Time to train to become employable as SD

Career Advice
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Hi. I have recently been looking at training in software development. I came across FCC and found lots of useful information… especially the posts about been never to old to learn ( 42 in 3 months). I looked at your training curriculum and added up all the modules. I worked it out to be roughly 3000 hours of learning…which to complete in a year would be 57.7 hours of studying per week. As I work full time this is not do able for me. Would you say I would need to complete all these modules to be eligible for a trainee developer? ( I also find the idea of a company giving me a trainee job at 42 quite hard to comprehend) any help/ advice on this would be greatly appreciated. Thanks :blush:

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  • The 3000 hours is a very rough estimate. Don’t put too much stock in it.
  • How much time each lesson takes you will vary by person and circumstance. Whether you’ll be able to make some intuitive leaps (or leaps based off of external resources) or need to walk through every lesson will vary by person and circumstance.
  • If you have no experience writing code, then trying to become job-ready in a year is extremely ambitious . It would require a lot of luck and a lot of work.
  • There isn’t really such a thing as a “trainee developer”. (Only Sith deal in absolutes: I’m sure that there are companies that do something like this, it’s not part of the industry as a whole.) Obviously, there are developers who are at the beginning of their career and they aren’t expected to have much experience, but they are expected to already have fairly comprehensive education/training (formal or informal).
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Hi @AJ1979!

Welcome to the forum!

I started about 6 months ago. Just doing FCC will not be enough. I think it is a good start but more of a guide.

You will also need to have a portfolio of projects that aren’t class projects.

Also, age gets brought up alot in the is forum. But there are plenty of people who have gotten jobs in the their 30’s, 40’s and 50’s

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Yeah, I agree with what has been said, but a few additional thoughts…

3000 hours of learning

As pointed out, this is just an estimate. Personally, I think it is very high, especially in the early sections. But some people will sail through some sections and struggle in others.

Would you say I would need to complete all these modules to be eligible for a trainee developer?

As pointed out, that’s not quite a thing, but in the spirit of the question… Some (extremely lucky) people get hired while only halfway through the FCC materials. Some finish FCC and spend another year or two looking for work. It comes down to the job market where you are, your aptitude, your portfolio, how well you interview, your professional network, and just plain luck. It is unpredictable.

I would say that you shouldn’t even consider trying for anything until you’re done with the first 3 certificates. The first 6 would be better.

But then comes the task of getting the first job, which is extremely hard. My first job took 200 applications and 10 interviews over 6 months. My recent job search (after two years of a solid dev job) took 10 applications and 2 interviews over less than a month. That first job is very hard to get.

My advice is to learn and build and build and learn. Just code a little every day. Follow the FCC path, take little sidetrips as needed to get additional information, and build things. When you’re done with FCC, keep building things and learning new libraries.

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Thanks for replying to my message peeps. Lots of interesting stuff there. I’m going to crack on with FCC and go from there. Thanks again. Merry Christmas :christmas_tree::snowman: