I got a job. Thanks Free Code Camp!

Career Advice
#1

Hello Free Code Camp!

I’m Alex Cannon and I recently got a job as a junior software engineer doing front-end development work. I thought I’d drop by and give my thanks to the supportive community and all the contributors to Free Code Camp. The work and support you provide impacts the lives of so many people across the world.

Brief backstory

I completed the first 3 Free Code Camp certificates in 2017 and 2018. I also learned a lot on my own through personal projects, Chingu Voyage (which I highly recommend), and non-profit work for my local area. In total, it took about 2 1/2 years for me to get a job. I did take a 6 month break, so 2 years if you subtract that.

Advice for job seekers

I wrote a fairly detailed article on how to get a job to help anyone who’d like some more direction. Also, here is a link to my portfolio for anyone who is curious.

I’ll try to answer as many questions as I can. Let me know how I can help!

17 Likes
#2

Congratulations! Here’s to your future :slight_smile:

1 Like
#3

Congratulations! Thank you for sharing your story with us. I hope that you’ll continue to be part of our community as your knowledge and interest in programming deepens.

#4

Congrats!

I appreciate your write up on your blog. It was really informative for me.

#5

Sure, no problem. Let me know if you have any questions!

#6

Congratulations! What kind of tech will you be working with?

#7

@suziGeek ReactJS, possibly TypeScript. Not sure about backend yet.

1 Like
#8

Congrats on the job! Glad freeCodeCamp played a part in your journey. And I second @ArielLeslie - I hope you continue to be a part of our community as you learn more and more :smiley:

#9

Thanks I appreciate it! Happy to be part of the community.

#10

Congratulations! Thanks for sharing your experience to inspire the rest of the community. Good luck with your job!

#11

Congratulations and thanks for sharing. I am inspired to keep learning

#12

Congratulations! Thanks for sharing your work.
I have a question: I wonder what are the resources you used to understand how codepen works under the hood. I tried to do a codepen clone for 3 weeks but i get stuck :confused:

#13

Congratulations Alex! Thank you for sharing your story, very informative!

Best wishes,
Konstantin

#14

@zelol “What are the resources you used to understand how codepen works under the hood?”

Great question. So there are a lot of moving parts on Codepen. I’m not sure “part” you’re asking about in particular, so I’ll give some general advice.

One of the difficult problems you’ll encounter when you create this type of website is XSS (Cross Site Scripting) because you’re allowing users to input scripts on your website. Personally, (and I think this is the standard?) I used an <iframe> element to push user scripts into a separate, embedded webpage.

As far as learning resources, Free Code Camp can teach you the Front-End and Back-End for general problems. Otherwise, just reading express, react, redux, etc. documentation and stackoverflow posts can take you a long way.

I encourage people to keep push, push, pushing through their projects, but if you really aren’t making progress, I recommend doing a smaller project first.

#15

@TheyLeftMe4Dead I haven’t heard of iframe. I think that’s the solution I was looking for. Thank you very much!

#16

Alex, thanks for sharing! It’s truly inspiring!!!
I guess a lot of people are reading…while I tried to read this post and leaving messages, it kept having “429 errors” XD

#17

Congratulations on your success
wishing you many more good to come

#18