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How I got hired as a software engineer without a college degree

GrayCode

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I started another thread recently about my first fastlane month and I got a question on how I was able to get hired as a software engineer without a college degree. I feel like this is information I WISH someone shared with me as I was about to jump into coding. So, I figured rather than share it pages deep in the other thread, I'd make it standalone content incase someone specifically searches this out. (Hail the almighty SERPs ;))

How I got hired as a software engineer without a college degree

I'll break it down by paragraph based on key timelines and decisions I made, feel free to skip anything you aren't interested in. Hopefully, this is helpful to you. If you have a question, feel free to ask.

Deciding to learn 'how to code' (Oct 15' - Aug 16')
I was a personal trainer making maybe $30k a year. I was on the whole self-improvement journey before I finally bumped into MFL in late 2015 - maybe Oct 15' (based on me joining the forum in Nov 15'). I was hooked after reading the book, I knew I needed some kind of recurring revenue stream independent of my time. So... here's what happened.

I wound up coming up with an idea for software for gyms (since I worked in one) and took all of my savings at the time ($14k) and sought out 'engineers' to help me build it. Well, turns out 14k isn't enough to hire good, talented, trustworthy engineers and I got screwed.

I hired overseas developers, they beat around the bush, wrote some code, filled with typos, did like 1 feature and over the course of a few months my money went to zero and I was broke with no product. For a while, I kept it in my head that it was their fault, but really it was mine. I had no business spending my money on something I knew nothing about, thinking I was going to get rich. I was looking for an event (get rich quick) when I should've been all-in on the process.

So, that project would come to a close around March 16' or so. I was annoyed and confused but not bankrupt on motivation. I re-read MFL and continued my journey of listening to loads and loads of podcasts and youtube videos. I was a 'success zombie'. Finally, I decided the money was in software and I wanted out of my 30k per year job. So I said, screw it, I'll teach myself to code.

Learning to code (Aug 16' - Dec 17')
I dove in and at first, I wasn't too excited about it. But I dug in hard, 8-14 hour days depending on the day. I missed lots of 'chilling with the friends' nights, but I was able to see the other side. I only worked minimal hours as a PT, literally just enough to pay my bills and every other week I would routinely see my bank account go into negative balances for a day or so. But I knew I was getting a quick $100 from a client the next night so I shrugged it off.

I joined a coding Bootcamp that cost $7k at $1k per month payments, I put it on credit. The Bootcamp assumed most people would dedicate 2 hours per day so they estimated it would take 7 months. But I was going hard, remember? I wound up finishing all the content the Bootcamp had in 2 months' time and went on my way. The total cost of the Bootcamp was actually only $2k financed on credit.

I finished that at the beginning of Nov 16' and I knew I enjoyed coding but was definitely not yet hireable. So I dove into personal projects, I came up with random ideas for things and just built and built and built. I used google as my personal assistant and that would lead me to stack overflow. I would repeat this process until around Dec 17'.

At this point, I had built 4-5 web-apps (nothing insane, some were clones of other popular apps). Going into 2018 I knew I wanted to start looking for a job.

The decision to Look for a job (Jan 2018)
At this point, I was still doing oddball jobs and random business ideas that never worked. If you looked at a zoomed out graph of my bank account balance this entire time on a 2-week time period breakdown. It was never above $500, and if it was, it wasn't for long. But I was ready to get a job.

STOP! (this is important)

For anyone thinking:
  1. "wtf, this takes 2 years and you were broke and you got a job, how the hell is this Fastlane" OR
  2. "Yeah, cool bro, sounds great, tell me how to make $100k next month"
If this is you, you might not be ready for what I'm sharing. Sometimes, the teacher presents itself when the student is ready to learn.

I think I heard @MJ DeMarco say this in an interview once that - That you can still be living Fastlane in a job or working towards it and you really don't need to always burn all the ships and jump off the deep end (something like that). That was all I needed to know because I was about to go from making $30k per year to more than triple and if you read the post I linked in the opening sentence, 10x that.

