#168 From Accountant to Data Engineer with Alyson La
The freeCodeCamp Podcast
Quincy Larson
5.0 • 549 Ratings
🗓️ 12 April 2025
⏱️ 79 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
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/
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | not everyone is going to be nice. There is going to be mean people in the world. Because when I |
| 0:05.4 | entered my career, I was so naive and I was this girl from Utah and I just thought everyone was |
| 0:10.2 | just like nice and da-da-da. But in the corporate world, people are mean and they have like agendas |
| 0:18.4 | and they have like political, you know, maneuvers that they're trying to do |
| 0:23.6 | to get to where they want to be in the corporate world. And I just was so naive to that. So I would |
| 0:28.5 | tell my, my younger self, just know that not everyone is nice and you're going to encounter some |
| 0:36.7 | mean people and just kind of like |
| 0:38.2 | mentally prepare for that. |
| 0:39.3 | Welcome back to the Free Code Camp podcast, your source for raw, unedited interviews with |
| 0:45.2 | developers. |
| 0:46.1 | Today we're talking with Allison Law. |
| 0:48.6 | She taught herself how to code using Free Code Camp while working as an accountant at GitHub |
| 0:53.8 | and was able to transition |
| 0:55.9 | into a data scientist role there and ultimately became a data engineer. |
| 1:01.9 | After one of Allison's kids got diagnosed with autism, she left her career for three years |
| 1:07.2 | to be a full-time mom. |
| 1:09.0 | She then re-entered the workforce and now teaches other moms |
| 1:12.1 | how to do the same through a charity called TechMoms. Recently, Allison won a teacher of the year |
| 1:18.2 | award and she was a top five finalist in a recent data visualization competition. Support for |
| 1:24.2 | 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. |
| 1:34.5 | Learn more at WixSudio.com. |
| 1:36.7 | Support also comes from the 11,384 kind folks who support free code camp through a monthly donation. |
... |
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