I did it! My first web development job!

Career Advice
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Hi all, I want to start by saying thank you so much to the development community as a whole and especially freeCodeCamp. The help and support that we are surrounded with is unprecedented and is truly something of legend.

I’m working at a relatively small tech company 15-30 employees doing front end work on top of their API and back end involving sales on our clients’ sites. Our clients include some very big name companies that are found all over the globe. Needless to say, as a first time developer, IT IS VERY EXCITING!

Back in December of 2016 I made a commitment and promise to myself that I was going to become a web developer. I had no idea if I was going down the right path or learning the right things or if I was even learning the right things the right way. I googled EVERYTHING! I used freeCodeCamp as my guiding arrow and tried to absorb as much information as possible.

My Tips:

Do as many projects as possible, even outside of freeCodeCamp. Between your projects learn something new and then try to implement that in your next project.

Actually learn JavaScript!!! I cannot stress this enough. During my technical interview, the project leader even commented on the fact that they receive a countless number of applicants who put JS on their resume but don’t actually know simple JS i.e. manipulating arrays, creating objects, editing objects, looping through objects, etc. The algorithm sections for JavaScript on freeCodeCamp helped me beyond belief. I also used Project Euler for added difficulty and more practice.

Learn additional frameworks. JavaScript alone won’t be enough to make you standout but if you can handle your own within JavaScript picking up additional frameworks will be a breeze. I advise you look at what’s popular in your area, but typically ReactJS, and AngularJS are good places to start. Another comment the project leader made in the interview was that they don’t mind teaching their developers, they actually enjoy it, but we can’t be teaching the basics. We need to have employees that have a strong foundation that we can build on.

Use your own text editor. Codepen is extremely nice and helps get your projects off the ground but at the end of the day you’ll want to be comfortable in your own development environment. Also start using Git and GitHub like yesterday. In a professional environment all the work you do will originate and end from here so your going to want to know your way around on day 1.

Quit trying to measure up. Compare yourself to yourself. All too often we try to meet someone or something’s expectations that are outlandish and wild. This is your path and your choice. You decide where you go and how much time it takes you. If you’ve only been learning for a month don’t look at someone else’s project or code and get discouraged and think you’ll never get there. Instead look at code or a project you did a month ago. Consistently measure your growth to your past self. It will keep you focused and will foster encouragement rather than discouragement.

Read Quincy’s emails. No seriously read them. The links he posts in those emails include some pretty amazing stuff. They’re always relevant and current.

Overall it took me 6 months to go from a Nurse to a Web Developer. I worked 3 12-hour days a week, and spent the other 4 learning my butt off. My wife wanted to strangle me for spending so much time on the computer. My son missed me, but I knew the time and effort I put in now would eventually pay off in the future. I switched careers due to love and happiness. I struggled every bit of the way and felt like quitting many times. I set my goals and achieved them no matter how long it took me.

If you have any questions just comment below. I know how much value can come from gaining any sort of insight into the process and path of switching careers and becoming a web developer so I’ll do my best to give back as much as I can.

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Hey man glad to see your doing well.
what kind of level are they expecting as a new web developer?

Thanks

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congrats brother…
All the best for your future…

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Html/css - expert level for sure preprocessor is a bonus but probably not required. Obviously responsive frameworks and best practices as well.
JavaScript - working knowledge of what I would consider equivalent to the intermediate and advanced algorithm challenges on this site. Also working with APIs.
Some type of framework - this would be like angular or react, you don’t have to be an expert but definitely be familiar with it. A strong foundation in JavaScript will go a long way here.

Also for a front end developer a general sense of design is always helpful.

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What sites did you use to learn?
What do you think you did well during your learning process?
Where do you feel that you could / should have improved or done better?
How do you feel that your learning process helped you to get the role that you’ve achieved?
How do you feel learning was lacking after you’ve gone through the process of getting the role? (Clearly, it wasn’t lacking because they hired you but, I hope you can see what I’m trying to ask.)
How many roles did you apply for before landing this one?
How did you apply to the roles that you were attracted to?
Did you keep track of the companies and roles that you applied to?
Did they ask you any questions about Computer Science-y stuff: Big O Notation, Stacks, Binary Trees, Link Lists, Queues, Optimizing Sorting Algorithms, Red Black Trees, Bit manipulation, Hash Tables… Just to name a few.
Did you have to Whiteboard during any of the interviews?
What is your overall viewpoint about the learning process and actually obtaining employment?

