I'm now 3 years into my career and still loving it, happy to help out anyone looking to start in the industry! 💖
Verity Stothard
Posted on
I landed a Junior Front End Developer role after 3 months of self study, Ask Me Anything!
For further actions, you may consider blocking this person and/or reporting abuse
Top comments (23)
1) Can we be best friends? 2) I'm in the exact same boat (self-taught) and this is my goal! (sorry this isn't a question)
-What languages did you know starting out?
-What resources did you use?
-Did you ever feel like you were jumping the gun and applying to jobs too early?
-Did you ever reach a point where you felt like there just aren't any junior roles out there or you've applied to all of them?
-How did you stay motivated? And how did you handle the days where you may not have been so motivated?
-Did you ever get discouraged in the process? How did you overcome this?
-Do you have any advice for a self-taught person like me who feels like they're never going to reach that point?
I'm sure I have more questions haha. Sorry if this is so many!
1) Yes and yes 💃
2) Amazing! You'll absolutely get there, keep pushing 💪
-What resources did you use?
My first deep dive was the Treehouse front end development track (teamtreehouse.com/tracks/front-end...). I used that to get a grip on the basics I would need to land a job, then after that it was a whole lot of googling and stack overflow (still my main loves).
-Did you ever feel like you were jumping the gun and applying to jobs too early?
I have a very 'all or nothing' type personality, and at the time was living on a savings account that was getting depleting fast, so I was highly motivated to land a job. I knew realistically that my biggest learning would happen once I started working on real projects, so I wanted that to happen as soon as possible. I also had no sense of how little I knew at that point, which helped with confidence hah!
-Did you ever reach a point where you felt like there just aren't any junior roles out there or you've applied to all of them?
I do think it is getting harder to find Junior jobs, as a lot of the roles that would previously have been done by juniors are now done by cheap and effective tooling. Having said that, a person with a drive to learn and adapt will always have value. If you can push yourself to build your value, you will absolutely find a company that would love to have you on their team.
-How did you stay motivated? And how did you handle the days where you may not have been so motivated?
I set a very strict schedule for myself, I had set hours every day that were for study and nothing else. Being self taught requires a lot of discipline and determination, no one else will make you do it. Getting little wins in everyday also helped a lot, if I was struggling with a concept or feature, I would take a break and work on something I was more comfortable with, so I felt I had achieved something at the end of each day.
-Did you ever get discouraged in the process? How did you overcome this?
Absolutely, learning Javascript was really hard for me in the beginning, I had never worked with anything like it before. When I struggle with a particular subject, I try to get a top level overview on the first pass, then go back and do it all again from the beginning. I find this really helps with filling in gaps of knowledge. It takes resilience and determination, but you have to believe in yourself and commit to your goal.
-Do you have any advice for a self-taught person like me who feels like they're never going to reach that point?
Make the decision that it is going to happen. Once you decide how your life is going to be, nothing will convince you otherwise, and all your small decisions and actions will start to line up with that goal. Try to know a little bit about a lot, get a couple personal projects under your belt, and look for feedback wherever you can. You'll be amazed what you learn from someone else's perspective!
Best of luck!
V
This is awesome, thank you so much!! I hope we stay connected! Your path is amazing and I wanna land a junior web dev role so bad. For a lot of reasons obviously. I know it takes time and I have to build up my skill first. I like how you said if you were struggling you'd take a break and work on something you knew more, I tend to find myself doing the same thing. I also have to note it feels so much better to know I'm not the only one struggling with JS in the beginning. How did you come to understand it? Or did it just click for you?
Presistence! Doing lots of small projects and focusing in one one part at a time really helped when I was learning, e.g toggling a mobile nav on and off was one of my first battles won. It took nearly a week for me to build a mobile nav that was responsive and had multi level interaction, but focusing in on small things like that really helps you learn to think in JavaScript :)
Wow! Neat, more than 30 repos! I'm trying to get there too...
I have a question... What advice would you give someone who's trying to land a remote job, without much confirmed work experience (office-based job), with an associate's degree on informatics, and from a non-english-speaking country?
