30+ and got first developer job

First of all, sorry for my English, as English is my second language.:slight_smile:

Iā€™m from Indonesia. I knew FCC last year, before that I was playing around with codecademy.
I always consider myself as a geek, I love trying new techs and reading books about computer programs despite my major in literature and my job as language teacher and translator.

My first attempt was in 2008 and I was trying to teach myself Java but failed and I stopped trying, and then in 2010 I got web translation job, that was the time I fell in love with web development. when I downloaded the web file and opened it in Ms.Word (I didnā€™t know IDE) and saw lines of HTML code I was fascinated with the idea of web development, I thought ā€œwow, itā€™s amazing, how with lines of code you can make something useful and beautiful at the same time.ā€ That was my trigger to teach myself HTML and CSS and because of these skills I got a job as webmaster for a trading company, I didnā€™t touch coding at all because the companyā€™s website was using wordpress.

After 4 years working as worpress webmaster (still teaching too), I decided to switch career as web developer, but I didnā€™t know where should I begin. Out of nowhere as Universe listened my dream, some link about codehour (Hadi Partovi) brought me to another link, I ended up watching youtube video about programming Why Our Kids Must Learn to Code and it made me enrolled to CodeCademy and later in FreeCodeCamp.

I spent a year trying to figure out JavaScript puzzle in FCC as English is not my mother tongue, but I kept repeating it and finally understood how JavaScript works, but I still have to learn it more deeply.
at this time I also fell in love with rails and trying to follow all tutorials about cloning web apps with rails.
I am still at front-end intermediate project but all the puzzles Iā€™ve passed, built a stronger basic front-end skill for me.

As Iā€™m 33 years old now, I have the urge to get a developer job as soon as possible, so I applied to many front-end job vacancies, surprisingly I got many interview invitations despite I donā€™t have IT degree, just personal rails projects in github and FreeCodeCamp projects and competing with younger developers with experience or fresh graduates that agree with entry level salary.

I just believe in law of attraction that if I have passion universe will open doors for me, some interview made me loose confidence, as one interviewer underestimated me by saying that Iā€™m a late gamer, too old to apply for developer job, it was very uncomfortable moment, I lost my confidence, but one article about age issue in applying developer job, made me confidence, because the article said if the interviewer said that to you, it means he is looking for fresh graduates that are willing to receive low starter salary.

I decided not to give up and kept sending resumes, surprisingly one great startup in my city invited me to get an interview. I had nothing to loose so I did my best in the interview and 2 weeks later I got accepted and they offered me experienced (mid-career) developer salary. I keep wondering until now, why they offered me this job, maybe I guess they considered my passion in learning programming, and I owe big thanks to FCC for giving me strong foundation in front-end skill. THANKS FCC

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Iā€™m glad you didnā€™t give up dude, otherwise you would always doubt yourself.
I feel slightly inadequate about my ability as well but your story has inspired me and given me hope to keep going.

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Yes, I donā€™t know what would happen if I gave up. Iā€™m glad my story has inspired you.
just show your passion about coding(web development) to the interviewer, programming skill is a never ending skill, so tech company is looking for someone who loves learning something new.
I love quotes about passion from Confucius that keep me going:
ā€œChoose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life.ā€ Confucius

ā€œThe will to win, the desire to succeed, the urge to reach your full potentialā€¦ these are the keys that will unlock the door to personal excellence.ā€ Confucius

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Great story, Bang.

Iā€™m a humanity studies graduate but iā€™m starting my career as a content developer for digital agency in Jakarta. Entered java class in 2008, but i got stuck and stopped since i donā€™t realize that internet have a lot of resources for learning (internet is a fancy thing for college student living alone like me back then). I started again with learning html, css, js, & wp few monts ago and with (almost) infinite sources for learning, thereā€™s nothing to stop me.

