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Alex Cevicelow
Alex Cevicelow

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How I got a dev job 5 months out of high school

I have one word that sums up the journey to getting a job and that would be persistence. I am not writing this article to brag but I am writing to inspire.

I started coding freshman year of high school when I made the decision to take the path of vocational education. Vocational education for anyone that isn’t aware is where you learn a career skill or trade alongside your traditional high school education. At the vocational school I attended I learned all the basics of HTML, CSS and Javascript. I didn’t get taught how to build APIs or use Javascript frameworks so I set out to teach myself.

At the start of 2019 I decided that I was going to dedicate every spare moment I had to learning and getting better. This meant that I woke up at 5am everyday to code before school this also meant that anytime that wasn’t spent with friends, family or work I was ultra focused on coding.

By May 2019 I started to pull together my portfolio of a few projects that I made in angular and start to build my resume. I also did some mentoring sessions with a senior developer that really helped me define the path that I would need to take in order to get to where I wanted to be. So from June until September I applied to every single job that I could find on linkedIn that fit my ability (363 to be exact).

I had my first ever technical interview in september 2019, 4 months after graduating high school. I studied for an entire week reviewing JS fundamentals and whiteboarding. Long story short I didn’t get that exact job but I stayed persistent and continued to apply for jobs everyday.

I applied for a job that I wasn’t qualified for just hoping that someone would see my resume and I could tell my story and show my work. Next thing I know I am talking with the head of development for the company and having another technical interview. This interview goes very well and I fly down to check out the office and meet the team.

That brings us to where I am now. I am currently working for a company in Louisville kentucky where I am developing products for the home healthcare field.

Top comments (22)

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rajakumardev profile image
Rajakumar

Congratulations ... :D

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alex_cevi_ profile image
Alex Cevicelow

Thank you!

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enjeck profile image
Cleopatra E.

Your story is a little bit like mine. Well done!

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alex_cevi_ profile image
Alex Cevicelow

Interesting! I don't usually hear that often but that's great.

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metruzanca profile image
Samuele Zanca

Hey man, love hearing about this kind of stuff. Simply because I also went down that same path. This year actually. I had my final high school exam on the 27th of June and after a few months of hustling for interviews I landed a position at an aerospace consultancy company in Milan. I started on the 16th of September. Now I'm almost at 3 months into a job that I don't plan on leaving any time soon.
I'm currently working on a c#/c++ stack making windows apps for all devices, but I can see I'll likely get to work with react, node and go in the future too.

Self taught for the win.
Keep it up man.

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alex_cevi_ profile image
Alex Cevicelow

Love to hear it!

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jacqueline profile image
Jacqueline Binya

Well done.
Your story is of hard and work and persistance.
Im yet to get my first job as a dev, so thanks for the tips u mentioned in your article.

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alex_cevi_ profile image
Alex Cevicelow

Thank you! Reach out to me on twitter I'd be happy to answer any other questions or chat about development.

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jacqueline profile image
Jacqueline Binya

Will do so, thanks.

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boylecode profile image
Stephen Boyle

Great story mate, in that precise boat right now.

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alex_cevi_ profile image
Alex Cevicelow

Reach out on Twitter id love to help!

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esdee_reign profile image
Snehdeep Singh

Well done!!
It was really interesting to read your story.
I had one question, what were the things or thoughts that made you stay persistent? What was your motivation?😁

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alex_cevi_ profile image
Alex Cevicelow

Thanks so much!

To answer your question about what kept me motivated was that I didn't want to go to college because I'm not the biggest fan of sitting in classes that I am not interested in. So my promise to myself is that I would not attend school but work on learning something new everyday and continuing to improve my skills. The thoughts that I had running through my head were that I could do what I wanted as long as I kept continuing to grow as a developer.

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esdee_reign profile image
Snehdeep Singh • Edited

Thanks for answering 😁
In case I want to talk to you in future, how would that be possible?

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alex_cevi_ profile image
Alex Cevicelow

Follow me on twitter my messages are open

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esdee_reign profile image
Snehdeep Singh

thank you ♥️

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artoodeeto profile image
aRtoo

yow congrats bro. :)

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alex_cevi_ profile image
Alex Cevicelow

Thank you!

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fallenstedt profile image
Alex Fallenstedt

Congratulations. Keep up the studying and you'll go very far :). One thing you'll learn to love that will help you accelerate in your field are design patterns + algorithms.

Have fun!

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alex_cevi_ profile image
Alex Cevicelow

Thanks so much! Im starting to get more focused on the quality of code and the the art of writing things a certain way. I’ve also learned that being good at debugging is a very underrated skill that I think more up and coming devs should focus on.

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morales_eze profile image
EzeM

A well-deserved reward for hard work and persistance. Congrats!

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alex_cevi_ profile image
Alex Cevicelow

Thanks so much!