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I have a question. How did you do this with only 19 days visited to FCC since December 2016?

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@wajo1980 You can see that most of @dgparker 's learning was done between Oct 30, 2016 and Dec 30, 2016. And the Algorithm Challenges were from Jan 02, 2017 until Mar 18, 2017.
I don’t think that their learning path was just done via FCC. And that’s okay, because there are some amazing learning resources available. You can also see that they have about 11 projects (from what I can tell) vai Codepen and Github.
So, I’d like a little bit more information.

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Absolutely right, I used FCC as a general guideline and had to most definitely supplement my learning through other areas. I’ve finished courses on codecademy.com in python, JavaScript, html/css, and reactjs. For practicing algorithms and general programming i utilized projecteulers problems, codeingame, and project prompts found on sub Reddits. As I mentioned in my post, I also transitioned from codepen to my own local dev environment. So a lot of my finished projects never ended up on codepen. There are countless amounts of other resources outside of FCC I used as well, even just reading stackoverflow questions can take you a long way.

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I do not have any certificates through fcc, I often times read forum posts, participated in the gitter chat and connected with peers through my local fcc facebook page. As I mentioned in another reply I used a lot of outside resources.

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@dgparker Not to be pushy. But, (I’m going to be slightly pushy, LOL) Did you happen to see my series of questions above?

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so you are saying you landed this job yet you didn’t receive and certifications through FreeCodeCamp?

If so, your story is really interesting and inspiring.

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I know right! That is amazing! I love this guy! He is totally inspirational!

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I also use Code Academy as a good supplementary learning source. I will definitely check out the other supplementary sources provided as well.

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Yes, and although I didn’t technically receive any certifications through FreeCodeCamp that’s not to say I didn’t get those experiences or educational material somewhere else. Honestly I wish I would have been more diligent in following the FCC material, because I think I would of had an easier time in terms of portfolio development. For instance, I spent 30-45 days learning C# and visual studio, I made a pong game and some PC monitoring apps. Obviously I wouldn’t say I wasted my time doing this because a lot of those programming concepts overlap but, I could have spent those 30-45 days becoming that much better at javascript or familiarizing myself with a relevant framework or creating other projects that actually applied to the types of jobs that I was planning on applying too.

I guess an important thing to take away from this is that even though FCC is a great learning environment and an excellent path to follow, I wouldn’t get too hung up on HAVING to complete those challenges or getting the certificate as long as your getting that same or similar material elsewhere whether it’s from another online resource or even a book. I don’t say that to point you in a similar direction or to steer you away from FCC because I would actually suggest the opposite and try to adhere to the FCC curriculum and supplement your learning when you feel it’s need and then come back to FCC to complete the challenge. It would be the equivalent of not knowing where you need to go and having a map versus having a map. Ironically the tab used to view the curriculum is actually called MAP…heh

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Yes I did, I was previously on mobile and felt I would be better suited to answer your questions when I was back on my desktop, which I am now, sorry for the delay :slight_smile: …here it goes

What sites did you use to learn?
I used freecodecamp as a general guideline, codecademy as an intro crash course to something I was just beginning to learn. MDN, StackOverflow, codeingame.com, when I wasn’t at home I used the soloLearn app. Reddit /learnprogramming /cscareerquestions, language documentation. Also project euler for a real challenge
If I was telling someone just starting out that wanted to become a developer and was looking to do the FCC curriculum this is the path I would give them.

HTML/CSS course on codecademy, there’s quite a few of them

Do the initial FCC questions and problems pertaining to HTML/CSS

When you get to javascript beginner algorithms complete the JS course on codecademy.

Go as far as you can within the algorithms challenges on FCC. At this point you should have a pretty basic understanding of JS.

Start working on some of the FCC projects, and implementing what your learning.