Not my AMA but I followed you on Github :). Remote can be really hard to crack into but it is worth pursuing if you are anything like me. Traditionally in US corporate culture for example it tends to be an opportunity given to senior people who have demonstrated themselves on-site. There are some companies like Stripe, which are significantly expanding their remote workforce. Some remote jobs are not great jobs and they leverage the fact some people really need/want to work remotely and are very demanding so just keep that in mind it isn't all peachy.
I got a remote job as a junior for a small company and I think I did a lot of things right but it honestly felt like an enormous amount of luck and circumstance- It was remote but the boss came from the same city as me and there were some other connections. It was really hard not having a senior around in person at times and I accessed every community support I could to get me through hard times. Its great now but phew!
This is just my personal opinion- it really helps to personalize your web presence with a good photo if you feel comfortable. It helps people relate to you as a person when they look at your github projects etc and kind of helps with building trust. You can accomplish this in lots of other ways as well but this stuff is important to some people working remotely.
lmk if you want anymore advice/add me on linkedin whatever
Thanks! Really appreciated this advice!
Well, I'll look into the personalization phase, and I'll sure as hell create a LinkedIn profile and follow you. I've been kinda cautious of putting personal data on the web since I live in a country where that could mean trouble, but building trust is a very important aspect. I'll go into my personal site as well. Remote it's kinda the only option I got left, since the 8-5 on-site job I had was paying me $30/month as a Ionic dev, and that's pretty much the norm around here...
Best of luck Garador, you can absolutely make it happen 💪
Hey Garador,
Remote can be a tough one, and I haven't personally worked full time remote. My first job was in office and my current job is only part time remote after a period of full time in office when I first started. I don't know your exact level of experience, but from what I have heard from recruiters and colleagues in Australia, remote tends to be offered to more experienced developers, as when you are a junior the expectation is that you will need a little more guidance from the team until you build up your skills and reputation. I would personally recommend an in office job when starting out if it is possible for you, simply due to the amount you learn by working side by side with your team members.
If you are set on full time remote though, make sure you have a solid portfolio of work that demonstrates a range of skills and a proactive attitude to learning. If you can also demonstrate collaboration with a remote team, e.g. a personal or freelancing project where you collaborate with a designer, that would be even better!
Best of luck with your search :D
Thank you for your wise words!! I'll act accordingly.
Just did a few clicks of your personal website and GitHub and stuff and everything about the presentation is really professional. Immediately a whole bunch of details stuck out. If I think of a question I want to ask it heh.
Took me 6 months to get my first contract role, 10 months to first full time job, coming up on two years doing it now and I am really enjoying it.
Thanks Morgan!
Hello :),
Congrats! May I ask you what your entry salary was?
I would appreciate a lot to have an impression.
Thank you a lot in advance.
Hi there,
My particular salary won't be of my use as it varies so much depending on your location, level of experience, company etc. I have however used Pay Scale many times before to get an idea of salaries and find it's data to be fairly accurate :)
payscale.com/mypayscale.aspx
Hope that helps!
Wow, that was fast! Thank you :)!
What’s your professional background beside your self-taught programming experience?
Where did you look after a job or rather how?
Thanks again being there for questions!
No problem! I was a university student studying business and working as a marketing assistant before becoming a developer. I searched job boards like Seek for opportunities, and found the listing for my first job there. I was very underqualifued, but decided to just give it a go and apply, and thankfully it worked out :D
Sounds great!
One more question (you shouldn’t have offered me to ask ;) ):
What’s the atmosphere in a front end developer job like?
Is it more relaxed or stressful?
Haha all good 😅 it really depends on the company you work with. Every company will have a different culture and process of working. For example my first job was at an agency where the pace and stress levels varied a lot depending on deadlines and the amount of work we had coming in. Where as my current job is a lot more level in terms of stress/work load because it is an internal product and we focus mostly on one or two releases at a time :)
Thank you :). You have dog, is that right :)? I adore dogs.
What kind of dog is yours?
Are you allowed to bring your dog to work?
What's your role in the company being a front end developer? Are you more into html, css or into js side?
I'm curious to know how is the Frontend community there.
Also congratulations on your 3 years. :)
I am a Front End Vue.js Developer. I work mostly on the front end but we are a small team so I get a good amount of exposure to the back end too :)
Great! :)
Can you please share your calendar/plan/schedule?
Also, I wonder, how do I test myself? like, how do I test my knowledge every day?
Are there any tutors/mentors?)
Thanks in advance)))