Meet the couple behind Artists Who Code, a group helping artists switch careers to tech

Catherine Ricafort McCreary, a Broadway performer turned software program engineer, was almost a month into her new job on the on-line garments styling firm Sew Repair when the pandemic hit. Though she had made the leap to a extra steady, well-paying trade than theater, her artist mates and former co-workers had been in disaster.

A couple of week after Broadway shut down, Ricafort McCreary and her husband, Scott McCreary — a full-time cellist, singer and actor turned software program engineer — launched a assist group for artists concerned about making a profession change. “We thought: In case your job is gone, there’s by no means a greater time to study what we did,” Scott says. “We need to make it simpler and assist people who find themselves hurting.”

Lower than 10 individuals joined their first casual Zoom assembly in March 2020. However as phrase unfold over the previous two years, the group, now known as Artists Who Code, has grown to about 280 members throughout the U.S. and overseas. The volunteer-run group presents steerage and emotional assist for artists concerned about or presently working in know-how. Amongst them are Carla Stickler, who carried out because the Elphaba understudy in Broadway’s “Depraved” and now works as a software program engineer and humanities educator in Chicago; Melinda Sewak, a Nashville-based actor and singer who works in knowledge analytics, and Nick Spangler, a former Broadway actor who now works as a software program engineer for a digital theater ticketing platform.

Artists Who Code was born out of the pair’s deep frustrations working as full-time artists. After graduating from USC with a level in industrial and techniques engineering, Ricafort McCreary labored as a musical theater dancer, actor and singer for about 10 years, performing ensemble and supporting roles in Broadway’s “Mamma Mia,” “Cinderella” and “Miss Saigon.”

The 2 met in 2010 on NBC’s a cappella actuality present “The Sing-Off.” In 2018, the couple enrolled in software program engineering boot camps, each of them immersive, three-month programs that train college students to code and land a job in tech. They had been at a stage the place they each wished monetary safety — the power to purchase a home and plan for the longer term.

“We had been seeing performers who we regarded as much as and who had been well-known inside our group, and seeing they had been having to do issues, like go on tour for six months, to pay for his or her youngsters’ faculty,” McCreary says. “They had been simply as anxious about the place the following job would come from as we had been.”

Two months after graduating from the boot camp, McCreary, who carried out as a cellist with the New Haven Symphony Orchestra and acted in “Cabaret” on Broadway, was employed as a junior software program engineer for Grailed, a style tech firm.

When Ricafort McCreary was solid as Karen the Pc within the 2018 manufacturing of “SpongeBob SquarePants: The Broadway Musical,” it felt like a profession excessive. But the function, although glamorous, was only a band-aid over a deep wound, she says. When the job ended, she struggled as soon as once more with low-paying work and being unemployed, incomes simply $10,000 in 2019.

“With each massive Broadway credit score that I earned and the upper the ladder I climbed, I really did an evaluation; I noticed my internet price taking place,” she says. “I felt much less and fewer highly effective with every year I spent within the trade persevering with to audition, and feeling issues like typecasting and fixed unemployment, and plenty of bodily accidents — it simply all turned very irritating.”

Culling from their unusual and oftentimes isolating experiences of navigating the tech area as artists, Ricafort McCreary and McCreary constructed a free mini-curriculum of assets for Artists Who Code. These embody advising members on how to decide on a coding boot camp, establishing a mentorship program to assist artists in several phases of their coding journey and providing recommendation on the job search and nailing technical interviews.

In one in all their inner Google Docs titled “Actual Discuss: The Good, The Unhealthy, and The Ugly of stepping into Software program Engineering,” they outlined why they made a profession change. The nice? An entry-level job within the tech trade can earn six figures in New York, and it’s nonetheless attainable to tackle short-term performing gigs or different inventive tasks. The dangerous? Touchdown a job is hard and, as soon as within the door, the tradition shock of working an workplace job may be difficult to navigate. “The engineering group may be very dry and never empathetic,” they wrote. The ugly? Going from zero to software program engineer may require enrolling in a boot camp that may price about $16,000.

LinkedIn is commonly one other hurdle for artists. Ricafort McCreary hadn’t used LinkedIn till she utilized for jobs in engineering. She didn’t have an “applicable” skilled picture, “so I took a screenshot from an audition tape I had made for the function of a instructor,” she says, laughing. The couple discovered they needed to compress their wins within the arts to make room for tech. They hosted LinkedIn makeover workshops to assist artists translate delicate abilities like self-discipline, being detail-oriented and dealing in demanding environments on their resumes to draw hiring managers.

“It’s like a code change. As an artist, you don’t know what a Google Calendar invite is,” McCreary says. “Absorbing the etiquette of this new world and understanding what is suitable and what’s not and how you can attain out to individuals, and how you can advocate for your self and how you can talk the talents that you just as an artist carry to the desk.”

