From Grocery Clerk to Government Software Engineer

From Grocery Clerk to Government Software Engineer: How Lina Sachuk Rewrote Her American Dream

Lina Sachuk's story starts like most immigrant stories. Survival first. Ambition later. She came from Ukraine with degrees she couldn't use. She faced the challenge every immigrant knows: starting over.

Her days split between multiple jobs. She waited tables at Red Lobster. She worked the register at Costco. She picked up catering gigs wherever she could find them.

Summer 2015 changed everything. She found the Galvanize website. Within one year, she went from hourly service worker to web developer. She eventually landed at the U.S. Geological Survey as a software design engineer.

The Numbers Behind the Leap

Look at the economics of Sachuk's transformation. Bureau of Labor Statistics data shows waiters and waitresses earn a median annual wage of about $31,940. Hourly wages range from $8.94 at the low end to $28.89 at the high end. Restaurant servers make between $21,943 and $52,000 annually, even in better establishments.

Coding bootcamp graduates tell a different story. Starting salaries average $70,000. Complete beginners average $66,748 in their first positions. By their second job after bootcamp, graduates average $80,943. By their third position, they hit $99,229. This represents complete economic transformation.

Sachuk went from hourly service work to software engineering at the USGS. She worked there from December 2020 to August 2023 on the Geomagnetism Program. Her LinkedIn profile now lists JavaScript, TypeScript, Python, machine learning, and data visualization. Skills she didn't have years earlier.

Why Bootcamps Work When Degrees Don't

Sachuk chose a coding bootcamp over a traditional computer science degree. This path represents a major shift in how people enter tech. In 2019, coding bootcamps in the United States graduated over 23,043 students. U.S. colleges graduated 24,291 computer science undergraduates the same year.

Bootcamps work for career changers because of their structure. They focus on career outcomes. The global average job placement rate for coding bootcamp graduates sits between 71% and 79%. Traditional computer science degree holders average 68% placement. About 32% of bootcamp graduates find employment within one to three months. Another 26% secure positions within six months.

For immigrants like Sachuk, bootcamps offer speed. Traditional degrees require four years and cost between $40,000 and $120,000. Bootcamps run three to six months and cost an average of $13,580. Graduates recover their investment within 14 to 18 months.

The Immigrant Pattern in Tech

Sachuk's story repeats across immigrant communities in tech. The pattern stays consistent. Newcomers arrive with education or experience from their home country. Their credentials don't transfer. They start in service jobs to survive. They use intensive training to jump into sustainable careers.

Evgeniia Unzhakova spent nearly ten years teaching mathematics at Chuvash State University in Russia. She immigrated to the United States in 2019. She couldn't continue teaching. She enrolled in a coding bootcamp with her husband's support. "I tried to go for community college, but it wasn't for me because it was a slow way to reach my goal," she said. Time pressure drives many immigrants to establish financial stability fast.

Nicson Martinez came to the United States from Honduras at age ten. He eventually earned a degree in Computer Information Systems. After failing at coding once, he moved to Portland, Oregon for a software developer bootcamp. He got accepted into Microsoft's LEAP apprenticeship program.

Immigrant career changers share two traits. They embrace risk. They navigate uncertainty well. They already made the huge decision to leave their home country. The leap from service work to technology feels smaller by comparison.

From Service to Software

The move from hospitality and retail to software development happens often enough to be its own category. Kye Lindholm went from fine dining to site reliability engineering after completing Galvanize's program. "It was a useful experience to undergo such a rigorous program with a bunch of other people who were doing the same thing, as we're all making presumably big pivots in our lives together," Lindholm said. "It built a lot of comradery and trust, and we could lean on each other".

Another graduate went from working at Chuck E. Cheese to becoming a full-stack engineer at a major bank. The transformation turned "a distant dream into a tangible reality". These stories share a common thread. Prior technical skills don't matter as much as soft skills. Communication matters. Problem-solving under pressure matters. Working with diverse teams matters.

