Growing up, Chris Zambito figured he’d take over the family business – one of the largest dry-cleaning facilities in Buffalo, New York. And he did. But over time, he realized he wasn’t fulfilled and looked to his sister for inspiration. As a working software engineer, she encouraged him to try a beginner coding bootcamp.
Read about Chris’s journey from family business owner to Lead Software Developer at Comptus Technologies.
How did you become interested in software engineering? What drew you to this work?
I grew up in a family business, and then I took over that family business. It was a dry-cleaning laundry facility, and we were one of the largest in Buffalo, New York. At the same time, I bought a textile restoration company, but the problem with that type of business is that there’s always something breaking. You get no time to yourself whatsoever.
I also ended up going to school for business, thinking that it was the right move and that it would be something I’d want to do – just following in my family’s footsteps – but I was never in love with the work. As soon as COVID hit, I knew I needed to do something else with my life.
After talking with my sister and brother-in-law, who are software engineers, I realized I’ve always had an interest in building websites. I used to build websites for our businesses, but it wasn’t custom coding, I was using website builders. I just didn’t know how to get started with any of this in a professional way.
They told me that a lot of people at their companies graduated from bootcamps. I had been considering going back to school for computer engineering or computer science, and they were like, why spend that extra four years? They worked with people who’d gone through Hack Reactor, and I decided to put the companies up for sale and enroll in the bootcamp.
It was a big leap of faith, but it was good, I had been sort of miserable with what I was doing before, and I knew I enjoyed computers and being creative and making things, so I gave this a try.
What did you get out of your time in the bootcamp?
My sister asked me, Was the bootcamp worth it? I said yes, because while, sure, I could have learned all of this myself, the problem was that I had no idea where to start. I was using YouTube tutorials, and I had no idea what I was doing or where I was going with it.
Hack Reactor taught me a sense of a schedule, including what steps to take to go from zero to finishing the back end, connecting it to a front end, designing the front end, to deploying the front end. It doesn’t matter what project you work on, pretty much all of these little steps combine in the end.
Hack Reactor was the best place to understand how to start. I might not be using everything that I learned in the bootcamp, but in my first job afterward, they asked if I’d used a certain tech stack, and I said no. But I knew how to approach it. It didn’t matter what stack they were using, because I knew how to take the steps to learn it, and I was able to think and progressively move through the project and understand where I needed to look and how to educate myself.
In your job search, did you use any strategies from Career Services?
I definitely used a lot of different methods from Career Services. One thing that stuck with me is that, when searching for a job, you have to treat it like a full-time job. And that’s probably the toughest advice I give to people who message me on LinkedIn. They’re like, Hey, I saw you got a job, what did you do?
And I tell them, you have to be in a mindset that you’re going to be in your office for hours a day, applying to jobs. For me, I would apply to jobs directly on company websites, then I would go on LinkedIn to try to find someone from that company to see if they’d do an impersonal interview or just let them know that I’m here and I applied.
That’s how I got this job. I applied and they called me an hour later. They wanted to set up an interview. But I had applied to many jobs before that happened and I had to stay persistent. It’s a game of grinding, and not giving up, and a lot of coffee.
Where do you work now? And what are you working on?
I got hired by a company called Comptus Technologies as a Lead Front-End Developer. The main site that I work on is called Trade Assistant AI. It’s a machine learning algorithm that studies any crypto coin you pick, and we’ll run millions of scenarios on them and pick the best buy-and-sell signal.
When I got hired, they had just lost their front-end person, and I overtook the project, which included the entire front end. I also work with other clients for the company, and I help train newer developers to start doing custom work instead of using cookie-cutter WordPress sites. I’m teaching them how to use React and custom frameworks. Also through Comptus, I still get a bunch of contract projects.
You mentioned your prior career running the laundry business, and you’ve done other things professionally, too. Is there anything from those former lines of work that you’ve been able to carry into software engineering?
The most important thing I learned from running the company is that making connections is so important. You never know who you’re talking to, so you should treat everyone like they’re going to be your next coworker or boss or investor.
The next most important thing I learned is that you have to control your emotions so they’re not like a roller coaster. You’re going to have really amazing days and you’re going to have really, really hard days, and that’s totally normal.
You can’t let your emotions get too high or too low. On good days, remind yourself that this is awesome, and this is exactly what should be going on. But keep focusing. Enjoy it, but keep focusing, because tomorrow might be the worst day of your life and you can’t let your emotions drop to the floor.
You have to realize that as many good days as you have, you’re going to have that many bad days, and you just have to stay right in the middle, stay emotionally level, and it’s going to be fine.
That’s great advice. Do you have any other advice you’d give, especially to people just starting a bootcamp?
Yes, I’d reiterate that goal to stay emotionally level and realize that you’re going into this bootcamp because there’s something in your life that you want to change.
You have to be mentally prepared to make the commitment and make the sacrifices. Start now. Give up whatever you need to give up. Buckle down, because the time flies by. You’re going to meet some incredible people. I still talk to so many people from the bootcamp on a daily basis, but it’s such a short amount of time in your life. Do whatever it takes to focus because you’re literally changing your life, and it’s worth it.
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