MY approach to getting a job without a college degree
It was Jan 2018 and I knew I was good, but there were definitely things I didn't know. My entire approach was this:

This is a numbers game, I know that if I get 100 interviews, I'll eventually land one. My goal is to get a job earning 6 figures and still work on my own stuff on the side. If I'm asked something I don't know the answer to, that's OK, I'll write it down and research it after. I'll also openly admit to not knowing the answer and ask them to explain it to me.

So here's what I did, I started reaching out to anything that caught my interest. I took all the interviews and used my approach above. By the time the 7th and 8th interview rolled around I was answering all the questions, easily, because I wrote down what I didn't know and researched it.

My goal was to get a job within 100 interviews and using this approach it took me exactly 12. I do not have a college degree in computer science but what I do have is persistence.

On interview #12 I was on the final stages and I believe it came down to me and 2 or 3 other engineers, all of whom had college educations and many more years experience than me. Here's what I did to seal the deal.

I took 2 hours out of my 'oh so busy day' and redesigned their home page based on what I thought would perform better (they mentioned this was something they eventually wanted to tackle). I emailed them the design and listed out my reasons for the changes, I ended that email with: "If you're looking for a confident engineer who tackles things head-on and gets stuff done, I'm your guy"

Then I waited, it took 2 hours to get a response and their response was that they were impressed and they decided to go with me, I'd have a formal offer letter in my inbox by Tuesday morning. I believe it was a Thursday when I did this.

True to their word, on Tuesday morning I had an offer letter and that's the story. I got hired, above other engineers, without a degree and I honestly believe anyone else can do this. They just need to get ok with things taking some time. My life is totally changed now. I would always tell myself when I first began learning and shit got hard and I felt like stopping:

"Dude you're 25, (28 now), so what if it takes you even 5 years. 30 is still young as F*ck and you'll be making great money with the potential to explode that income, be patient, trust the process"

Finally
Through all of that time, I was learning other things too. I learned about money and how to have it make money for you. A good post that probably should be read more is this one that MJ did - long before the 'paycheck pot' was even in a book How to Never Work Another Day in Your Life, The Money-System Portfolio – Fastlane Entrepreneurs.

In the last 3 years I probably:
  • Read 25 books
  • Listened to 50 books (audible)
  • Listened to over 2,000 podcast episodes (no joke)
  • Read 500+ blog posts (Money, SEO, Marketing, Coding, etc)

Things take time, trust the process. Good luck on your journey, I'll be around if you have questions that I can help answer.
 
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Red

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So much this. For so long, when friends were moping around saying how they couldn't find a job, I wish I had this write up to throw at them.


For a while, I kept it in my head that it was their fault, but really it was mine.

Also, the quicker we figure out things like this in life, the better our lives get. Kudos, man. Great write up showcasing how to get shit done.
 

WillHurtDontCare

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For so long, when friends were moping around saying how they couldn't find a job

As long as people with money are complaining (which will always be the case), there will be jobs.
 

BellaPippin

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I took 2 hours out of my 'oh so busy day' and redesigned their home page based on what I thought would perform better (they mentioned this was something they eventually wanted to tackle). I emailed them the design and listed out my reasons for the changes, I ended that email with: "If you're looking for a confident engineer who tackles things head-on and gets stuff done, I'm your guy"

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GrayCode

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So much this. For so long, when friends were moping around saying how they couldn't find a job, I wish I had this write up to throw at them.
Yeah, I hear that. I think people just need to have a game plan with everything. I find most people search for jobs like this: "I'll just send out a few resumes and see what happens", then when nothing comes of it, The complaining begins.
Also, the quicker we figure out things like this in life, the better our lives get. Kudos, man. Great write up showcasing how to get shit done.
Yes, took time to realize, but you're 100% right. Thank you :)
 

100ToOne

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Amazing story man. I hope you all the best in your life.
The most important things I got from this post were:

* Persistence mentality. Either I make it or I make it.

* Process: 2 years learning and hustling journey. This built you a long-term high income where you can use to fund your investments/businesses, instead of something like flipping stuff for short-term income.

