Video Version of this post if you don’t like reading: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1jucjjHeQHY
I don’t feel like making a lot of fluff so I’ll just get to it. I use to work at a call center and hated my job. Felt like a little piece of my soul died every day I had to go into work. I knew web development was something I could learn on my own (without college) and the salaries looked pretty good too so I started learning. It took about 7-8 months to get my first job (Although I could have had a 90 Day internship (@$15/hour) after just 4 months.
How I learned
- TeamTreeHouse - Started off with TeamTreeHouse’s front end developer tech degree. I think the quality of the projects from this are one of the big reasons I got the job. They’ve got some great intro videos that show how the internet works and they’ve got a nice curriculum planned out for you. You can submit one project a week so if you’re pushing you can finish it in 10-12 weeks;
The basic format is:
-Watch Videos to see what you can do and see how to do it
-Take quizzes to make sure you’ve got it.
-Build a project where you apply what you’ve learned.
The techdegree is pricey but you get what you pay for and I felt like if it could help me get a new job it’d be worth it.
- FreeCodeCamp - Half way through the front end tech degree on TTH I joined FCC; While team tree house is a great way to learn, there were some projects where I’d work on a skill (maybe SASS) and then I wouldn’t touch it again. FreeCodeCamp was a great way to review the skills I’d learned and get more repetition. It’s also a different format (TTH is video, FCC is text) so you get to learn it a different way.
Another big plus with FCC is the meetups! If you live in an area where they have meetups go. I found a job through indeed but it would have been a much faster process if I was more social and went to more meetups and found a job through my network.
- Odin Project - This was really just another layer I threw on to make sure I wasn’t missing any info. Whenever I watched a video on TTH of did a section on FCC I knew there was some info that I didn’t retain so I wanted to hit it multiple times from multiple sources to really get it to stick. I didn’t get to dive to far into Odin but there was some decent info on it.
How I searched for and landed a job
I worked 6am - 4:30pm so I’d come in at 5:50, pull up all the job sites I wanted to apply on, search ‘web developer’, and apply for anything new that I felt remotely qualified for (So if they said they needed someone with 3 years experience, I’d apply in case they couldn’t find anyone better lol)
I probably sent out about 1000 applications but it finally payed off.
Sites I use:
-Indeed
-CraigsList
-AngelList
-Dice
-StackOverflowJobs
-Linkeding Jobs
Other Info
-Click here to see my portfolio
-I put in about 20-25 hours of coding/studying a week
-I live in Dallas
-What the interviews were like https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y3vgi612ZFA&t=1s
I really thought about taking a bootcamp, but with so many resources online I couldn’t justify the cost. As long as you can make yourself work without someone over your shoulder, (You’ll actually come home after a long crap day of work and sit down to learn HTML & CSS) I don’t think you need a boot-camp.
I made a vlog documenting my journey to find a job and continue posting about what it’s like to be a web developer.Check it out here
Let me know if I can help you any or if you have any questions!