A daisy chain of events brought Navy veteran, Britini Malloy, into Software Engineering at Microsoft.
Shortly after transferring to Everett, WA with her active-duty husband, this industrious and studious mother of five (including twins!) enrolled in college. She completed her degree and it yielded her a whopping one interview, so she decided to return to school to get her masters. Two years later the best opportunity she could find was an unpaid internship as a web developer/designer.
Frustrated but undeterred, Britini amped up her search and accepted assistance from her local WorkSource office. As luck would have it, her counselor had recently heard about Apprenti and recommended she give it a try. Britini took the assessment in December and by Valentine’s Day she was interviewing and getting plugged into the inaugural Software Engineering Apprenticeship for Microsoft.
A portion of the apprenticeship included three months of C# training with TLG Learning. Since the structure of a cohort is more collaborative than competitive, Britini’s academic computer science experience was valued and built upon.
From TLG she moved into on-the-job training at Microsoft which led to two full-time offers a year later. She opted to join a team of seasoned engineers working on Microsoft Intune. Though she was a little intimidated by the heavy-hitters on her new team, Britini’s new dev manager valued the perspective and creative approach she brought to the organization. In fact, their team has since used their headcount to acquire additional up-and-coming developers from varied backgrounds.
While there were struggles and frustrations of accelerated learning and on-the-job training, Britini marvels at her on-going experience at Microsoft and has come to believe in Satya Nadella’s principles around growth mindset. Today Britini continues the daisy chain by referring people to the program, we look forward to sharing their stories someday soon!