How To Get Controls Experience Engineer Reddit

How I Went from Newbie to Software Engineer in 9 Months While Working Full Time

In this post, I'll share how I went from zero(ish) to a six-figure software engineering task offer in nine months while working full time and existence self-taught.

Whenever I would start reading a success story, I would immediately look to discover the author's groundwork, hoping it would match mine. I never found someone who had the aforementioned groundwork every bit I did, and almost likely mine won't match yours exactly.

All the same, I promise that my story inspires others and acts equally a valuable data bespeak that can be added to your success story dataset.

Total Disclosure

I took a Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) course in high school (nine years ago). In my freshman engineering course (seven years ago), I learned some C, Python, Matlab, and Labview. I graduated from a skilful academy with a chemical applied science caste and a proficient GPA (three years ago). I hadn't done whatever programming outside of school, in loftier schoolhouse or college, until I decided I wanted to larn last year.

Afterwards college, I got a job as a Process Engineer at a refinery. I worked there until I changed careers into Software Engineering.

Why I wanted to change careers

I enjoyed solving technical problems, just I knew I wanted to become into the business/startup world at some point. I always kept the thought of an MBA in the back of my heed, but every time I looked at the price tag of the top schools, my involvement waned.

On May 27th, 2017 I found myself googling about MBAs once more, and somehow I stumbled upon software engineering. It seemed like a perfect fit.

Software engineers are in increasing demand, salaries are great, and it's the perfect industry from which to get into the startup world without needing a ton of initial capital. All you demand is a computer, and your opportunities are limitless (kind of).

In no other technology discipline tin you lot but take an idea, get-go edifice it, evidence it to users, and iterate with niggling majuscule and low barrier to entry. In chemical engineering, you essentially need a running found or a lot of money to blueprint a plant if you had an thought for a new production.

I had heard of people quitting their jobs and attending a bootcamp, but the more I read nearly it online, the more I realized that you can totally larn information technology all on your own if you are committed and focused.

You might argue that you lot are losing out on the networking and career advice provided by a bootcamp. This can be true, merely I was fortunate in that I was living in the Bay Area which allowed me to nourish several meetups, so I networked that way.

Besides, the worst instance was that I'd realize that I couldn't practice it on my own, and then I would quit my job to attend a bootcamp.

The Goal

1*KZkc4nIrFnwol9D3OggP3A — Photo by Robert Baker on Unsplash

You need to have a goal. Especially if you are trying to larn while working full-time. It is easy to let your learning drag on and on if you don't have whatsoever external pressure pushing you lot. So you need to create internal pressure. Your goal should be elementary and quantitative. Y'all should do enough research to come upwardly with a reasonable goal. Mine was the post-obit:

Get a software engineering job within i year with the same or improve bacon than I am making correct now.

The Plan

1*e7O7A5rM79ng6b8Dc3EbEg — Photo by Glenn Carstens-Peters on Unsplash

One time you have a goal, you need a plan to help you lot get there. This is where y'all swallow as many success stories as you lot can. None of them will friction match your exact situation, but you can have some advice from each one. I developed (and iterated on) my plan using resources such as the learnprogramming subreddit, the freeCodeCamp forum, and Medium.

On May 27, 2017 I decided I was going to brand the coding plunge, and I dove in caput commencement. That twenty-four hours I decided to beginning putting in no more forty hours per week at my job, and then that I had time to code after work and on the weekends. Luckily for you, I did a pretty good task of documenting my progress.

My programme, through many iterations, ended upward looking something like this:

Take an Intro to CS class to become a solid base understanding of core CS concepts
Follow freeCodeCamp until I tin can build portfolio-level full stack web apps on my ain
Refactor to clean up the lawmaking, add testing, focus on advanced concepts
Contribute to open source
Prepare for job interviews

To starting time, my program was simple. At the time, I thought I was going to follow Google'south Technical Guide, so I started with their recommended introductory class, Udacity CS101.

Calendar month 0 - Udacity CS101, Harvard CS50

The high of making this big conclusion gave me a ton of free energy. I would offset coding as before long equally I got home from piece of work and wouldn't end until I went to bed. And and then again all weekend. Udacity CS101 tracked completion percentage, which was a big motivator for me. I logged my completion per centum every solar day afterwards coding. I finished the first 75% in 10 days. The terminal 25% was heavy in recursion, and information technology was a bit tougher for me. All in all, it took me 20 days to cease Udacity CS101.

While I was taking Udacity CS101, I had started reading the learnprogramming subreddit quite heavily. I read that it was of import for self-taught developers looking to make a career alter to exist active online. I decided to make new Twitter, Reddit, Stack Overflow, Medium, and Quora accounts using my full name, so that I could build up an online presence.

Also, I decided to stop reading distracting media similar Instagram, Facebook, and non-programming subreddits. I would only check my telephone for programming-related news and posts. This was crucial in making sure that I was finding out about the all-time learning paths and learning resources. It was because of this that I plant out nearly Harvard CS50 on edX.

