The freeCodeCamp Podcast12 Apr 2025

#168 From Accountant to Data Engineer with Alyson La

On this week's episode of the podcast, freeCodeCamp founder Quincy Larson interviews Alyson La. She taught herself how to code while working as an accountant at GitHub and was able to transition to a data scientist there, then ultimately a software engineer.

After one of her kids got diagnosed with autism, she left her career for 3 years to be a full-time mom. She then re-entered the workforce and now teaches other moms how to do the same through a charity called Tech-Moms. She recently won a teacher of the year award and was a top 5 finalist in a data visualization competition.

We talk about:
- How Alyson taught herself programming while working as an accountant
- How she transitioned to data analyst and ultimately data engineer
- Tips for preparing for a break from work to take care of your family or address burnout
- How to re-enter with the workforce with gusto

Support for this podcast comes from a grant from Wix Studio. Wix Studio provides developers tools to rapidly build websites with everything out-of-the-box, then extend, replace, and break boundaries with code. Learn more at https://wixstudio.com.

Support also comes from the 11,384 kind folks who support freeCodeCamp through a monthly donation. You can join these chill human beings and help our charity's mission by going to donate.freecodecamp.org

Links we talk about during our conversation:

- Alyson's new analytics consultancy: https://alysonla.com/
- The charity Alyson teaches at: https://www.tech-moms.org/
- Tech-Mom's Data class: https://github.com/Tech-Moms/data-analytics-course
- The petition site Alyson mentioned: https://playground-petition-portal-9cfaeecf.vercel.app/
- Alyson's Drake fan page: https://alysonla.github.io/drizzydrakefanpage/
- Alyson's matching game: https://alysonla.github.io/hubber-memory-game/
- Alyson substack: https://alysonsaiplayground.substack.com/
- The data visualization app Alyson that was a finalist in the recent competition: https://pixar-scroll-tale.lovable.app/

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