Montreal entrepreneur explains what it takes to create a successful career

Montreal resident Dominic Tremblay has always been an entrepreneur at heart.

He believes that in order to succeed, constantly building your skill set is absolutely essential. Having already been the founder of a startup fresh out of university, he’d already had a taste of what it takes to making a living based on an innately creative mind. But to him, that wasn’t quite enough. 

With a background in computer programming, he looked to the future with the goal of working in web development. However, he desired more skills so his ideas could materialize. Tremblay registered for the full-time immersive web development bootcamp at Lighthouse Labs in Montreal to harness his passion for the better.

Daily Hive sat down to talk to Tremblay about his experience in the Lighthouse Labs program. 

Tell us about yourself

I have been an entrepreneur. I launched a startup fresh out of university with two of my friends. Having a company, you wear many hats. I was doing more development early on and moved on to more managerial tasks as the company grew. I did a lot of digital marketing, product management, and more. The company called Visicom Media has been successful and employs around 30 persons today. However, I had the feeling that I accomplished what I wanted and decided that it was time for me to do something else. I wanted to get back to web development and be closer to the product. I have always been passionate about web development for the mix of technology and creativity. It’s amazing what you can accomplish today with all the tools and frameworks out there.

Why did you decide to register for the Lighthouse Labs program?

I decided to register for Lighthouse Labs because I wanted to get up to speed with the latest development tools and technologies. Although I do have a background in computer programming, I was more involved in digital marketing in the last few years. I was taking courses online already but I wanted a more straightforward path. The fact that Lighthouse is an immersive program allows you to reach your goal much faster. Also, you have a lot of support from everyone at Lighthouse. You learn much faster that way and you benefit from the experience and expertise of others.

Who would you recommend Lighthouse to?

Lighthouse does offer a part-time course and a fully immersive course. The immersive course is for someone who would like to have hands on experience with web development and would like a fast track to be professionally ready. The part-time course, or the full time, could be for someone who wants to learn more deeply about web development or if it’s something they would like to do in the future. For example, it could be someone involved with design/front end as there is now less distinction between roles. For example, full stack developers do both the front end and back end.

What kinds of skills did you learn in the program?

You learn pretty much all the skills you need to become a web developer. That’s what the program is for. So you start off with terminal commands, programming with Ruby, Git/GitHub and move on the frameworks like Sinatra and Ruby on Rails. Of course, you learn about CSS, Javascript and NodeJS.

How long did it take you to learn them?

Before starting the bootcamps, you need to go through the prep work which cover the basics and ensure that everyone starts on the same base. At the bootcamp, you need to put  the time and efforts every day to learn the skills. You have lectures every day about the current activities and you follow the daily tasks and projects on your dashboard.  Since I already had a background in programming, learning some skills like Ruby was maybe more straightforward for me. However, I still needed to put a lot of efforts. With frameworks like Ruby on Rails, it’s more demanding and you need understand many aspects like Ruby, the database, the controllers, the views, etc. The teacher assistants are very helpful.

What do you feel you walked away from the program with?

Ruby on Rails was new to me. It’s a really good framework that provides you with everything you need to build Web apps. We learn to use Git and GitHub a lot and when doing the mid-term final projects your learn to work as a team. You get used to learn new skills throughout the bootcamp and for the final projects our team decided to learn ReactJS. So your learn a lot of the technical skills, but you get used to learning new things along the way. This is really useful as web development evolves all the time. You learn the front end, the back end, team work, and the ability to adapt.

How has the program changed you?

For me, it provided me with the challenges that I needed to get up to date with current web technologies. It gave me a fast track to be at the level the industry requires. I feel more confident.

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Many Lighthouse Labs students are already working as developers or are in the job seeking process – in this case they can talk to the career services department. The web development bootcamp and iOS development bootcamp last for a duration of eight weeks in person, are full-time immersive, include a four week remote prep course, with a 7:1 student to teacher ratio. Each are designed to launch you into your first Junior Developer role.

To celebrate the launch of its new Full-Stack Web Bootcamp curriculum, Lighthouse Labs has released its Early Bird Challenge. Activate the puzzle, solve the clues and you could score $500 off their Web or iOS Bootcamp. Click here for details.