I was originally content with just doing one intro course, only anybody seemed to recommend Harvard CS50, so I decided to dive into that next. CS students at other schools had taken this course and said they learned more than in CS50 than a year or two at their university studying CS. The full general consensus was that the form was difficult but worth it. By the end of Month 0, I had completed the outset v lectures and homework assignments.

Month 1 - Harvard CS50, Linux, 1st Meetup, freeCodeCamp

I completed CS50 about halfway into the calendar month. I'm non going to comment too much on my experience with CS50, because I wrote an in-depth post nigh my feel here.

TLDR: It's a great course, I highly recommend information technology. David Malan is an first-class lecturer, and there are a ton of resources to help you go through it. Y'all start in C, motility on to Python, and then cease with web development. It is very dense, and there is a lot of material, just I call back it is well worth information technology.

After CS50, I decided to prepare my XPS 15 to dual boot Windows and Ubuntu. That was a frustrating weekend. I messed up my partitions and near bricked my laptop. I was shut to chucking my laptop and getting a new one.

I slowly weaned myself off of Windows and eventually was solely using Ubuntu. I wanted to force myself to get comfy with the command line which I think worked to some degree, merely I nonetheless have a long means to go.

I started 100 days of code to make sure I stayed focused and coded every day. It is important to document your progress. If you are making progress every solar day, it won't seem like much merely when you look back a month or several months, yous will realize that you have actually made quite a bit of progress which motivates you to keep going.

I knew that networking would make or intermission me, so I mustered up the courage to get to my first coding meetup. I had never gone to any meetup let alone a coding meetup. I was and so nervous that after driving there, parking, and walking to the door, I nearly turned effectually and went home.

It helped that it was the outset meetup for the group. I chop-chop realized that there was no reason to be nervous. No one knew each other, no one was judgmental, and everyone was eager to learn. This was the beginning of a meetup-spree. I concluded up attending over 50 meetups in 9 months.

I'm glad that I started going to meetups early. Most people simply started to attend meetups when they were looking for a job, but at that betoken information technology is about also tardily. There are so many reasons to offset early. To name a few:

Developing relationships takes a long time. Starting early on means that you take connections who can vouch for yous when looking for a job afterward
Talking about programming with strangers is a great way to prepare for interviews
You tin learn new frameworks, tools, and learning resources from people who are alee of you. This can influence your hereafter learning plan.

At that place was some uncertainty at this time in my coding journeying. This was nigh when I needed to decide what kind of software developer I wanted to be.

Ultimately, I chose spider web evolution because it seemed like there was high demand and also a lot of online resource. Once I had that figured out, I needed to effigy out what to do next. Some people recommended that at this stage I should think nigh web apps I wanted to build and then become going. Some people recommended The Odin Project or freeCodeCamp.

The guy that was running the weekly meetup I was attending knew Ruby and wanted to do projects with Scarlet. This was a big reason why I made the decision to go all in on The Odin Project.

And so two days subsequently I ditched that idea.

That is i of the downsides of going the self-taught road. One minute you think you know what path y'all should take, only so the next twenty-four hour period you wonder if that was the right move.

I read that Ruby was falling out of favor, and I proved this by searching for Ruby vs JavaScript jobs, and then I ended up starting freeCodeCamp. The one thing that bothered me most freeCodeCamp was that they came up with the project ideas, and so every camper does the same projects. This concerned me at starting time considering I wanted to stand out to recruiters. However, I concluded up loving freeCodeCamp, and now I highly recommend it. For more than details on my feel and recommendations regarding freeCodeCamp, check out my writeup here.

Calendar month 2 — YDKJS, freeCodeCamp Front end End, React

I started reading You Don't Know JavaScript, because everyone recommended it to supplement freeCodeCamp. I had to re-read several sections as it is pretty dense, but information technology'south a perfect resources to learn lexical telescopic, closures, promises, and all parts of JavaScript that yous hear virtually and desire to learn just never do considering they seem difficult.

I finished the forepart-end department of freeCodeCamp. The checklist format and estimated completion fourth dimension helped motivate me to terminate rapidly. I was also itching to move on to the side by side section and learn React. However, this besides meant that my projects had minimal styling. I did whatever it took to fulfill the user stories and naught more.

In retrospect, maybe I should accept focused on making the projects more appealing. Perhaps, this would have helped me learn CSS more deeply.

The next footstep was learning React, and I was pretty pumped.

I had heard so much about it, and I was set to fit in with the cool kids. However, I was a little hesitant given the licensing bug at the time. I'm really glad that is no longer an outcome. Learning React was difficult for me. I wasn't aware of any adept tutorials then (but it seems like there are a ton at present).

I tried reading the docs and post-obit along with Facebook'southward Tic-Tac-Toe tutorial, but I didn't quite empathize all of information technology. I was told if that wasn't working for me, and so it meant I didn't understand JavaScript plenty. So then I went dorsum to reading You Don't Know JavaScript, but once more that was too dense for me.

