Hey guys,
I just got my first job in tech, and I couldn’t have done it without freeCodeCamp. I worked through the curriculum in about 9 months working 2 hours a day, then helped convert a food bank website for the Open Source for Good project, a new freeCodeCamp initiative. Working this project involved communicating with another camper in Switzerland, and attending weekly Skype sessions with a freeCodeCamp project manager to plan the upcoming week’s work. It taught me a lot about using version control in a team setting, especially when we opened up the project to general contributions from the freeCodeCamp community, and my partner and I had to evaluate pull requests. You can learn a lot from the free material on the internet, but these sorts of skills - working together on a project with other people - are really difficult to pick up outside of the workplace.
I can’t stress enough the importance of networking and getting yourself out there. It’s not necessary to have great people skills to network successfully - my people skills certainly are not my strong point! The important thing is to make people aware that you’re available and what you’re capable of. I live in a somewhat remote location that doesn’t have a lot networking opportunities, but it does have a weekly ”project night“ at a coffee shop attended by professional web developers. I went to the meeting as often as I could, showed people what I was working on for freeCodeCamp, and asked for help when I was stuck on something. Eventually someone recognized my value (or took pity on me) and offered me a job.
Incidentally, I must have applied for dozens of jobs posted on the Internet, and I don’t think I got a human response to any of them. Don’t be discouraged if you’re not finding any luck applying for jobs. Companies that post positions publicly get an enormous quantity of applicants, and accordingly have very high standards for those they hire. The job I was just hired to do involves writing Java and Objective-C code for a mobile app. I don’t have any experience writing code for a mobile platform, but my boss was confident, based on what he knew about me, that I could learn these skills effectively. It’s unlikely I would have even gotten an interview for this job without knowing my employer. The secret to finding a job is networking. In most cities of any size there are a lot of opportunities to meet people - hack-a-thons, project nights, lectures, freeCodeCamp coffee-and-code events, and more. I encourage everyone working through freeCodeCamp to go to as many of these events as they can.
Best of luck,
Peter Deal