* Sales: "I know I have what's required and which is valuable for the job market, so if I hit 100 job listings, I'll definitely get one".

*Creativity: You showed them what you're capable of by solving their website issues, instead of talking and explaining what the solution might be.

Thanks for sharing. I really like these real life stories because it's the only thing that I've seen in real life. I never see an overnight celebrity/millionaire. Man, even drug dealing takes time and effort.

If I read this story 4 years ago when all I was thinking: "I'm going to become a millionaire next year because I believe it and I have the mentality which most people don't", I would of thought you're just a slow-lane slave to the system.

Keep it up!
 
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Benji90

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I was active in your other thread and this one explaining your process has me fired up! Unfortunately I wont be able to commit 8-14 hours a day as you did, but I'm looking at hitting 3-5 a day - I worked out I have 43 hours a spare a week.

168 hours in a week
108 after work
102 after travelling for work
97 after gym
48 after sleep (7hrs a night)
43 after miscellaneous (life happens)

So 3-5 hours a day coding would leave me with 8-22 hours a week to maintain my relationship and eat and chores etc

It'll be tight but worth it getting out of my job that's killing me physically and mentally.

Thanks for the inspiration @GrayCode.
 
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This is awesome, OP.

I work as a software engineer at a huge tech company and I have been trying to get my friend to believe this is possible. I figured it might take 6 months of self-study to learn enough to do your own personal projects so you could have some experience to show, but I had not seen anyone do it. This is even better than I expected.
 

GrayCode

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Amazing story man. I hope you all the best in your life.
Thank you. You as well.
If I read this story 4 years ago when all I was thinking: "I'm going to become a millionaire next year because I believe it and I have the mentality which most people don't", I would of thought you're just a slow-lane slave to the system.
Ha, If I read this 4 years ago, I'd think exactly the same. It's not the case at all, I don't think lots of people realize if they just stop focusing on short term dollars as you mentioned above, they'll open the path to something much bigger in 3-5 years time.

Now I'm 28, and like you said have a world of opportunity in front of me, with $ to devote to projects, and the skills to see them through. It's not overnight, but it's as close to a sure thing as you can get.

I was active in your other thread and this one explaining your process has me fired up! Unfortunately I wont be able to commit 8-14 hours a day as you did, but I'm looking at hitting 3-5 a day - I worked out I have 43 hours a week spare a week.

168 hours in a week
108 after work
102 after travelling for work
97 after gym
48 after sleep (7hrs a night)
43 after miscellaneous (life happens)

So 3-5 hours a day coding would leave me with 8-22 hours a week to maintain my relationship and eat and chores etc

It'll be tight but worth it getting out of my job that's killing me physically and mentally.

Thanks for the inspiration @GrayCode.
For sure @Benji90. 8-14 was typical, but there were plenty of other days where it was just 3-5 hours. Just to be clear it wasn't 8-14 hours straight of programming (I'm not a robot). There was plenty of surfing and doing other things in there, blog posts, etc as mentioned at the end of the post.

You'll get there, just don't quit and be sure to go to bed better than you were when you woke up.

This is awesome, OP.

I work as a software engineer at a huge tech company and I have been trying to get my friend to believe this is possible. I figured it might take 6 months of self-study to learn enough to do your own personal projects so you could have some experience to show, but I had not seen anyone do it. This is even better than I expected.

Please send him a link to it, and tell him to join the forum and message me. Happy to help. Get him around focused people.
 
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Benji90

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@GrayCode Yeah I get what you mean, my plan is 3 hours during work days and have a Sunday dedicated to code and all things related to it, my girlfriend works in hospitality so I know most sundays I'll be alone to immerse myself.

I have a few friends starting their own business soon, so my aim is to learn as much as I can quickly and build them a website (they're a string quartet - so little capital for anything major).

Thanks again.
 

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Dude, your 2nd GOLD thread in many months. Thanks for sharing the process. And by process, I mean process!

