How I Got My First Paying Developer Job
I knew I needed a new job the day the FBI raided my office. When I saw them come in with bullet-proof vests and guns, I thought one of my coworkers was a drug dealer like Walter White in Breaking Bad. I was even more surprised when they said, “Everyone put your hands up and walk away from your computers without locking them.”
I had a good gig at a startup mail-order pharmacy. I knew they were paying me much more than I would ever get from another pharmacy tech gig. After the FBI raid, my boss was laid off and I figured I couldn’t be far behind. I knew I needed marketable skills in a field that interested me. I decided to learn to code and have loved learning new skills. I’m sure we’ve all had similar realizations that have led us to better our lives by pursuing careers in tech. I want to say that if I can find a job through teaching myself to code with free materials online, you can too.
It took me approximately one year and three months to find a job that pays me to do web development. I’ll take you through the journey I took to get here.
I worked full-time at a pharmacy; I met, dated, and married my wife; and pursued passions like skateboarding and snowboarding. All of these things made it take longer to learn web development, but I am glad I did all of them because they’ve helped me live a full life.
I am super cheap, so I tried to learn everything I needed to know to get a job without spending money. To be fair, I have been voluntarily donating $5 a month to Freecodecamp.org because I feel like they provide a great platform for those learning to code.
I started learning web development at the end of January 2018. I took a Lynda course called JavaScript Essential Training. I have access to Lynda courses for free through my local library. After that course, I was super confused, so I asked my roommate who was a web developer where I could learn to code. He suggested Freecodecamp.org. I started working through their curriculum and attending the weekly study group held at a library near my house. That helped me to understand HTML, CSS and Bootstrap. They even had me do some work with jQuery. In March, I started using Khan Academy to learn SQL and help cement my learning from Freecodecamp.org. I was moving right along with the curriculum on Freecodecamp when the curriculum changed in May 2018. The certificates I was working on became legacy certificates and there was a whole new set of certificates to work towards. Reluctantly, I started working on the new certificates.
In August 2018, I got a part-time, unpaid, remote developer internship at a startup focused on student resources. It was a Django (Python) app with jQuery on the front-end. I worked on the internship for about 10 hours a week and learned lots of things like how to make Chrome extensions, rest APIs, and database models. I couldn’t show my code to anyone because it was all in a private repository. I was very excited to have the experience of working with a production codebase and Docker containers. I think getting any type of experience doing web development is a good thing.
In February of 2019, I got laid off from my pharmacy tech job, which accelerated my job search. I updated my resume and my portfolio and started applying for lots of positions. I threw my resume at so many companies. If I met around 60% of the job requirements I would hit them up with a resume. I let my social network know that I was looking for a web development job. I upgraded to LinkedIn premium for a month and felt that the jobs I found there were better suited for me. I checked Stack Overflow, Codepen, Angel.co, and GitHub’s job boards almost daily.
I got many rejection emails that said they were impressed with my skills but found more qualified candidates. The only feedback I received about why I wasn’t chosen was from 1 job, and I was very pleased that they told me why they decided other people were more qualified than me. Looking at my records, I can see I did interviews with at least 13 companies in the two months I was fully dedicated to finding a development job. I felt like I was always beaten by more qualified candidates. I was just about to give up and go back to pharmacy tech work when I got the call that ended my search.
The job I landed is at a university a little south of where I live. My local Freecodecamp study group leader messaged me about the developer job, so I applied. I had overlooked the job because it was part-time (28 hours/week) and I was looking for full-time employment. I applied around March 29, 2019. I had my first interview with them on April 12, 2019 and got an offer extended to me on April 30, 2019.
I am really glad to be working as a developer and want to encourage people to apply to jobs and not be discouraged by rejection emails. I think we can all be plagued by thoughts of our own inadequacy, but we don’t have to let them limit us. We can go forward learning and hoping that with each thing we learn, we are that much closer to our goals. If I can do this, you certainly can too.
