The following is an anonymized redacted version of a conversation I had with a fellow developer who's on a learning path and struggling to land that first position. After typing it all out, I thought it would be useful to others in a similar vein so here we go.
I have so many great things to share with you and I want to set some context first. I'm a mid-life career transition person. My first jr tech role I was 46 yo. My wife is 48 and is starting her tech journey now. I know and worked with plenty of people who have done what you're trying to do so I know it's possible. More importantly, I've condensed the factors down to a convenient list that I'm going to share with you. Real important to remember I'm going to give you my best advice based on experience and what I've seen work for so many others. What you choose to do with this information is obviously totally your choice. I've been down this road with people and after I share the game plan some go all in and get the job, others say "ok thanks this is great" then they never follow up and months later they're still not in tech. It's about the effort.
So, you have to make the decision now is this something you want or not. Regardless of prior failures, ghosted interviews or other issues, 100% in or 100% out are the only options. If you're 100% in, I got you. Follow these steps and you'll be employed within a year. You know, I spent months sleeping in my car in the back of a restaurant when I was divorced, out of money, lost a good job and too embarrassed to go back to my parents. It was winter and I would leave the car heater on until I got really sleepy then turn it off and try to fall asleep fast because it's hard to sleep when you're cold. I set my alarm for 1/2 hour before the opening restaurant folks showed to work so no one would know. I'd go to late night movies and just crash in an empty theater room for...a bit too long. I considered a shelter until a coworker told me about them letting people with mental faculty issues in who used the bathroom on themselves and you would just have to lay there beside them. So I couldn't do the shelter. That my friend is HOMELESS. Sleeping in the back of your car hoping the police don't come knocking and arrest you for trespassing - been there, done that. Now, here we go.
My specialty with all this is people like me, older adults, adults with family and kids, adults coming from different industries with no CS degree - that's my situation and what I know well so if that's you too, I can help. As far as learning resources, I've done Udacity's Front End Nanodegree, 3 Udemy courses front to back, an additional 3-4 Udemy courses partially, lots of work on freecodecamp, codecademy, and w3schools. I've completed multiple courses on codingphase.com which I highly recommend. The point is it takes a lot. For us who aren't a 22 year old UC Berkley grad with 3 top tech internships on our resume, it takes a lot. We can't do the minimum, we \*have\* to do the maximum to receive consideration. At the end of the day, we're out here trying to convince an employer "hey, your bet on middle-age me is just as good if not BETTER bet than the top CS grads to come out of Georgia Tech. No slight on Georgia Tech, my sister is an alum ;-).
Regarding application numbers, my first go round at getting in to tech, I applied to at least 100 jobs and just stopped counting after awhile when it seemed like nothing was going to come through for me. The second time around I applied to over 60 positions and only got 3 interviews out of it. The position I eventually landed was gained in part through networking which is something I used to look down on. Then at a tech meetup with https://codeconnector.io, we had a panel of some of the best software engineers in all of Memphis. They were asked a question about jobs and networking and I kid you not, 100% of them said they got their first or a subsequent job through networking. Some of these included traditional CS grad folks. Right or wrong, the deciding factor is still often who you know. NOT ALL THE TIME! But it's a factor that can help.
One of my favorite tech youtubers released a video on getting in tech right at the beginning of 2020 that you should totally watch. He's Joe Santos Garcia and runs codingphase.com He's self-taught, laid-back dominican bro from around the block, literally. He also made over $1/2 million last year working for himself so don't let the accent or casual swag make you miss the points that will get you hired. He's a good channel to follow and his courses are on time. [https://youtu.be/KV1HWEvcniU](https://youtu.be/KV1HWEvcniU)
There is a website called roadmaps that specs out good things to know for a variety of programming careers. They have one for frontend, android, devops, and more I'd like you to check out. What they say is you don't have to know all of the things, but here is the landscape of expectations that you can use and guide yourself appropriately. [https://roadmap.sh/](https://roadmap.sh/)
The next two links I'm going to share are critical. It's a spreadsheet checklist for getting your first job in tech as a career transition person. This is my gameplan. That's it. Read this post twice, take notes of the action parts. Go hard on your learning. Watch the video when you first open the spreadsheet or it wont' make much sense, even worse, you'll assign wrong meaning to it. Naturally, I'm here to help you along the way, it's what I do.
The spreadsheet: Tech Checklist
The video to watch with it: Video to accompany tech checklist
I wish you well!!
Top comments (0)