Start Your Online Profile

As the industry grows and more jobs are needing to be filled, more and more companies are looking outside University computer science programs for talent. Having never finished college, this was probably the major reason why I wanted to transition into the tech industry. But how do recruiters and hiring managers evaluate your skills without a degree? The answer is simple, through your profile.

Your profile serves as your personal landing page and living resume. While your Facebook page and Linkedin profile all have their place, your profile will be the place where you showcase the work you’ve done and projects you’ve completed. In fact many hiring managers won’t even call you back if there’s no link to a profile page, or your profile doesn’t look often visited. If you’ve built games, or apps put them here. If you’ve freelanced and built sites for clients link to them here. This will be the single most important aspect of your career; maintaining your profile and keeping it up to date.

Starting Point: You may have heard of Wordpress, which is an online Content Management System or CMS. Wordpress and similar sites allow you to build basic websites and blogs without doing the heavy coding. Through Wordpress’ GUI, all you have to do is manage upload content (images, videos, text, etc) and use their templates to format it. As a developer, programmer, or engineer your ultimate goal should be to build your profile page from scratch, but for now you can use a simple wordpress site to get up and running.

Goal: Understand CMS like Wordpress and how they are used to build simple websites and blog pages.

Challenge: Choose a CMS that suits your goals and set up a simple profile to host your work.

Online Resources

Whether you’re completely self-taught noob or seasoned programmer, an advantage the tech industry has is that there lives an expansive and bustling online community. Medium for example serves as the tech world’s blog where people from every angle of the industry come to share their experience and words of wisdom. Whether it be thoughts on Internet regulation to React tutorials, Medium has it all and all you have to do is search. Medium also has a partnership program where you can write posts and publish them on the Medium site, tapping into their audience.

StackOverflow is another great community, where users meet to answer live coding problems. At any point during your tutorials, formal classes if you take them, or even on the job, StackOverflow exists purely to leverage the collective hive mind of developers to help you with any solution you may be stuck on.

Similar to StackOverflow Reddit has thriving communities from general programming (r/learnprogramming) to more language specific communities (r/javascript)(r/React). These forums are indispensable, especially if you’re one to burn the midnight oil; there is usually always someone who can look over your code and help you out. Don’t be shy, ASK QUESTIONS!

Starting Point: Medium, StackOverflow, Reddit

Goal: Understand the various communities and resources available to you that can provide assistance and advice

Challenge: Join one of the three communities described and make a post!

Self-Taught vs. Bootcamp vs. University

In America we’ve been conditioned to believe that professions, especially high paying ones (doctors, lawyers, etc) required years of advanced schooling and high level professional connections. While this is somewhat true, times are indeed changing. As top tech firms like Google, Amazon, and Facebook are looking outside of the traditional talent pipelines, more opportunities are emerging for driven self starters.

Teaching yourself to code has its pros and cons in comparison to traditional university computer science degree. The most obvious pro of course is cost. Teaching yourself to code also is more accessible than going to college for a lot of people. You can also learn at a pace more suitable to your individual lifestyle. While teaching yourself to code is cheaper than a degree program, you miss out on the vast resources and network offered from a university program. While a University program may be faster paced and not as accessible, having an “illustrious educational institution” to validate your knowledge can be advantageous when it comes to the job search.

Guided learning through bootcamps and online coding schools can offer a good balance between self-teaching and university, oftentimes at a fraction of the cost. There are numerous online coding bootcamps who offer claims that you can become a (enter language) developer in “X” amount of weeks/months. BE WARY of these programs. Although there are some really good bootcamp programs, do your due diligence and pay close attention to alumni reviews and hiring rates.

Recently there have been a number of 9 - 12 month coding fellowships who offer “no money down” tuition agreements. One popular program, Lambda School, based out of San Francisco promises no tuition payments until after you graduate, get hired and earn $50K or more. I have personal experience with Lambda School and will be doing a full review series in the coming months.

Starting Point: Lambda School classifies themselves as more of a fellowship program rather than a bootcamp as their programs range from 9-12 months. They offer numerous classes from Web Development to Data Science to iOS/Android development; all classes are fully online and they offer both full time and part time schedules.

Flatiron School is one of the country’s top coding bootcamps. With campuses located around the country and overseas, as well as online programs, Flatiron operates more as coding specific college than a usual bootcamp. Every year CourseReport.com reviews the top coding bootcamps, check out their 2019-2020 rankings to find the best fit for you.

Goal: Research each avenue to see which path is best for you. You may start out self-taught, but as you advance into more complex concepts you may feel like guided instruction may be helpful. DO NOT BE DISCOURAGED! Everyone’s journey is different and there is no right or wrong way to achieve your goal.

Challenge: Completing any of these programs takes immense amounts of focus, drive, and commitment. You may be ready to enroll in a program and you may not. For this challenge, pick a program that you feel is a good fit and make a plan to enroll. Your plan can be 3 months, 6 months, or even a year out, but making a plan to get there is half the battle

Conclusion

Learning to code is a journey with many different facets to consider. Despite the common image of some anti-social kid staying up all night in front of a computer screen in his parent’s basement, often portrayed by the media, coding is not some anti social activity reserved for savant wiz kids. Even if you’re self-taught, coding doesn’t have to be a lonely, solitary journey. There are numerous avenues to get started and endless resources to help you along the way. It’s easy to feel overwhelmed when first starting out as you have no clue what’s worth your time and what isn’t , but stick to what reaches you on your level of understanding. Avoid the trap of basing your experience around advice making bold claims (“10 Ways to Make You A Developer in 3 Months!”). Be patient, work hard, and leave no stone unturned. Good Luck!