I will cheat a little because I’m not a developer per se, but I rather hold a multitasking position bringing together knowledge about Linux, SQL, Front-End and Back-End. But first things first.
I’m almost 30 and being a son of a small-time farmer and a waitress hasn’t exactly prepped me to succeed early on. I scored decently in high school and managed to get MA in History, but after the college it was down the hill form me. I did some odd jobs and eventually ended up working first in a warehouse and then in a factory as an unskilled laborer. I realized that things were deteriorating for me quickly and decided to rotate my live 180 degrees.
There is more to that change, but I deem it irrelevant to the topic, so I will cover only the FCC and post-FCC part. So nearing 28 years I started an FCC course. With passion of a virgin programmer and someone determined, I were coding like mad; spending 6-7 hours in a row just coding. It was tough sometimes, especially when it came to JS algorithms, but I managed to create a few projects which made me proud of myself. Being 3/4 into FCC (or was it earlier?), I started to doubt: Am I good at this? Or am I just an impostor?
After the initial breakdown I decided on a risky leap. I left my job and became unemployed for virtually 3-4 months. The second thing I did was to start applying for intern jobs and junior developer jobs. While my applications were being sent I trained like mad to polish my skills.
As expected, influx of aspiring junior front-end devs to the work market made it hard for me to get through, but eventually I was interviewed a couple of times. Of course I didn’t get those jobs but each time I learned a valuable lesson. Fed up with the current state of affairs I started my own IT business and suddenly, I got a call from UK based company offering me a contract as a support for their local dev branch.
I’m my own man now. Ranking high compared to other contractors and able to negotiate better salary. I also got in the process a lovely wife and a newborn son, so it’s a win-win situation in my books.
All of this wouldn’t be possible without the initial spark that FCC gave me, so thanks!
Awesome folrunge, good to hear a success story with a slight twist. Can I ask what the main focus of your IT business was when you got contacted? Web development? What were your early project like as a support to the UK firm? Daunting or…not as bad as you thought?
@codebarron, I was trying to compete on the market as a web developer. What draw their attention to me was my experience in Linux and SQL, but my coding allowed me to shine during the initial talks. I think the fact that I was able to create a few apps (all part of FCC standard, really) made good first impression and from that point I just had to score on their test. Tricky was the technical part of the interview (Linux, SQL and other stuff went smooth) when they gave me 3 assignments, all about figuring out basic functionality of their app. I solved just 1 but it was good enough for them.
Early on they figured out that I’m good at training people so I was promptly assigned as a person responsible for sharing the knowledge with new contractors and other junior employees. I also had training sessions with our clients form all over the world, some of them were major brands. Like really major. I also took part in helping in creation of front-end for our other product; my involvement was a small one, mind you, but it adds to overall performance.
As mentioned before, I’m studying Java now. Mainly, to be able to put my fingers in some of the bigger projects of my contractor. With Python I hope someday to create my own apps for physics that will perform magic like calculating trajectory of the space debris or for mining astrophysics databases in order to automatize research process (big astro fan here). The last one is my big dream that I was propelled towards, in some sense, by FCC
PS Job offers on LinkedIn recently started to come my way, so the ball is rolling
Hola, me gustaría felicitarte por la persistencia y el sacrificio que has tenido, también por tus logros. Te puedo jurar que lo entiendo, hoy estoy en una situación muy similar.