Take the Javascript30 course. It’s Great! and the guy is awesome.

When you’re done with that, start getting used to reading the documentation and understanding what it’s saying and how to APPLY that to your problems/solution

Work through some of the more advanced algorithms on FCC, if you like math involved problems check out projecteuler, if you get bored easily checkout codeingame

Take the JQuery course on codecademy

The list can go on from there but you should be able to get a general idea of how the process goes. Learn, Apply, Learn, Apply, Learn, Apply etc.

What do you think you did well during your learning process?
To be short the single most important thing I did was remain consistent. Every day I tried to code and if I couldn’t code, I made sure to try and learn something pertaining to coding. Quincy’s Emails, soloLearn app, stackoverflow, reddit etc.
Where do you feel that you could / should have improved or done better?
Remained on course within the FCC curriculum. I said in another post that I veered off and learned other things outside of web development which wasn’t necessarily a bad thing but I wasn’t planning on going down that route and I think the time could have ultimately been better spent. C# and Python…Obviously those can apply to web development, but as an example I’m working as a front-end developer, I don’t use C# or Python lol.
How do you feel that your learning process helped you to get the role that you’ve achieved?
I think the biggest thing with my learning process is like I said above. I tried to learn something new every day. By following that philosophy you are destined to see growth and development.
How do you feel learning was lacking after you’ve gone through the process of getting the role? (Clearly, it wasn’t lacking because they hired you but, I hope you can see what I’m trying to ask.)
I think most people would agree that there’s a difference between a hobby and a job. More specifically there’s a difference between making a project solely for yourself and your portfolio to shipping code out to a client. It’s more about quality than quantity a weird quirk that you find in your code and can hack your way around to get it working for your project is totally fine, but to send that same thing out to a client is a totally different animal. You’ll probably either want to find a better way to do it or take a whole different approach.
How many roles did you apply for before landing this one?
I would say I applied to no less than 25 positions. I was contacted by several recruiters and went to several different interviews and had some still lined up for the following week when I actually accepted the offer. Overall I had 3 offers at the time I accepted my job.
How did you apply to the roles that you were attracted to?
I created a resume based on several resources found online when it comes to applying to development jobs. I used two job posting sites, Dice and Indeed.
Did you keep track of the companies and roles that you applied to?
Both indeed and Dice have built in tracking of the jobs that you apply too. You can even notate which ones you’re interviewing with and which ones you’ve received offers from.
Did they ask you any questions about Computer Science-y stuff: Big O Notation, Stacks, Binary Trees, Link Lists, Queues, Optimizing Sorting Algorithms, Red Black Trees, Bit manipulation, Hash Tables… Just to name a few.
Did you have to Whiteboard during any of the interviews?
My role is in front-end development so the questions weren’t really CS related. It wasn’t technically a whiteboard but I did have to write it out on a piece of paper. The questions were quite simple really. Creating objects, iterating over objects, modifying/manipulating objects and arrays. I was however prepared to answer more complex problems based on the stories and advice I read online.
What is your overall viewpoint about the learning process and actually obtaining employment?
Overall I think you could spend all day and night learning for the next year but if you have nothing to show for it(externally) It’s not really going to do you any good (in terms of employment). Take what you’ve learned and actually apply it. Then show how you’ve applied through your portfolio. Constantly look for ways to implement what you learn in future and past projects. Don’t be afraid to experiment.

In terms of applying to jobs and getting an interview. You have to find a way to standout. Creating a unique resume and a unique portfolio. For instance my friend works as a CAD operator when he applied to the company that he still currently works at, On his resume he called himself a “CAD Ninja”… Be yourself so you don’t have to sell yourself.

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I’m a professional front-end developer

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I have an error in this code is there someone could tell me about the error.
Movie Hustle

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Congratulations to you! may you achieve much more and all the best for your new job!:+1::+1::grinning:

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Congratulations buddy Hope you really enjoy the journey! :grinning:

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:grinning: This is very encouraging and inspiring. Thank you for sharing and I wish you all the best. I have saved the links to the resources you suggested. Congrats on landing the job you wanted! :+1::+1: