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Hey guys, this is my first post on any type of forum like this, so please forgive me if I begin to ramble.
That being said hello! My name is Zack. I don't claim to be a millionaire, though I am confident within a few years I will be there. I am currently heading toward ~400k a year as a programmer using a strategy I will outline in another post, this post is more about how I started. We all know how exciting it is to finally land a job and get coding doing what we enjoy. That first paycheck is sweet. It was especially sweet for me. When I was 20 years old I dropped out of college due to being offered a job with a 6 figure salary. I thought I was set for life. But how did I get to that point? That's what I will outline in this article, in a resume style format. I'll outline the skills I obtained and that were required to progress towards the 100k club.
The starting point:
My experience with programming started 7 years before I landed the job. Don't let that discourage you, because the majority of my experience was obtained in 3 years. That being said I'd rather not omit anything to be as transparent as possible. I started programming games on a game engine called “game maker 8”. It was a magical time in my life, but i'll spare you the fairytale. Every engineer remembers the first few things they made and how awful the architecture and coding practice was. Yet we reminisce on them as simpler times.
In the next few years I occasionally worked on these games, eventually landing an internship when I was in high school using the unity engine. Note that the language I learned for game maker 8 (Java) had nothing to do with unity (C#). Programming fundamentals are the same no matter what language you are using (from an object-oriented perspective). I also took AP computer science in high school, which is entry-level programming. If you know loops, functions, and variables you can pass the AP test. Easy stuff.
Enter college:
When college started things got serious, but not from a traditional going to class perspective. I never was great at math and HATED computer science class. In my college they had us learning c++ on an old terminal-based IDE (Integrated development environment). They retaught the same stuff I learned in high school all the way up to CS311. That's when I had enough and dropped out.
During this span of 3 years is really where the value for you comes in:
I bought an iMac with the money I had saved up by working at in-n-out the past year. I then immediately begin to learn objective c. I had a dream of becoming an app entrepreneur, you know the ones that sell an app for millions and get super popular among the tech community. I wanted the clout and I wanted the big paycheck, in that order. I thought it was easy, just make an app and cash out. This is the type of ambition that is required to put yourself on the fast track. Once I had a bit of objective c under my belt I then started learning swift. I thought I needed objective C but then when I learned no one was supporting it for the future and swift was the new hot language, I jumped on board with that. That's three months I could have saved right there by just learning swift.
How did I learn this language?
No secret sauce here. Just go on udemy.com and type in swift and take the latest fundamentals course. Try to take something using an AWS or firebase backend, as this will give you the experience required for most jobs. More specifically, look at how to consume REST API’s. Once I learned all of this (In the span of 1 month, doing it every day for an hour or so) I began to make my own projects. This is the most important part. You will need the experience to show on your resume for jobs, so you better have some great apps. That being said, your first app will be trash. My first app was a Frankenstein mess of code I had learned in the courses all pasted together. It was a social network that allowed you to see what cool things were going on around you. I was hyped and proud to send it to all my friends, though none of them ended up using it.
Joining startups as a founder
I know what you're thinking, I just learned swift and now I'm joining a startup company? A few key things with this that you can leave out of your job interviews: you don't need to be paid for the work, and your startup does not need to make millions. Leverage start-up incubators like Y-combinator to find a co-founder that needs an app and has no money, and then work like hell on it. By this time I had created a relationship with one of these founders and helped her build an on-demand yoga service that I stayed part of for a year.
By now, my resume looked like this(I'll leave company names out):
App company 2 years of experience: ( nothing wrong with having an app company where you publish your own apps. Does not need to have some crazy legal structure either, can just be your name)
App 1: using swift, xcode , objective c, and rest API’s I build a social network that allowed people to find cool things to do near them… blablabla
App 2: using swift, xcode , objective c, and rest API’s I build a music streaming service that allowed people to play youtube music in the background for free… blablabal
Startup company with app on the store and articles written about founder (social proof) :
using swift, xcode, objective c and rest API’s I build an app that lets yoga instructors be scheduled, paid for and messaged all in one place like uber for yoga! … blablabla
Once that startup company failed I was devastated. The founder had left me to hang dry with no payment for my app I made them, but I had the experience. And to get a job you need experience right?
I then started applying for jobs, and ended up at a global organization that had an app geared to restaurants making 6 figures.
That's how it shook out for me, but it doesn't need to be like that for you. If I had targeted the job a-lot sooner, I have no doubt I could have got there faster.
Final thoughts / TL;DR:
That's a very scattered context-driven explanation on how I did it, but the takeaway can be boiled down into 3 steps. Also you need to know how to sell yourself as a programmer.
I hope this helps!
