New year. An other year passing by. Like a fast train, time is roaring without any concern of well-established schedules and straight, direct destinations.
At 33, a few years ago I decided to try my hand in web development. Programming seemed such a privileged career, where there is plentiful jobs and you can also work from anywhere in the world. You can work from your home or you can work from the back of a camper van. I had great people around me who were and still are successful software engineers like my partner or my brother-in-law. They earned good money with high-prestige jobs.
I wanted to be like them or those intelligent people who can solve complicated problems with a few key-strokes, who build beautiful web applications.
As usual my journey to become a web developer wasn’t straightforward and I am far from a safe and calm port. Yes, I can say I am a software developer now but I am not earning loads of money, nor have I hacked any serious government agency’s website. Not if that these were my goals.
My goal is to have as much freedom in my work as I can possibly have meanwhile I am solving real-life problems and I am getting better and better in what I am doing.
So how does my journey look like so far in the rugged path of becoming and being a web developer. Let me tell you it is with lot of shorter or longer breaks and stops that I am walking this holy road. I first started with wanting to do a bootcamp and as someone who didn’t have much money I applied to Founders and Coders which is a free bootcamp but they did not admit me. I think it was the lack of personal contact as I lived a few months outside of the UK, the time when I applied. I was sad about it but then I continued to apply to other bootcamps. In the end neither of them were suitable. I got accepted to a few ones but then I didn’t like their contract or I couldn’t pay the tuition fees. So in the end I remained with Freecodecamp and Udemy courses.
I have never felt ready to apply to jobs but eventually I came across Riverford, an organic veg box company’s internship and I got in. I was so happy working for an ethical organisation. Nevertheless most of the time I just felt stupid at work and I felt I need to learn much more to be able to call myself a web developer. Following that I got a junior Front-end Developer role at an asset management system company and I have to say I really didn’t like that job. People were nice to me but I didn’t grow to like the product, most of the time I just found it very boring. So I decided I will freelance. This was a big plunge in the unknown but I chose freedom over money. Which I don’t think is the better or superior choice and it might change depending on my life circumstance but it still feels like the best option for me.
However I’ve never felt ready with my technical skills and I still wanted to take part in a structured learning program. I found finally a very suitable learning opportunity which was Treehouse’s Techdegree. After trying my hand at so many different learning opportunities this one seemed just the right fit and since then I finished two different Techdegrees with them.
As with the freelancing goes, it doesn’t go bad at all. For sometime I didn’t get any jobs then I found a more steady job with a really supportive company where I can work on an online system for a South African removals company. I love the product and the people with whom I am in touch are very nice.
I strongly believe anyone can become a web developer if they put their mind to it. My only advice is surround yourself with technical communities even if it is just following technical people on twitter and be consistent, stay with your goal and work towards it bit by bit. If you get better just 1% every day that adds up over time.
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