Course Report research confirms this. The typical coding bootcamp student is 30 years old with at least a bachelor's degree and six years of work experience. 40% never worked as programmers before. Prior to enrolling, many worked in hospitality, retail, and tourism. The median age and work experience show these are adults making calculated decisions to transform their economic circumstances.

What Makes Career Changers Win

Career changers succeed for specific reasons beyond good curriculum. They bring maturity. They bring motivation born from wanting something better. They bring transferable skills from prior careers.

Carey LaMothe, another Galvanize graduate, needed to support herself and her newborn. "So she took the road of code, and it seriously worked out". Katherine Aquino spent years in education advising women to pursue tech jobs. She decided "it was time to take her own advice".

The bootcamp model fits this population. Unlike traditional degrees assuming full-time student status, many bootcamps offer flexible scheduling. Programs focus on practical skills. Modern frameworks. Deployment processes. Collaborative development workflows. Not theoretical computer science foundations.

Career support matters too. Bootcamps with high placement rates provide career coaching. Resume review. Interview preparation. Direct connections to hiring employers. Some programs align their financial incentives with student outcomes through income share agreements or job guarantees.

The Salary Transformation

The salary lift for bootcamp graduates is substantial. Course Report studies show graduates get an average salary increase of 56% compared to pre-bootcamp earnings. For former administration worker Devon Lindsey, the transformation was dramatic: "I quadrupled my salary and have this whole new career coming my way".

The breakdown by prior experience shows an interesting pattern:

Complete beginners average $66,748 in their first positions. Those who taught themselves some code before bootcamp average $69,854. Experienced programmers who attended bootcamp average $76,735.

Prior experience helps. But it doesn't determine success. Complete beginners succeed regularly when they commit fully.

Women make up about 36% of coding bootcamp alumni. They report similar outcomes to men. Comparable pre and post-bootcamp salaries. Similar employment rates of 86-88%. A slightly higher salary lift of 59% compared to 53% for men.

Why These Stories Matter

Sachuk's transformation from Red Lobster waitress to USGS software engineer is more than inspiration. It represents a replicable pathway for economic mobility. Her LinkedIn profile lists the Oscar Wilde quote: "I have the simplest tastes. I'm always satisfied with the Best". Someone who refuses to accept limitation as permanent.

The tech sector continues to demand talent. Software developers earn median salaries around $130,000 for full-stack roles and $170,000 for back-end specialists in the United States. Industry growth creates ongoing opportunities for those willing to invest in reskilling.

For immigrants, technology careers offer extra advantages. Work depends less on cultural fluency or native English proficiency. Remote work opportunities provide flexibility. Skills transfer across geographic boundaries.

Programs like Refcode in Atlanta now extend similar opportunities to refugees. They provide free coding bootcamps teaching software development and artificial intelligence skills. "Companies are almost desperate to hire talented software engineers," founder Brenton Strine noted. "And then, on the other hand, there's this huge need of new Americans starting over from nothing".

The Real Lesson

Lina Sachuk's story matters because she wasn't exceptional. She was trilingual in English, Ukrainian, and Russian. She was educated with a master's degree in computer science from Polytechnic State University in Ukraine. But many immigrants arrive with credentials that don't translate. They face the same choice. Accept diminished circumstances or find a new path forward.

Sachuk bet on herself. She found Galvanize's program. She committed to intensive learning. She emerged with skills the American job market valued. Her career progression afterward shows the bootcamp was a beginning, not an ending. Freelance web developer to implementation consultant at Fast Enterprises to software design engineer at the USGS.

For anyone juggling service industry shifts while dreaming of something different, Sachuk's story offers a concrete roadmap. Intensive education programs exist. They work. The transformation they enable is real and measurable. The gap between a $30,000 service industry income and a $70,000+ technology salary is substantial. You cross it in less than a year.

The American dream has always been about reinvention. What changed is the tools for reinvention are more available now. Accessible education. Online resources. An industry hungry for talent. Lina Sachuk recognized the opportunity and seized it. The question for others in similar circumstances: are you ready to do the same?