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I dropped out of college, was
in debt, working 60 hours a week,
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hated my job,
and most importantly, I felt stuck.
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This is the
story of how I learned how to code
within four months, and I got a job.
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I did it with no computer science
degree or a coding BootCamp
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I am going to explain
exactly what I learned, how I got
a job, and how much that job paid.
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Let's go.
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Before
I got into tech, I was working
a lot of dead end sales jobs,
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because I dropped
out of community college and
I didn't really have any other skills.
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I didn't like the
idea of always having to hop from
job to job If I didn't like something.
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I wanted something with a little
bit more career mobility long term.
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I didn't
even really know what coding was.
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I just
knew that the tech industry was,
let's say, a great environment for
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$180 grand now
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$200 ish
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$250,000
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$400,000 annually
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growth... Yeah.
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By the way, I'm not knocking sales.
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I think sales
is a really important skill to learn.
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I just needed a change, and it
really just wasn't for me long term.
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And I wanted to gain the ability
to build something of my own.
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The idea of building
something from zero to one
seemed like a superpower to me.
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Day one,
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I just went on
Google and I typed in how to code.
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That's when I found a site called
FreeCodeCamp, and I started
to learn about web development.
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I quickly learned about HTML, CSS,
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and I learned
about my first real programming
language called JavaScript.
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There's
a bunch of different programming
languages that you could learn,
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but I personally
chose JavaScript because
I wanted to build web apps.
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Even
major companies like Uber and
Airbnb use it, and there's a massive
demand for it in the job market.
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By using FreeCodeCamp, I started
to learn the basics of coding.
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I learned things like variables,
loops, objects, and functions.
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But even after
doing the tutorials, I didn't really
feel like I could apply to anything.
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And I still didn't
even know how to do something
as basic as building a website.
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And I realized that I learned how to
code, not exactly how to program.
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I was writing
code to solve logic problems,
but I didn't know how to program,
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which is using
the code to build something useful.
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At this point, though, already
I was starting to love the journey.
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I really liked problem solving,
and I could see myself doing
something like this long term.
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So
I did what any sane person would
do and I quit my job and I moved
to Korea to minimize my expenses.
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And I decided to learn full time.
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Learning full time
was a lot harder than I thought.
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I've
actually never studied anything
this complicated or tough before,
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and I was quickly starting
to realize that I didn't really
know how to study at this pace.
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I would sit in front of my computer
and hours and hours would go by.
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That was when I went
online, I typed in how to learn.
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And
I found a course called "Learning
how to Learn" by Barbara Oakley.
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This course was life changing.
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My two main
takeaways were one, it taught me
how to learn in space segments,
A technique called Pomodoros.
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And the course
taught me that I needed to create
a dedicated space for learning.
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So I joined a Coworking
space, so I could focus better.
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Now,
armed with new knowledge, I got
back to studying. And it worked.
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Here's
what a normal day looked like.
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08:00 a.m wake up.
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8:30, Head to the train station.
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09:00
a.m. Arrive at the coworking space.
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9:15, Coffee Journaling
reviewing the curriculum.
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9:30 to 12:30,
I would have my first study session,
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where I did 30
minutes increments of Pomodoros.
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From 12:30
to 1:30, I would eat lunch and take a
small break, then back to studying.
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From
02:00 p.m to 6:30, it was more 30
minutes increments of Pomodoros
until I was ready to head out.
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From 6:30 to 7:30,
I would gym three times a week,
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And then 8:30
to 9:00, I would eat dinner with
my grandma, then help her clean.
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This was my schedule
for six days a week, no exceptions.
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The next part of FreeCodeCamp
was a lot more challenging.
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Front end projects.
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They essentially give you a list
of projects that you have to build
using HTML, CSS and JavaScript.
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To me, this felt like
a massive jump because I never
actually built anything before.
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I felt stuck at this stage
until I found a YouTube channel
of this guy named Stephen
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who would stream himself
building these projects line by line.
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By copying him
and recreating what he was doing,
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I was able to
use that experience and build the
next couple of projects on my own.
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I also found a great resource
called watchandcode.com,
where you watch and code.
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By following along once again
and modeling others, the concepts
really started to take hold,
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and I was really starting
to understand what I was doing,
not just solving a math problem.
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In exactly one month, I ended
up earning my FreeCodeCamp
Front End Developer certificate.
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I was
learning a lot, but I never actually
built anything full stack before.
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Something with a
front end or an interface, the thing
that you see within the browser.
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A database where all
the information lives, essentially,
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and a server
which handles and manipulates
all the data in the back end
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by taking
in requests from the front end.
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So I still felt like an
imposter and not a real developer.
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You're not an intellectual.