Take note: This type of process is what a true Fastlane is about. You don't go from a Personal Trainer to starting the next Facebook. You grind a minor shift that when extended into time, turns into a dramatic outcome. And more big outcomes are a comin'!

Look at what you did...

  • Taught yourself a high-leverage skill, with demand.
  • Built yourself some serious capital to pursue higher leverage opportunities, businesses, etc.
  • Built yourself a "safety net" when things go south in the economy (they will)
  • Most important, built yourself a future with the possibility of divesting from time.
All of this and it didn't cost you $90K in a college degree.

Congrats. Stories like this remind me why I write.
 

Pat D. Rick

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For a while, I kept it in my head that it was their fault, but really it was mine.
This is actually what I love most about your post.

Taking ownership! A lesson everybody needs to learn.
 
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GrayCode

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Dude, your 2nd GOLD thread in many months. Thanks for sharing the process. And by process, I mean process!
Wow thanks, two in the same week! Maybe it's a forum record :)

Take note: This type of process is what a true Fastlane is about. You don't go from a Personal Trainer to starting the next Facebook. You grind a minor shift that when extended into time, turns into a dramatic outcome. And more big outcomes are a comin'!

Look at what you did...

  • Taught yourself a high-leverage skill, with demand.
  • Built yourself some serious capital to pursue higher leverage opportunities, businesses, etc.
  • Built yourself a "safety net" when things go south in the economy (they will)
  • Most important, built yourself a future with the possibility of divesting from time.
All of this and it didn't cost you $90K in a college degree.
Yes! Ready for all of it, including the economic downturn (I mean eventual buying opportunity). and Nope, no student loan debt here. Just hard work, process and persistence. Hopefully, others realize they can do the same.
Congrats. Stories like this remind me why I write.
I know I said it in my last post, but thanks again. I imagine your books follow the same long process that any journey has to follow.

Release book, immediate negative feedback (cover, title, blah, blah), it's not until many months or years later when people have had time to put what you said into action in a long string of process that you get to hear the stories like this come from it.

It seems to be a common thread in all things that are worth it. They just take time.
This is actually what I love most about your post.

Taking ownership! A lesson everybody needs to learn.
It was at that moment I realized I matured. Haha, thanks for the comment.
 

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That's cool. Congrats on your achievements. Wish to learn to make real life projects with what I'm learning.

Can you tell me some of the random projects that you did while learning to code?
 

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I started another thread recently about my first fastlane month and I got a question on how I was able to get hired as a software engineer without a college degree. I feel like this is information I WISH someone shared with me as I was about to jump into coding. So, I figured rather than share it pages deep in the other thread, I'd make it standalone content incase someone specifically searches this out. (Hail the almighty SERPs ;))

How I got hired as a software engineer without a college degree

I'll break it down by paragraph based on key timelines and decisions I made, feel free to skip anything you aren't interested in. Hopefully, this is helpful to you. If you have a question, feel free to ask.

Deciding to learn 'how to code' (Oct 15' - Aug 16')
I was a personal trainer making maybe $30k a year. I was on the whole self-improvement journey before I finally bumped into MFL in late 2015 - maybe Oct 15' (based on me joining the forum in Nov 15'). I was hooked after reading the book, I knew I needed some kind of recurring revenue stream independent of my time. So... here's what happened.

I wound up coming up with an idea for software for gyms (since I worked in one) and took all of my savings at the time ($14k) and sought out 'engineers' to help me build it. Well, turns out 14k isn't enough to hire good, talented, trustworthy engineers and I got screwed.

I hired overseas developers, they beat around the bush, wrote some code, filled with typos, did like 1 feature and over the course of a few months my money went to zero and I was broke with no product. For a while, I kept it in my head that it was their fault, but really it was mine. I had no business spending my money on something I knew nothing about, thinking I was going to get rich. I was looking for an event (get rich quick) when I should've been all-in on the process.

So, that project would come to a close around March 16' or so. I was annoyed and confused but not bankrupt on motivation. I re-read MFL and continued my journey of listening to loads and loads of podcasts and youtube videos. I was a 'success zombie'. Finally, I decided the money was in software and I wanted out of my 30k per year job. So I said, screw it, I'll teach myself to code.

