Self-Taught, No Bootcamp, First Dev Job: Exactly What I Did

My previous posts were about life after I landed the job; this one is about how I landed it, how long it took and what it took.

I didn’t do a bootcamp. I couldn’t afford it, and my English wasn’t good enough to follow one anyway. So I learned on trains and after work: docs, blogs, a few courses, Discord servers, whatever I could stick in my head without it sliding out.

I did all of this while working full-time at a small mom-and-pop shop, studying on the train and after my shift.

For the first six months, my brain rejected everything. I’d read MDN for an hour and remember three words. Somewhere around month six, it stopped hurting. A “hello world” turned into a todo app, then a simple site. Tiny dopamine hits kept me going.

Then I tried to get a job.

Hundreds of applications. Silence. Not even rejections. Silence.

I learned what no tutorial tells you: most companies don’t want to train brand-new devs, especially without a degree. Projects on GitHub? Good for learning, almost invisible for hiring.

So I made a decision I’m not proud of, but I’m not going to pretend didn’t happen: I padded my résumé, framed my self-study as “experience,” listed tools I knew but hadn’t used at scale. It was a risk. It got me callbacks.

Then I bombed the calls. I didn’t speak recruiter. I didn’t speak “team.”

I fixed that. Short answers. Business context. “Here’s what I built, why it mattered, and what I’d do differently.” I kept a notebook of phrases that worked and stole the ones that sounded like a grown engineer.

Technical rounds hit next. Algorithms. Data structures. Timers. Dry mouth.

I drilled patterns with a pen before I touched the IDE: sliding window, two pointers, BFS/DFS, binary search. I failed again and again. Call it around forty interviews before I started recognizing the shapes of questions and my own panic patterns.

Almost two years in, I got my first offer.

No magic moment. Just volume, adjustments, and not quitting on the worst days.

The Parts No One Says Out Loud

Projects rarely get you hired.

They teach you. They rarely convince them. Don’t stop building, just know what it’s for.

“Entry-level” often means “already did this somewhere else.”

Companies want risk reduced. If you’re truly new, you have to make them feel safe: clarity, communication, pattern fluency.

Padding your résumé is a gamble.

It might get you in the room. It might nuke your trust. I own my choice. It’s not advice.

Interviews are pattern recognition, not genius.

You don’t have to be special. You have to be steady.

What Actually Moved the Needle

I leaned on Dev.to and freeCodeCamp blogs, plus a few Coursera modules. I mixed in Udemy and Zero To Mastery (Andrei Neagoie), Traversy Media and Joshua Fluke on YouTube, and debugged with Google, StackOverflow, Reddit, and Discord communities while drilling LeetCode with a pen-and-notebook.

• Reading over random tutorials. Docs and longform posts trained my brain to sit and absorb. Videos were supplements, not the main meal.
• Two or three small but finished apps. Not ten half-done clones. Finished, with a README that explains trade-offs.
• Notebook before IDE. If I couldn’t write the idea without code, I didn’t understand it.
• Daily DSA reps (30–45 minutes). Not marathons. Patterns over perfection.
• Recruiter language. Impact → tools → trade-offs → what I’d change. That loop got me past screens.
• Focused waves of applications. Adjust résumé and keywords every two weeks instead of blasting identical submissions.
• Discord over solo despair. Someone telling me “yeah, that error is normal” saved me hours and my sanity.

Scenes I Still Remember

• The train at 11 p.m. Reading the same paragraph three times until it finally made sense.
• The first phone screen. My voice shook. I talked in circles. Dead silence after.
• The first solved LeetCode without hints. Not hard, just clean. I wrote the solution twice to burn it in.
• The nearly-offer that became a rejection. I went for a walk and didn’t quit.
• The actual offer. No confetti. Just a call. I said “yes,” hung up, and sat quietly for five minutes.

If You’re Where I Was

This isn’t a checklist. It’s a handful of rules that didn’t lie to me.

• Read daily. Thirty minutes. Docs count.
• Build small, finish, write it up. What, why, trade-offs.
• Drill patterns, not ego. Two questions a day beats a weekend binge.
• Record yourself answering “Tell me about a project.” Fix the ramble.
• If a tool confuses you, write a one-page explainer in your own words.
• Apply in batches, then adjust. Don’t keep doing what isn’t working.
• Have one person you can DM when your brain is melting. It matters.

This Part Again, So There’s No Confusion

I padded my résumé to get interviews. It worked for me and came with anxiety tax. If you’re about to copy that, think hard. There are other paths: internships, apprenticeships, open-source with real maintainers, internal transfers. I’m not your conscience. I’m telling you what I did.

Your Next Step (today, not “someday”)

Pick one:

• Write a 200-word README “case study” for one project: problem → constraints → choices → what you’d change.
• Solve two pattern problems with a pen and timer. Stop at 45 minutes.
• Record a 90-second answer to “What’s your stack and why?” Listen once. Fix one sentence.

Then stop. Show up again tomorrow.

I’m still showing up. Still learning in public. Still screwing up. Better.

I’m grateful to the people who helped, and to my past self for not quitting.