PS, I recorded a video for this article of me just voicing it over and adding stuff, if you are interested feel free to check it out:
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w1isyJf8Hks&t=7s
Thanks,
Zack
That being said hello! My name is Zack. I don't claim to be a millionaire, though I am confident within a few years I will be there. I am currently heading toward ~400k a year as a programmer using a strategy I will outline in another post, this post is more about how I started. We all know how exciting it is to finally land a job and get coding doing what we enjoy. That first paycheck is sweet. It was especially sweet for me. When I was 20 years old I dropped out of college due to being offered a job with a 6 figure salary. I thought I was set for life. But how did I get to that point? That's what I will outline in this article, in a resume style format. I'll outline the skills I obtained and that were required to progress towards the 100k club.
The starting point:
My experience with programming started 7 years before I landed the job. Don't let that discourage you, because the majority of my experience was obtained in 3 years. That being said I'd rather not omit anything to be as transparent as possible. I started programming games on a game engine called “game maker 8”. It was a magical time in my life, but i'll spare you the fairytale. Every engineer remembers the first few things they made and how awful the architecture and coding practice was. Yet we reminisce on them as simpler times.
In the next few years I occasionally worked on these games, eventually landing an internship when I was in high school using the unity engine. Note that the language I learned for game maker 8 (Java) had nothing to do with unity (C#). Programming fundamentals are the same no matter what language you are using (from an object-oriented perspective). I also took AP computer science in high school, which is entry-level programming. If you know loops, functions, and variables you can pass the AP test. Easy stuff.
Enter college:
When college started things got serious, but not from a traditional going to class perspective. I never was great at math and HATED computer science class. In my college they had us learning c++ on an old terminal-based IDE (Integrated development environment). They retaught the same stuff I learned in high school all the way up to CS311. That's when I had enough and dropped out.
During this span of 3 years is really where the value for you comes in:
I bought an iMac with the money I had saved up by working at in-n-out the past year. I then immediately begin to learn objective c. I had a dream of becoming an app entrepreneur, you know the ones that sell an app for millions and get super popular among the tech community. I wanted the clout and I wanted the big paycheck, in that order. I thought it was easy, just make an app and cash out. This is the type of ambition that is required to put yourself on the fast track. Once I had a bit of objective c under my belt I then started learning swift. I thought I needed objective C but then when I learned no one was supporting it for the future and swift was the new hot language, I jumped on board with that. That's three months I could have saved right there by just learning swift.
How did I learn this language?
No secret sauce here. Just go on udemy.com and type in swift and take the latest fundamentals course. Try to take something using an AWS or firebase backend, as this will give you the experience required for most jobs. More specifically, look at how to consume REST API’s. Once I learned all of this (In the span of 1 month, doing it every day for an hour or so) I began to make my own projects. This is the most important part. You will need the experience to show on your resume for jobs, so you better have some great apps. That being said, your first app will be trash. My first app was a Frankenstein mess of code I had learned in the courses all pasted together. It was a social network that allowed you to see what cool things were going on around you. I was hyped and proud to send it to all my friends, though none of them ended up using it.
Joining startups as a founder
I know what you're thinking, I just learned swift and now I'm joining a startup company? A few key things with this that you can leave out of your job interviews: you don't need to be paid for the work, and your startup does not need to make millions. Leverage start-up incubators like Y-combinator to find a co-founder that needs an app and has no money, and then work like hell on it. By this time I had created a relationship with one of these founders and helped her build an on-demand yoga service that I stayed part of for a year.
By now, my resume looked like this(I'll leave company names out):
App company 2 years of experience: ( nothing wrong with having an app company where you publish your own apps. Does not need to have some crazy legal structure either, can just be your name)
App 1: using swift, xcode , objective c, and rest API’s I build a social network that allowed people to find cool things to do near them… blablabla
App 2: using swift, xcode , objective c, and rest API’s I build a music streaming service that allowed people to play youtube music in the background for free… blablabal
Startup company with app on the store and articles written about founder (social proof) :
using swift, xcode, objective c and rest API’s I build an app that lets yoga instructors be scheduled, paid for and messaged all in one place like uber for yoga! … blablabla
Once that startup company failed I was devastated. The founder had left me to hang dry with no payment for my app I made them, but I had the experience. And to get a job you need experience right?
I then started applying for jobs, and ended up at a global organization that had an app geared to restaurants making 6 figures.
That's how it shook out for me, but it doesn't need to be like that for you. If I had targeted the job a-lot sooner, I have no doubt I could have got there faster.
Final thoughts / TL;DR:
That's a very scattered context-driven explanation on how I did it, but the takeaway can be boiled down into 3 steps. Also you need to know how to sell yourself as a programmer.
- Learn a programming language that you can create a product or service with, and create your own projects.
- Join a startup company using that technology for free, who knows the company actually might workout.
- Transition that experience into a paying job. A college degree is no match for the real-life experience!
I hope this helps!
PS, I recorded a video for this article of me just voicing it over and adding stuff, if you are interested feel free to check it out:
Thanks,
Zack
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