Learning to code (Aug 16' - Dec 17')
I dove in and at first, I wasn't too excited about it. But I dug in hard, 8-14 hour days depending on the day. I missed lots of 'chilling with the friends' nights, but I was able to see the other side. I only worked minimal hours as a PT, literally just enough to pay my bills and every other week I would routinely see my bank account go into negative balances for a day or so. But I knew I was getting a quick $100 from a client the next night so I shrugged it off.

I joined a coding Bootcamp that cost $7k at $1k per month payments, I put it on credit. The Bootcamp assumed most people would dedicate 2 hours per day so they estimated it would take 7 months. But I was going hard, remember? I wound up finishing all the content the Bootcamp had in 2 months' time and went on my way. The total cost of the Bootcamp was actually only $2k financed on credit.

I finished that at the beginning of Nov 16' and I knew I enjoyed coding but was definitely not yet hireable. So I dove into personal projects, I came up with random ideas for things and just built and built and built. I used google as my personal assistant and that would lead me to stack overflow. I would repeat this process until around Dec 17'.

At this point, I had built 4-5 web-apps (nothing insane, some were clones of other popular apps). Going into 2018 I knew I wanted to start looking for a job.

The decision to Look for a job (Jan 2018)
At this point, I was still doing oddball jobs and random business ideas that never worked. If you looked at a zoomed out graph of my bank account balance this entire time on a 2-week time period breakdown. It was never above $500, and if it was, it wasn't for long. But I was ready to get a job.

STOP! (this is important)

For anyone thinking:
  1. "wtf, this takes 2 years and you were broke and you got a job, how the hell is this Fastlane" OR
  2. "Yeah, cool bro, sounds great, tell me how to make $100k next month"
If this is you, you might not be ready for what I'm sharing. Sometimes, the teacher presents itself when the student is ready to learn.

I think I heard @MJ DeMarco say this in an interview once that - That you can still be living Fastlane in a job or working towards it and you really don't need to always burn all the ships and jump off the deep end (something like that). That was all I needed to know because I was about to go from making $30k per year to more than triple and if you read the post I linked in the opening sentence, 10x that.

MY approach to getting a job without a college degree
It was Jan 2018 and I knew I was good, but there were definitely things I didn't know. My entire approach was this:

This is a numbers game, I know that if I get 100 interviews, I'll eventually land one. My goal is to get a job earning 6 figures and still work on my own stuff on the side. If I'm asked something I don't know the answer to, that's OK, I'll write it down and research it after. I'll also openly admit to not knowing the answer and ask them to explain it to me.

So here's what I did, I started reaching out to anything that caught my interest. I took all the interviews and used my approach above. By the time the 7th and 8th interview rolled around I was answering all the questions, easily, because I wrote down what I didn't know and researched it.

My goal was to get a job within 100 interviews and using this approach it took me exactly 12. I do not have a college degree in computer science but what I do have is persistence.

On interview #12 I was on the final stages and I believe it came down to me and 2 or 3 other engineers, all of whom had college educations and many more years experience than me. Here's what I did to seal the deal.

I took 2 hours out of my 'oh so busy day' and redesigned their home page based on what I thought would perform better (they mentioned this was something they eventually wanted to tackle). I emailed them the design and listed out my reasons for the changes, I ended that email with: "If you're looking for a confident engineer who tackles things head-on and gets stuff done, I'm your guy"

Then I waited, it took 2 hours to get a response and their response was that they were impressed and they decided to go with me, I'd have a formal offer letter in my inbox by Tuesday morning. I believe it was a Thursday when I did this.

