuming that for those three months it's a way of life and a way of thinking. Going into the working world forced me to come out of that. However, I went into the job (which otherwise would have been overwhelmingly intimidating) with the confidence that comes from finishing code school. I've said this before, and I want to reiterate: finishing code school will absolutely not make someone a senior-developer-level master of code. But it will give you the underlying skills to drop into a coding environment knowing that you know how to learn it.

What was the most valuable takeaway from your experience with CCS?

The skillset. I now know that I can go into a coding environment and understand the language. They teach you how to figure things out and how to learn using this new set of skills.

For people who are considering code school, you cannot expect to be an expert similarly to someone who went to undergrad, etc. and has been doing it for years. That's not the point of code school. It will give you the fundamental knowledge to be able to learn whatever discipline you've chosen to pursue. It's literally learning a foreign language. By the end of the program, you are conversing in that language, not mastering it. 

What does it mean to be a part of the CCS alumnus community?

It means a lot to me, actually. I didn't expect that, either. I didn't expect to be drawn into the larger community of programmers. There is an image of professional coders - that they're isolated and working alone - that is absolutely not the case. Coding professionally is 100% collaborative. Being a part of code school brings you into that community of coders to help with projects, find jobs/networking, etc.

What's an interesting/fun fact about yourself? 

I once conducted a blind tasting of over twenty different grocery-store off-brand Mountain Dews. It was a blast. The winner was Laura Lynn's Diet Mountain Moon Drops.