You're a fake and a fraud.
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So to
become a programmer, I decided
to build my first full stack project.
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Remember
Stephen with a YouTube channel?
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I reached out to him
to get his assistance to help me
build my first full stack web app,
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we decided
to meet three times a week.
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Here's what we did.
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We picked one
major overarching project which
will teach me the basics of CRUD,
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which
is Create, read, update and delete.
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These are the foundations
for any web application.
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I decided to clone Pinterest.
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I honestly don't think
I would have gotten a job without
this next part, so pay attention.
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I asked Stephen
to treat me like a real junior
developer working at a company.
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We implemented a project
management tool called Jira.
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We used
Jira to compartmentalize the entire
project and write the requirements
of exactly what I'd be building.
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This taught
me how to estimate my work
and plan how to build an entire
web app from zero to launch.
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We also set
the project up on GitHub, which
is a version control application.
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This taught me how to develop
different branches for when
I was working on certain features,
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and I could learn how to control
different versions of the code.
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Most tech companies use some
version of the two applications
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because being a developer isn't
just about knowing how to code.
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It's about knowing
how to work collaboratively
with other people as well.
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Stephen grilled me on
our pair of programming sessions.
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He was
very strict about me keeping the
deadlines and the estimates that
I originally wrote out for myself.
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He would constantly question
why I was doing what I was doing.
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And
he even taught me the concept
of DRY, just Don't Repeat Yourself,
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or essentially
just making reusable code.
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I had to learn how
to build by Googling for answers
and using sites like Stack Overflow.
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And he
would leave me a lot of comments
on things that I needed to change.
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So I learned
how to debug my code on my own.
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This made
me feel like I was a real developer.
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at this time, I supplemented
my learning journey with
Udemy courses on React and Node
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because these
were the two frameworks that
I chose to build my Pinterest clone.
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As a result of building
my first full stack project, I ended
up learning how to do things like
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how to design a database, build
APIs, set up Auth, and eventually
push the app to a cloud server.
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These
are all things I would have never
learned by just doing tutorials.
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And
in around two months, I finished
my first full-stack web app.
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I remember when I finished the
app, I felt like a real programmer.
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That's when reality
set in and I realized I'm still broke.
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I haven't made a single
penny in over a couple of months,
and I still needed to find a job.
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It was time
to see if everything that I learned
was actually worth anything.
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First,
I defined the job that I wanted.
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I wanted to be remote. And most
importantly, I wanted to work for
a small to medium sized company,
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because I hate working
in a corporate environment.
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I found
all the jobs that fit my parameters
on sites like weworkremotly.com
and remoteok.io
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And instead
of just applying to these jobs,
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I found
the contact information of the
hiring managers and developers
who worked at the company,
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and I messaged
them to introduce myself.
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I explained
exactly what I had learned up until
this point,what I was looking for.
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I even included
the link to my GitHub so they could
see the projects that I had built.
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Most importantly,
I included an offer that
I know that they couldn't refuse.
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I offered to work for free.
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And I understand
guys, not everyone can afford to do
this, but I had originally estimated
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that this was going to take
me around four months anyways.
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And I had
another month of time that I could
essentially dedicate to learning.
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I knew all I had to do
was get my foot into a company,I
could essentially learn there
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and then prove
my worth over time to leverage
that into a real job long term.
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Overall, I found around
22 jobs I thought fit the parameters
of what I was looking for.
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I got
around six responses. From those
responses, I got four interviews.
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And out
of the four interviews, I ended up
getting three legitimate job offers.
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Even
though I had offered to work for
free, after the technical interviews,
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the employers thought that I had
enough skills at that point where I
was worth hiring for a full time job.
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I ended up choosing the company
with the best opportunity to learn,
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and that
also happened to have the best
compensation package as well.
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My first salary was
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$50,000 a year,
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and
then after my probationary period,
I was making $65,000 a year.
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My benefits
kicked in like health and dental.
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But the
biggest perk for me was that I got
to work remotely the entire time as
long as I worked the US time zone.
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I'm
not saying that you'll be an expert
developer if you follow this plan.
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I'm just sharing what I did to
learn just enough to land me a job,
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as
most of the progress that I've had
as a developer all came on the job.
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No luck here, just focused effort.
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Now, I've been
working in tech for over a decade,
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and let me
be the first to tell you that nobody
cares about your credentials.
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Learning
how to code was mainly two things
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learning how to solve problems,
and two, persisting until you find
the answer that you're looking for.
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If you're interested in seeing
us learn more cool stuff, make
sure to subscribe to the channel.
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And also, if you want
to see me apply these principles
to something other than coding,
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like something
artistic, click on this video.
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Where we're going to put it?
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Here?