True to their word, on Tuesday morning I had an offer letter and that's the story. I got hired, above other engineers, without a degree and I honestly believe anyone else can do this. They just need to get ok with things taking some time. My life is totally changed now. I would always tell myself when I first began learning and shit got hard and I felt like stopping:

"Dude you're 25, (28 now), so what if it takes you even 5 years. 30 is still young as F*ck and you'll be making great money with the potential to explode that income, be patient, trust the process"

Finally
Through all of that time, I was learning other things too. I learned about money and how to have it make money for you. A good post that probably should be read more is this one that MJ did - long before the 'paycheck pot' was even in a book How to Never Work Another Day in Your Life, The Money-System Portfolio – Fastlane Entrepreneurs.

In the last 3 years I probably:
  • Read 25 books
  • Listened to 50 books (audible)
  • Listened to over 2,000 podcast episodes (no joke)
  • Read 500+ blog posts (Money, SEO, Marketing, Coding, etc)

Things take time, trust the process. Good luck on your journey, I'll be around if you have questions that I can help answer.
Sweet! Thanks for sharing!

sounds so much like a freelancing prospecting process haha.

I love it that you actually learned from interviews that didn’t go 100% well-and asked how you could do better for the questions.

It’s a lot more productive than just walking away grumbling, ‘That interview/interviewer/company was shit anyways.’
 
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Kraelog

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Congratulations dude, you're an inspiration !

I'm basically on the same track, just one year later :D
 

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Thanks, @GrayCode !!! Loved your previous post. And this one is even more inspiring. When you're sitting alone and frustrated that things arent going your way, this is a reminder that good things take time, effort and a lot of persistence. Wishing you only the best for the future :)
 

GrayCode

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That's cool. Congrats on your achievements. Wish to learn to make real-life projects with what I'm learning.

Can you tell me some of the random projects that you did while learning to code?
Sure, everything I've built had to do specifically with learning how to code the feature, not so much the project because I wasn't thinking "this will make me $100m" (i got over that slowing, poisonous mentality)

So if I code just to learn how to build a specific feature, what you'll find is that most features are transferable across many different products. Then there are domain-specific-features that are unique to the product.

Just keep in mind that with all the things I built I never fully finished, because it didn't matter, I wasn't bringing them to market. Just wanted the knowledge.

Examples of things I built (all because I wanted to know the features within the thing)

  • Twitter clone
    Learned: user profiles, likes, follows, mentions, user authentication, etc.
  • Wordpress clone
    Learned: Content Management System, AWS s3 (storing files in amazon), cemented design skills
  • Personal trainer/client marketplace
    online payments, 2 sided marketplaces
A few other things which I don't recall at the very moment, but you eventually get to a point where you say: "Oh, shit, all of these features are just building blocks"

Think legos, eventually, you can just take them apart and re-arrange them into any order you need to build a new thing.

Sharing response with @lobo

Congratulations dude, you're an inspiration !

I'm basically on the same track, just one year later :D
Thank you, and keep going!

Thanks, @GrayCode !!! Loved your previous post. And this one is even more inspiring. When you're sitting alone and frustrated that things arent going your way, this is a reminder that good things take time, effort and a lot of persistence. Wishing you only the best for the future :)
So true, always a good reminder. Thank you!
 
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Blakells

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@GrayCode if you don't mind me asking, what language did you learn? I'm currently learning Java myself, then off to JS most likely with Node.JS and then I think i'll be ready for an internship. I'm a comp sci student at my college but they aren't teaching me fast enough. Did you use predominantly books, or videos from sites like freeCodeCamp or TheOdinProject or PluralSight, etc etc...
I am personally on the fence about a bootcamp like Lambda, Galvanize, or others but haven't decided yet.
 

MaciekWado

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Sure, everything I've built had to do specifically with learning how to code the feature, not so much the project because I wasn't thinking "this will make me $100m" (i got over that slowing, poisonous mentality)

So if I code just to learn how to build a specific feature, what you'll find is that most features are transferable across many different products. Then there are domain-specific-features that are unique to the product.

Just keep in mind that with all the things I built I never fully finished, because it didn't matter, I wasn't bringing them to market. Just wanted the knowledge.

