Hello everyone,
Warning, I’m dyslexic so be prepared for horrible grammar, later on today I will edit post for grammer and spelling but I want to get this out there before I go to work –
Hey guys, I got my first job and I know I had many questions over the past few months that I would have loved to know so I hope this helps, and if you have any more just ask.
Background: I am from NY, however, I’m currently living in Poland because my fiancée got into medical school in Krakow, we moved in 8 months ago(start of the school year). Back in the US I worked as a PB at chase (almost 3 years, moved up from teller, first real job), and then In Poland, I worked for a French pharmaceutical consultancy as a business development specialist. (I can speak Polish, I cant read or write). While the job was comfortable and played very well I was not interested and I knew I would not be able to work in the same field back in the US without a degree in public health. I am also a student on my last semester working on my BBA (online).
Learning Programming: I started to learn to programme about 5 months ago. I did about 5 hours a day every day for the past 5 months except for 1 week when I went to Japan. So I did about 750h of studying. (more if you count podcasts and other material about programming but not exactly programming). I do feel like I was very inefficient in how I learned just because of the amount of noise out there. I also spent way more money then I had to, let me explain. I purchased a lot of udemy courses (I don’t regret this, they are great and have a money back guarantee), however I paid 1k on an online Bootcamp >.<, I regret it a lot because I quit after a bit because it was outdated and the material was basic, but it did come with a mentor for 10 months and I still use that feture of the boot camp a lot, but im sure I culd have found a mentor for free, and if I wuld not be able to find one you can always pay by the hour and it wuld have still been much cheeper.
I used FCC, but I used it as a way to test myself only. If you got bored of reading or got tired of my horrible dyslexic and dysgraphic grammar Movies series world then I’ll just cut to the chase, YES if you can do all of the FCC content without much trouble then you are more then capable of getting a job. (just also learn SASS, GIT, and NPM).
If I had to start all over I would do the following courses from udemy + FCC.
Step 1:
The Web Developer Bootcamp by Colt Steele, OR The Complete Web Developer in 2018: Zero to Mastery by Andrei Neagoie. / Why? lean a bit about everything in one place, you will have a good understanding of whats possible, and don’t believe them when they say its the only course you will ever need (unless you a genius).
/ Don’t do both like I did pick just one, I prefer Colt because I think he does a better job at explaining concepts, but Andrei’s course is more “modern”.
Step 2:
Build Responsive Real World Websites with HTML5 and CSS3, Jonas Schmedtmann
/ Why? Deep dive into CSS + HTML with a large project, I learned a lot from this, very valuable and it fortifies what you learned in step 1
Step 3:
The Complete JavaScript Course 2018: Build Real Projects!, Jonas Schmedtmann
/ Why? JavaScript deep dive with two big JS projects goes over ES6 very well + the old way of doing JS
(By now you should be 2-3 months in and you should be very comfortable with the basics of CSS HTML + JS but its time to get better)
Step 4:
Advanced CSS and Sass: Flexbox, Grid, Animations and More!, Jonas Schmedtmann
/ Why? After all that JS you would have probably forgotten a bit of CSS, so you need a refresher + you need to learn about all the things that you don’t know about like flexbox, grid, SASS, all needed for that first job. 3 nice big projects included.
Step 5:
start looking for a job! with the knowledge from the courses above you will be more than ready to get a job, don’t forget to keep doing personal projects to get better, and to keep everything fresh.
Yes, no step on framework because this will be highly dependent on the jobs where you live, they might want to react, view, or angular but with your solid foundation picking up a framework will be super easy. Know the content from the above courses well and you will have a solid foundation that will take you very far, from this point on you just add things on a need to know basis.
The Job: For those that are curious I got a job as a Front End Javascript Developer, meaning that I will mostly be working on the logic of web apps (the place that I got my job at is a software house that makes web apps and not “static landing pages”, therefore I won’t get to use CSS as much as I would like to but I will get experienced in the logical side of things. I will be working with Angular and React, and I got the job without knowing either framework. This happened because the manager was very impressed with my understanding of vanilla JS, and he realized that I can easily pick up the frameworks with what I know. I start in 2 weeks but I’m already learning angular to hit the ground running when I start.
Remember always keep learning.
