Got my first dev job!

You Can Do This!
#1

I’m posting this to encourage and motivate others who are on the path to web development.

I have just accepted an offer for a junior frontend developer role.

It has been a rocky road with my learning journey being ‘on and off’ for the last few years. However, since last year October I took web development seriously and made huge sacrifices.

Sleep? What’s that? Social life? Not in my dictionary.

I smashed my way through every obstacle non-stop. I chipped away little by little every night.

Finally, hard work has paid off.

Where did I learn to code?
A mixture of resources.

  • FreeCodeCamp
  • YouTube
  • Official docs
  • Articles/blogs

Most importantly I listened to podcasts and joined a few sub reddit groups where I would read posts on a daily basis. This is where I picked up a lot of the terminology and jargon to prepare me for interviews.

What tools were under my belt when I applied?

  • HTML/CSS
  • Sass/SCSS
  • Bootstrap
  • JavaScript
  • React
  • Gatsby
  • GraphQL
  • React-Bootstrap
  • TailwindCSS
  • Contentful & Prismic CMSs

I had also built a website for a local nursery with a CMS and a mailing platform.

For those who are in the midst of changing careers to web development, especially teachers - as I am one of them - there is light at the end of the tunnel

I couldn’t be more thankful to FreeCodeCamp for starting me on this journey. All the questions I asked, the moderators, admins and the good folks who helped me in my darkest moments of debugging despair.

If there’s one advice I would give to those starting out, it’s consistency beats everything. Stay consistent and trust the process.

The train is not stopping here, onwards an upwards :rocket:

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#2

Good work!

One note here - I strongly recommend against sacrificing sleep during the learning process. Brains are powered by sleep and food.

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#4

You’re right, sleep is the magic pill. But with a little kid and day job, the only time I had was late at night. I’m more excited about having my sleep back than the job :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

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#5

Congrats!

That’s true.

Also make sure to take break during the day when you are on the job.
There will be a lot of new information thrown your way so you will want to stay healthy and not burnout trying to keep up with all of the changes.

Good luck! :+1:

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#6

Hey Ibrahim, congrats on the job!! That’s amazing and inspiring, looking forward to getting there.
Would you share the reddit groups you joined and would recommend?

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#7

Congratulations! I’m currently learning HTML/CSS before moving on to other areas. Do you believe it will be simpler to understand the other topics if one has been studying HTML/CSS thoroughly?

#8

Absolutely! There’s definitely new things to learn. Food + sleep + me = best friends :grinning:

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#9

Thanks @yunsuklee
I joined these groups:
r/webdev
r/javascript
r/reactjs
r/Frontend
r/gatsbyjs

These are the ones I used to read trending posts from regularly. There are many more online forums ofcourse but the idea is to submerse yourself in the developer community and absorb as much information as you can.

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#10

Thank you!

Depends what you mean by ‘thoroughly’. I would say if you’ve completed the responsive design module then it’s enough to move on.

Ultimately, you’ll forever be learning new stuff including html and css. So learn the basics and move on. You’ll find yourself coming back to html/css whenever you’re stuck and that’s when you’ll fill your knowledge gaps.

Hope this helps.

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#11

Congratulations! Sounds like you put a lot of work into this. I’m really happy you reached your goal.

Can you recommend a podcast or two?

#12

Thank you so much!

There are plenty of podcasts on Spotify. I would recommend freeCodeCamp’s. They have over 100 episodes of varying lengths. I listened mostly to those who shared their career changing story - gave me some inspiration.

Other podcasts I occasionally tapped into: Learn to code with me, devJourney, egghead.io.

Hope that helps :slight_smile:

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#13

I haven’t listend to any dev podcasts so far because I didn’t see the appeal before, but since you mentioned that it helps with the lingo I 'm ready to give them a chance. Thanks for the tipps!

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#14

Congrats Ibrahim , I am trying to learn CSS right now.

#15

Congratulations, you can only look up from here

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#16

Congrats! It must make you happy to finally achieve a great step on your journey!

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#17

Thanks buddy!
Keep up the good work, you’ll get there!

#19

Noice, good advice, congrats!

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#20

congrats man, I just started 2 months ago.

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#21

Congratulations on the new developer job!

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#22

@ibrahim_aq Thank you for sharing your story! This is very motivating as I’m still learning HTML, CSS, and JS.

1 Like