Examples of things I built (all because I wanted to know the features within the thing)

  • Twitter clone
    Learned: user profiles, likes, follows, mentions, user authentication, etc.
  • Wordpress clone
    Learned: Content Management System, AWS s3 (storing files in amazon), cemented design skills
  • Personal trainer/client marketplace
    online payments, 2 sided marketplaces
A few other things which I don't recall at the very moment, but you eventually get to a point where you say: "Oh, shit, all of these features are just building blocks"

Think legos, eventually, you can just take them apart and re-arrange them into any order you need to build a new thing.

Sharing response with @lobo


Thank you, and keep going!


So true, always a good reminder. Thank you!
Awesome man! Few questions. Did you focus on basics like data structures/algorithms? or learn on the go or still not fully know them?


Can you pls show your typical day how it looks like? with hours for each?

I notice that I can truly for learning something new for about 5/6hours dedicated learning with Pomodoro technique then read etc If I would learning something with practising more than six hours it's likely wasted time, per science brain don't have such capacity.

Did you maintain exercise?

What is your background? You don't have any college degree from any field?

Last question Why exaclty 16 months of learning? When you looking from this perspective now? You weren't ready or just hit you, imposter syndrome? and maybe you were able to land job quicker.
I'm asking beacuse there is plenty of stories about people landing jobs after 4months to 2 years plus more. So there is a big scope here.

One more time congrats and good luck!!!
 

WildFlower

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I was hired without ANY college degree! I try to pass on the knowledge to anyone who will listen.. sorry I didn't know you. LOL I worked at Warner Bros studios as a
Sr. Internet Application Developer. :)
 
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ravenspear

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Great story man, I went the college route but it sounds like our paths are coming closer together now. I'm another software guy and you posted in my other thread recently about moving into greater things.

Anyone can take the path you took and it's a great reminder that you can always leverage yourself with grit, brute force, or whatever you want to call it.

Software still has a lot of good paying jobs because the barrier to entry is high. For those willing to surmount that barrier, the benefits are really good on the other side.
 

GrayCode

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@GrayCode if you don't mind me asking, what language did you learn? I'm currently learning Java myself, then off to JS most likely with Node.JS and then I think i'll be ready for an internship. I'm a comp sci student at my college but they aren't teaching me fast enough. Did you use predominantly books, or videos from sites like freeCodeCamp or TheOdinProject or PluralSight, etc etc...
I am personally on the fence about a bootcamp like Lambda, Galvanize, or others but haven't decided yet.
First question should be whether or not you like Java? If you do, dive into that, books, courses, anything you can get your hands on. But don't just follow along with all the examples. Make your own things applying what you're learning. It's abstract, but that's the best way to progress in my eyes.
 

GrayCode

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Great story man, I went the college route but it sounds like our paths are coming closer together now. I'm another software guy and you posted in my other thread recently about moving into greater things.

Anyone can take the path you took and it's a great reminder that you can always leverage yourself with grit, brute force, or whatever you want to call it.

Software still has a lot of good paying jobs because the barrier to entry is high. For those willing to surmount that barrier, the benefits are really good on the other side.
Exactly, too many people give up far before making it to the other side. If they just persist, they'll be ok. Thanks for sharing.
 
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quicksort

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Please send him a link to it, and tell him to join the forum and message me. Happy to help. Get him around focused people.

I sent her a link and told her to join- she was wondering which bootcamp you used?
 

Blakells

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Will look into that one. I was thinking about taking a coding bootcamp during the summer like galvanize/hack reactor, and then doing my job search while I still attend college or possibly work part time + college or somewhere along that route. It seems like some bootcamps like lambda are 9 months long or so, and I can't see why other than it looking like you are still "enrolled" while looking for a job?
 

Brewmacker

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What a great life story GrayCode and really inspiring. Amazing process!

Im hacking away at coding 3-4 hours a day for the past 6 months and this is on top of a 40 hour job. As of Friday I have a six week vacation booked (Freeeeeeedom!!!) to really get stuck in full time at my own work and excel. Your story will be printed, framed and hung above my computer screen to pick me up when feeling down ;)

Thanks so much for sharing!
 

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