I’ve dreamed about writing this post countless times, and now that it’s finally here it feels very surreal. Yesterday, I handed in my notice after accepting a job as a JavaScript Developer for a large tech company here in the UK. I start in January with a nice pay rise and fantastic prospects!
I’m about to turn 34, and a few years ago I’d never written a line of code in my life. I just want to say a huge thank you to Quincy and everyone in the community here, as I literally couldn’t have done this without you.
I started freeCodeCamp in February 2016, and I’m currently about half way through the Back End certificate. In that time I’ve also held down a full-time job, moved house twice, got married and became a dad!
It’s been exhausting and exhilarating and I wouldn’t change any of it. At times I was sceptical it would actually lead to a paying job, but this forum has always been a huge morale booster and helped me keep focused.
If anyone has any questions I’d be happy to answer as best I can. One piece of advice I’d offer from my job hunt is not to put any stock in recruitment agencies. I sent my resume & portfolio to countless recruitment agencies, and never heard anything back. That same resume & portfolio got me 3 face to face interviews without a phone screening, as well as two phone interviews when I went to the companies directly.
Congratulations! You must be thrilled. Your hard work paid off. Do you know what kinds of things you’ll be building? Do you plan to try and learn anything new before you start?
Congratulations @JamesRea83. You hard-work paid off. Keep learning. I am about the same age as yourself. 33, a dad with a full-time web developer job. I got my job while learning using FreeCodeCamp. I was discovered by a manager at my work-place and he influenced my transfer into the software development unit.
The skills I’ve acquired are pretty much exactly in line with what’s taught on the syllabus here- html, css & js / jQuery on the front end. React & D3 (also Highcharts, which is a walk in the park compared to D3!). Express & Mongoose on the backend.
One thing I noticed in all 3 interviews was how often git came up. Being able to use the git CLI was definitely a recurring theme. I’ve got a long way to go with git, but just being able to say I could hold my own with the CLI seemed to be important.
I think the github profile page is also very important. I was surprised by how few technical questions I was asked in my interviews. I was expecting whiteboarding and all the rest, but it never materialised. Turns out my interviewers had been over my github page with a fine tooth comb and were happy with my abilities before I set foot in the building.
For my first two interviews, I spent ages looking through interview prep questions, doing quizzes and generally working myself into a stressed frenzy. For a week or so leading up to them, all the time I would normally have spent coding was spent revising. So when I actually sat down in front of these people, it had been quite a while since I’d written any code, and that really hurt my confidence.
In the run up to my successful interview, I decided to say screw it and just throw myself into the next FCC project. I was working on it just a few hours before the interview, buried in code and loving it, and that really showed. With everything fresh in my mind, I was able to talk about coding with confidence & passion. My new manager said it was my enthusiasm that sealed the deal.
I’d definitely recommend this approach for your next interview- don’t stress out trying to memorise interview questions. Just throw yourself into your coding!
Can I get some advice from you as a fellow camper? I’ve been learning web development for about 6 months mainly focusing on javascript, react and nodejs backend. I’ve skipped many of the intermediate freecodecamp topics and went straight into backend web development and was able to complete the first 2 projects fairly easily (voting an bar social app). However, I’ve faced quite a lot of trouble when I tried incorporating new technologies for the other projects (graphql for book trading and websocks + d3 for charting application) I went through many tutorials over the course of 2 months and still couldn’t figure out certain aspects of the application such as authentication using graphql, etc. Should I have just stuck to what I know, REST, react, mongo and kept building till I gain greater expertise? Also at what point would I be ready for a job, do I just need to know the MERN stack or do I also need to dabble in JQuery, React Native, d3, graphql, etc?
You must be thrilled. Your hard work paid off. Do you know what kinds of things you’ll be building? Do you plan to try and learn anything new before you start?
