It feels like I’ve been to this forum after a whole year.
I got a job 5 months ago and I wanted to share the tough journey since the past year
start of fCC:
So I had started with the HTML and CSS certs and took 2 months to get the cert and another 2 to make projects after advice from the wonderful people here at the fCC forum. I made a lot of friends online too.
what i did before fCC:
What had got me started in the first place was that I was a masters student in Computer Science and the job market crash had just struck us in 2023 when we were done with our degree.
struggles after the first fCC cert:
so after 4 months of coding, I was losing the motivation to keep coding as i felt it was real tough doing something solo in my room also day on my pc without getting to work with people in person. Something was off and it was tough to convince myself that I didnt like actual coding like the many years I’ve spent trying to get into the industry through formal education .
getting lucky
luckily since I had made a really optimised linkedin profile - using fCC articles - I got reached out on linkedin by a local startup for a job due to the keywords I added under my name. I accepted the invite, went to interview and got in. It was barely a interview to be honest, just more of a talk to know about me.
quick downfall
the work quickly got confusing as there was no proper guidance, where knowing how to code is useless when you have no idea what needs to be coded in the first place. It was a startup and the pay & work culture reflected that - no organisation, confusion, low pay, quick changes
I lost the job 3 months since I joined - my skill to code was also a part of that which I accept.
what work requires is PROBLEM SOLVING + COMMUNICATION
and not knowing just syntax of code
everything at work was a matter of “FIGURE IT OUT YOURSELF”
And rise
4 months later I went to a neighbours party and met a former teacher who invited me to teaching at my undergraduate college which is FAR easier to get into than a regular industry job or a high ranking academic uni. Having the formal requirements met, I thought why not?
Seems academic teaching and research is the perfect fit for me. Its been 5 months and the variety of roles I have had to play are exam paper setter, teacher, mentor, advertiser, friend … and so on. I have taught Golang, Parallel Computing, C and Python programming so far.
Today I am preparing to do a PhD in a highly ranking university in India and feel I can continue this career for many years to come. I love making friends, teaching people, helping someone grow, learning stuff (coding a lot less in front of a pc tho)
In todays terrible job market, this area saved my life and I hope my story would help you the reader from reading my story.
Cheers 