I can’t be the only one who feels like they’ve been running on a treadmill set to “impossible.” I clocked over 600 hours teaching myself HTML, CSS, and JavaScript after high school—built small projects, watched more than 80 tutorials, even wrestled with my first React component. I thought: “Okay, I’m on my way.”
Then I open job boards and see “MERN + AI/ML” plastered everywhere. “Must have 3–5 years’ experience integrating machine learning.” Almost every hackathon in Kenya now has “AI” in the title, and I’m left wondering whether I should drop everything, learn Python overnight, and become a data scientist—despite being only in my second year of uni and having barely scratched the surface of front-end, not to mention back-end.
Don’t get me wrong—I love what I do. I still geek out when a CSS animation snaps into place or when my React component finally fetches data without error. But the bar keeps climbing higher and higher as I try desperately to pull it back down. Every time I tick one skill off my list, three more appear: Rust. WebAssembly. Blockchain integration. Model deployment. Senior-level AI chops.
It’s demoralizing. I question whether I should drop front-end entirely and pivot to Python—then what? Learn TensorFlow? PyTorch? Devour machine-learning math textbooks? In my head, I can already see the next job description demanding “5 years’ Python + AI experience” while I’m still figuring out asynchronous fetch calls in JS.
Getting that first junior role or internship feels like chasing a mirage. Every application I send feels like shouting into the void: “Here’s my portfolio! Here are my projects!”—only to hear crickets or, worse, polite rejections citing my lack of AI/ML background.
I’ve given so much time and energy—and it still feels like a drop in the ocean. I want to scream that the industry has shifted so fast it’s leaving self-taught developers gasping for air. So here I am—halfway through uni, self-taught since day one, and I still feel like I’m back at square one.
I thought to myself, “Maybe a bootcamp will help,” so I joined ALX. I start my classes next month and hope it gives me the structure and guidance to focus my learning.
Maybe this is the reality: feeling discouraged is part of the process. Maybe the only way forward is to acknowledge the overwhelm, rant it out, then choose one thing—just one—and lean into it.
One thing I know for sure: I’m not backing down.
self-taught devs—how are you keeping up with the ever-rising bar?😭
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