This post was first published on CoderHood as 5 Best Strategies To Get Your First Programming Job. CoderHood is a blog dedicated to the human dimen...
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1 Really helped me back in the days.
I did a degree in CS and worked as a dev on the side for 10-20h a week, in a software company.
My grades were average, but I had 4 years of experience when I graduated.
Also, I learned many things from that job that I didn't learn at university.
It might be weird, but I am actually a bit stressed about my second job. The job I have right now is great, but It was just ridiculously easy to get. A phone call with a human resource person, who didn't know much about programming. We talked about the company, their products, the team and he asked me what I worked on as a self-taught dev. Then, the lead developer sent me a programming challenge ( like you explain in this article ). I completed it, received some feedback, and started to work 2-3 days later...
That was my first interview, and so far, the only one. Whenever I think about it, I just can't believe that it will be so easy in the future. Or maybe my expectations were way off?
I guess the company I'm working for right now isn't very strict on who they hire. I guess some companies are like that, with the need of so many developers. It might not be that easy and stress free next time :)
Anyway, good post!
You never know! It can be easy and stress-free, or it can be a nightmare. I strive to make my candidates have a great experience, but it is definitely more than a phone call and a programming challenge.
Companies are starting to learn that abusing candidates is a bad strategy, but big companies are particularly bad with that. In small companies, it depends on who you find. Just don't stress out about it!! It is not in your control, and you kind of have to roll with the punches. I wrote something about why I do that here.
My policy is that if a company treats me poorly during the interview process, I have no reason to believe they will treat me better later. So, if your interview experience sucks, you should consider looking elsewhere.
At what point would you consider a developer to not be a junior anymore? Have you seen candidates applying for a junior position and thought: this person should be applying for a more advanced position?
That is an excellent question. Unfortunately, I don't think that there is a simple formula. I have seen developers with 2 years of work experience on their resume who are stronger than people with 5 years of experience.
It mostly depends on what people did with their time, how much they coded during their schooling, etc. For example, a developer who built desktop applications on windows machines for 5 years is a very junior dev when it comes to distributed systems. They'd be able to pick that up, but it would take a couple of years before being proficient.
If I had to oversimplify I'd go with this definition:
10,000 hours is about 4.7 years of full-time employment if one started coding for the first time on their first day of work. Clearly, that's never the case. People start learning much earlier than their first day on the job. So, you can imagine that studying computer science in college and working on personal projects could give you a few thousand hours of experience even before start working.
Now... I have seen what I call "senior-junior" developers who have worked for 10 years on one single dialog box in a Microsoft application. Those folks have many years of experience but tend to be very unprepared because they have been relegated to that little niche for so long.
I have also seen "junior-senior" developers, who have very little work experience but are wizards at their craft.
Difficult question! I'll need to think more about this one, but I hope my rumbling help shed some lights on my personal way of looking at it.
Thanks for this post. I've just started looking for work as a junior web developer and it's a little disconcerting starting from the very bottom after about 20 years working in other fields.
Still, I'm really excited about web development, and I see this as my path in the near future. Your suggestions are really helpful and I look forward to putting them to use.
Hi
Can these apply to my situation too? I have a 6 year gap (been focusing on improving my disability - i wrote about it here Is it possible to get a web development job if I have a 6 year gap?).
Though I'm almost 30 and might not be considered young, I have all the other qualities you listed, eager and willing to learn, free to spend all the time in the world in proving.
The only disadvantage is that my speech is really bad, on the phone at least. How how could I by pass the phone interviews?
And can people out of school - like me - work as an intern?
Thanks a lot
Thank you! :)