Hello everyone,
I wanted to share my story in the hope that it could help others.
I am 31 years old and have an academic background in Community Psychology and Housing Studies. I have a BSc a MSc and a PgCert that I have completed in different countries (Italy, UK).
I am currently based in London.
After going for several managerial interview I realised that I did not like anymore my profession and I was looking for something that could make me feel passionate about what I do.
In my teens’ years I have been a professional e-gamer (CounterStrike 1.5) and I have been always really close to the tech world (building my own machine, etc), although without ever writing a single line of code.
At the end of September 2018, something clicked inside me, and I bought the John Duckett’s book ‘HTML & CSS’. After scrolling a couple pages I just dived into online tutorial, and so on and so forth (buying the standards Web Developer Bootcamp on Udemy).
After 3 weeks into HTML CSS and JS, I have seen a Software Developer position opening for the company I currently work for (public body) and I asked the Developer Manager for a meeting to have some insight regarding the work being done and how to progress as a starting developer.
She explained to me that the position was for a back-end Developer and he encouraged me to apply to gain experience as internal candidate (working in a totally different department).
I wasn’t sure of the stack as it included different technologies I never heard before (Ruby, RoR, C#, .NET, Angular) and I started learning Ruby whilst simultaneously applying for internship and (free) bootcamps which required passing Ruby challenges.
2 weeks later, and barely a month into coding, I had my first three interview. One for my current employer, one for a start-up looking for a Junior Dev to train, one for a coding bootcamp which provided internship and basic salary.
I went to the interview with my current company and they sat me in front of Visual Studio and C# and gave me a challenge to solve.
Needless to say, I had never seen VS and C# before that day, so it was a total disaster as I could not use Ruby on that machine to solve the challenge.
After 59 minutes of humiliation in front of that screen, I got to the second part which was a more standard interview with Q&A.
Three weeks later they emailed me to say that unfortunately I was unsuccessful (no surprise there).
I asked the Manager for a chat to get some feedback on my interview, and surprisingly, he said he was really impressed by my enthusiasm and that I clearly had skill which could be easily transferrable into the Developer job.
They offered me a 6 months contract to test me and see what I could learn.
8 weeks into my developer journey I landed a job as back-end Software Developer using C# and .NET.
I spent every second until my new employment to learn C# and .NET, and I must say, compared to the basic of front-end and JS, that felt like climbing a mountain, blindfolded and with both arms tied behind my back.
I am now two months into the job and I must say it’s really challenging to work with people with years of experience whilst I have to learn everything on the go, which includes different technologies and how the server-side works.
I have helped building a simple website which taught me a lot, and I am about to start writing APIs in .NET.
I am receiving great feedback around my passion and willingness to learn, and more important the fact that I do not wait for them to tell me what to do, but I take initiative and I can work independently when required.
I hope my story can encourage others to believe that the most important skills to get a job as Software Developer is not what you technologies do you ‘know’, but it’s a combination of your personal attitude, demonstrating passion for what you do, proving you are a team-player (and a person that people wouldn’t hate!) and that you can learn on your own if required.
Focus on learning the technologies but most importantly focus on how improving your personal skills.
I did got my first job 2 weeks ago, but it is all realted just to ting I was already learning - Javascript, PHP, data displaying in inteactive charts. They might be using React, but that needs to be decided in future by the managers. Fingers crossed I would go well for you