Greetings from Depok. lol

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Awesome! Congratulations on getting where you are. You earned it. Now, never stop learning and improving. Never be satisfied with how far youā€™ve come. You may be the best developer in your company, but you probably wonā€™t be there for life. Prepare yourself to have companies fighting to hire you for a job you could never even get interviewed for today. :slight_smile:

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Hi Yoskakomba,

Congratulations! It sounds like you got a great job, with a mid-career salary. This is a great outcome. And it sounds like you worked hard, and persevered through some age discrimination.

It must be wonderful to think back to your initial ambition of becoming a developer back in 2008, and then actually achieve that ambition in 2016. It has been a long road, but youā€™ve finally reached the milestone of your first real developer job!

Thank you for taking the time to write up this post explaining your journey so far. This is a huge inspiration for me, and for the rest of our community as well.

Please keep us posted of how your new job goes when you have time. As you learn new skills (like Ruby on Rails), we would welcome any contributions you can make to our wiki (Iā€™ve written a guide to contributing to our wiki here).

Good luck with your new job. Happy coding!

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yoskakomba,

Congrats on the success! Love that you never gave up and kept pushing to achieve your goal. I hope Quincy reads about your success because he should write about it on Medium. More people need to hear about your success.

I went back to learn MEAN stack programming at 53. So glad to hear there are others doing this later in life.

Congrats again on your success.

Jennifer

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Sama-sama, tahun 2008 internet broadband unlimited masih diawang-awang, internet masih lemot dan mahal, tutorial yang open source plus komunitas juga jarang kayaknya, apalagi tutorial video di youtube secara youtube masih 2 tahun berdiri tahun 2008. stackoverflow juga baru berdiri tahun 2008 masih bayi, komunitasnya juga masih sedkit banget, beda sama jaman sekarang lebih mudah untuk nyelesaiin tutorial karena banyak yang dukung.

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Thank you, I am inspired by your story too. I donā€™t stop learning and improving as I do what I love, I am thirsty for more knowledge in programming.

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Thank you so much Quincy for making all of these happened for us.
Back in 2008, there were not many open source tutorials and great open source community, learning alone could be very frustrating.

I will contribute more to FCC by translating FCC web pages to Indonesian and contributing to WIKI because FCC made my dream came true.

Thank you Quincy and team.

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Thank you Jennifer, :slight_smile:

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@yoskakomba great story. It is always great to read about someone elseā€™s success on FCC. Keep it positive!

Hi @yoskakomba your story is really inspiring. I started coding on Coursera enrolling ā€˜Data Science Specializationā€™ and then I started FCC too. After finishing the 10 courses specialization Iā€™m a little demoralized about getting a job in this field, a lot of job requisites are for someone with a degree and I donā€™t have it. But reading your story make me change my mind. So thank you for sharing it.

Marko

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Love your positive attitude - and CONGRATS! That is a fantastic & inspirational story.

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Congratulations! This is a very motivating and inspiring story!

congratulation!!

very inspiring story :slight_smile:

good luck

Awesome! I am so thrilled youā€™re going to write some wiki articles in Indonesian. We have a ton of campers from Indonesia who will benefit greatly from being able to learn in their own language :slight_smile:

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Hi Yoskakomba,

Thank you for sharing your story with us. and Congratulations for getting your dream job :slight_smile:

I am a Mechanical Engineer at a Natural Gas Liquefaction Plant in Egypt, and I really HATE my job.
Every time I think about what I do, what Experience have I gained, and what creativity was I allowed to exercise, I realize that it all comes down to NONE.
In this job and in many others I can get, I am really nothing but an overpaid Data-Entry Worker :frowning:

Your story inspires me to keep on coding and sharpening my skills and I will compete with other developers because I do have the PASSION for it.

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This is an absolutely amazing story! One I will not forget and continue be motivated by. Thank you for sharing, great job, and congratulations!

Stop apologizing for your English. You write better English than everyone Iā€™ve gotten an e-mail from today and those people only speak 1 language, English.

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