Code Newbie

Seran Ybaric's path into tech was anything but linear. She worked in biochemistry research, at NPR as a producer, and in sales and content roles at startups before she learned to code. The real turning point came while she was learning on her own and then in a bootcamp. She found the process lonely and discouraging, and it was only when she met the other 44 people in her cohort that she realized the struggle was not a personal failing. That experience made her see how rare such community was. Outside a campus or a bootcamp costing around eleven thousand dollars, it was very hard to find people who understood the journey of learning to code.

Code Newbie started almost by accident. Seran had no formal plan. She launched a simple Twitter chat that met every Wednesday for one hour, using a hashtag and a moderator who posed questions to the group. She treated it as a fun side project rather than a business, which took the pressure off. Over time the chat grew into a podcast, a conference, several meetups, and study groups. Seran's approach throughout has been to listen to the community and ask what people need, then build to meet that need.

The first participants did not arrive on their own. For roughly the first few months, Seran direct-messaged friends with large Twitter followers and asked them to retweet the chat each week. She was willing to do this manual work because the project was not her income. Around months five or six, the chat had enough momentum that people kept returning without the big push. Seran noted that the startup literature she read covered the how of early growth but not how long to keep pushing before deciding something was not working.

The Twitter chat proved that people wanted to talk to each other, but it was not a good format for digging deeply into topics. That limitation pushed Code Newbie toward podcasts, long-form stories, and in-person meetups. Seran found that meetups worked best in a study-group format with a meetup leader who helped pair people up. She also learned that her non-technical skills, such as interviewing, public speaking, and community building, helped her stand out in tech. She also noticed that leaning too heavily on those strengths could keep her from growing, so she pushed herself to learn more coding to build a platform idea she had been sitting on.

Code Newbie now runs a weekly chat, a podcast, a conference, and several meetups, and it is supported by an international community of people learning to code. The sources do not disclose revenue figures, but Seran credits her wide range of skills with making the project possible at a cost a single person could manage.