Within the early days of Artists Who Code, the couple labored to seek out methods to stroll by way of technical ideas and jargon for many who had been unfamiliar. “Now it’s the identical people who we had been serving to mentor at first, plenty of them are actually employed of their first software program engineering or product supervisor or UX designer jobs,” Ricafort McCreary says. “They’re speaking about issues that I don’t even perceive.”

For Jonathan Butler, Artists Who Code proved integral in his transition from cellist to full-time software program engineer. Discouraged by the shortage of stability as a contract musician, Butler started studying to code earlier than nationwide lockdowns. As knowledgeable cellist primarily based in L.A., there have been few steady job choices — which usually embody taking part in with knowledgeable orchestra or educating cello at a college — notably within the early days of the pandemic.

Being a part of Artists Who Code was useful as he labored by way of coding questions. However extra vital, seeing different artists make the transition served as inspiration that he might do it too.

For now, Butler isn’t concerned about returning to the cello. He began studying electrical bass and picked up a facet gig as a front-of-house combine engineer. “I don’t have plenty of regret. It’s not that I hated cello or hated music; I loved it,” he says. “However it was not a internet optimistic. It was inflicting frustrations, particularly with mainly all arts occasions being canceled from the pandemic.”

For Ricafort McCreary and McCreary, one of the crucial essential points of Artists Who Code is the formation of a group to assist artists navigate the id disaster that usually comes with altering careers. Making a brand new résumé is especially painful; a lot of the suggestions they’ve acquired, and have given, is to attenuate their achievements within the arts to create space for discussing their experience in, say, engineering. “It looks like that’s your soul and also you’re crushing it and making area for this different factor,” McCreary says.

In conferences, members have typically puzzled if they may nonetheless name themselves artists whereas studying to code. However the McCrearys emphasize it’s attainable to do each.

“Perhaps the pure inventive varieties see getting a day job like this as promoting out or giving up,” Ricafort McCreary says. “We’re actually making an attempt to reframe that.”

Getting sensible recommendation and connecting with different artist coders has been encouraging, says Lindsay Patterson Abdou, an opera singer who started studying programming languages earlier than the pandemic. “I like the additional benefit that they perceive that for me, personally, music and performing continues to be an enormous a part of who I’m,” Patterson Abdou says, “and I by no means need to should let that go.”

Each Ricafort McCreary and McCreary are fulfilled of their new jobs. With out the feast-or-famine cycle of being full-time artists, the couple says they’ve unlocked a brand new ardour for the humanities and freedom to be selective within the gigs they pursue. As a software program engineer, McCreary makes six occasions greater than his lowest-earning years as an artist. Coding started as a approach to obtain stability and earn more money, however, he says, “I’ve discovered that it’s really a reasonably rewarding profession and artistic outlet in its personal sense.”

Working as a full-time artist, Ricafort McCreary struggled to get solid in exhibits the place she might faucet dance. Now she faucets for the love of the artwork type. She additionally launched a marriage choreography enterprise that hires Broadway artists. “It’s made for a more healthy relationship with the humanities,” she says. “I discover it enjoyable once more and a supply of pleasure, which is what first attracted us to it, after which it turned a supply of stress and ache.

“Not worrying concerning the fundamental [questions like] ‘How do I dance sufficient, and sing sufficient and act sufficient to place meals on the desk and pay hire?’ As an alternative of pondering in that mindset,” Ricafort McCreary says, “now I can actually be inventive and discover my very own tasks.”

The couple has discovered that most individuals in Artists Who Code really feel the identical. Whereas many joined the group as a short lived measure, individuals have been stunned by how a lot they’re having fun with their new careers. A smaller quantity are pursuing tech and the humanities professionally on the similar time. And Catherine is aware of of two people who find themselves contemplating a return to arts full time. “My remark of what they’ve in widespread,” she says, “is that their first job in tech didn’t present sufficient structured assist and development.”

Two years after launching Artists Who Code, group calls really feel much less like an emergency. The couple, who purchased their first dwelling close to Phoenix in July 2020, now work in an advisory capability.

They’re additionally advocating on behalf of artists coming into tech. “My dream is {that a} hiring supervisor at a tech firm will get a résumé for any individual who was knowledgeable cellist or was on Broadway and understands instantly what it’s that particular person brings to the desk,” McCreary says.

Inside their group, they’ve seen artists use their newfound technical abilities to handle points within the arts. As a part of her closing mission throughout her 2018 boot camp, Ricafort McCreary made a recreation to check how properly a consumer might memorize a script. One other member, a harpist, made an utility for managing gigs — from the attitude of the artists — giving them the facility to decide on gigs reasonably than prospects filtering them out.

“There’s an entire wave of artists now which are breaking into tech due to COVID,” Ricafort McCreary says. “As they study these greatest practices and abilities and instruments from tech, which has achieved some actually wonderful issues, only some years from now, I’m hoping they will [launch] their very own concepts and begin making use of that again in the direction of the humanities.”