Month iii - freeCodeCamp React, CodeClub, Starting freeCodeCamp Back End

Ultimately, I only decided I would work my fashion through the freeCodeCamp React projects to come across how it went. That code was ugly, but it did help me empathize React a fiddling better.

That meetup I had been attending weekly decided that they were going to build projects with full stack JavaScript instead of Ruby, and they decided that the first project would be to build a website for the meetup group, CodeClub.Social.

I developed cards using React and Meetup API allowing the user to sign up for the next 3 meetups from our website. It was a trivial difficult for me to take a quick interruption from freeCodeCamp to do this, only it was an opportunity I couldn't pass upward. I was happy to be working on a projection with a small-scale group of people. It besides helped me learn Git and Github.

Earlier the month was over, I started working on the dorsum terminate section of freeCodeCamp.

Calendar month 4 - Finished freeCodeCamp Back Terminate, Yeggle

I worked through all of the API projects in freeCodeCamp, but I started deviating from freeCodeCamp at the Image Search Abstraction Layer projection.

I was itching to make full stack web applications, and then as soon as I saw the title of this project, I had an idea for my own project. I would brand a node app that would store random imgur URLs in a database, and then make a front end end that would output a user-specified number of those random images. What everyone says is true: you work harder and have more than success when you lot are working on a project that was your own thought.

One time I got it to piece of work, I was very proud of myself. It was ugly and clunky, but it worked.

Every bit I was working through freeCodeCamp, I was learning about what projects would be within my capabilities. I was running regularly at the fourth dimension, and so I would come with ideas on my runs and write them down when I got abode. That manner I would accept a list of project ideas when I was ready.

I finally felt prepare to showtime making my own useful and polished full-stack web apps to share with users and put on my portfolio. I was and then ready to go started.

When looking for a new eating house, I ever establish myself opening Yelp to check reviews, and so opening Maps to check their reviews. What if I made an app that compared both next?

And so I fabricated Yeggle. I used Node/Express/React along with the Google Maps and Yelp APIs. There were a couple obstacles I didn't think I would be able to overcome, but in the stop I finished and I was very proud of my app. Then I posted it to Reddit, and no one cared. That was a bit of a bummer, but I didn't let it become me down.

Month 5 - StockIT

I didn't get quite as much done this month, as I started it off with a two calendar week holiday to Nihon and Thailand!

Only I did start and complete my side by side project. I kept reading about how hard it was to go a job equally a self-taught developer, so I idea I needed to do something unique. I remembered a game where a Dow Jones stock graph started trending, and you had one opportunity to buy and one opportunity to sell, and the goal was to beat the market place. The purpose of the game was to bear witness you how difficult it was to beat out the market.

My idea was to brand a game like to that, but instead of the market, you lot would be playing against a motorcar learning algorithm. And then I created StockIT.

I took a video tutorial on Pandas and Scikit Learn that covered multiple machine learning techniques. I originally wanted to do some cool deep learning techniques, but I realized that took massive datasets and more time than I wanted to spend.

Instead, I stuck to a simple linear regression model. I thought that would exist the hard part, but information technology wasn't. Getting D3 to jive with React was the hard role. Both libraries wanted to control the DOM. There were another libraries that helped to join the ii, but I felt they were as well bloated. I ended up using D3 to generate the SVGs and React to handle the DOM which worked out quite well for me.

This time when I shared it with Reddit, everyone loved it!

Turns out, just similar VCs, redditors are all virtually that machine learning. All the love from Reddit was a big confidence boost. People were playing my game and enjoying it!

Calendar month 6 - jobSort(), Job Hunt Prep

Afterward StockIT, I rolled correct into my next personal project. I wanted to make a job lath that aggregated the smaller tech-focused task listing websites such equally Stack Overflow, Github, and Hacker News. To add my ain unique spin to information technology, I decided to have it sort based on the technologies the user wanted in a job and how desperately they wanted each of them.

For example, let's say I was looking for a job that was looking for someone who knew JavaScript, React, and/or Python, and I actually wanted to piece of work with JavaScript and React but I didn't care and so much about Python. And so I could give JavaScript a three, React a iii, and maybe Python a 1. The listings would then sort accordingly.

I ran into various obstacles with this project and had to change course a couple times, but I ended upwardly with a product I was happy with. My concluding tech stack was React/Node/Express/MySQL. I posted the project to the cscareerquestions subreddit and got 650 views earlier it was taken down because they don't allow personal projects.

The "terminal" production is here, and if you lot're interested in knowing more about my struggles and refactors, cheque out my mail hither.

Because of my issues, jobSort() took upwards a decent portion of the month. I ended upward getting coffee with a friend I had met at my offset meetup, and he advised me to start applying for jobs now. I read all over the place that anybody says they waited too long to use. Also, whenever I saw a post asking when to apply, the top comment was ever "now."

In my caput, I was going to work my way through my structured plan to build upwardly my portfolio with personal projects, and then piece of work on open source contributions, and and then set for interviews, and finally outset applying to jobs. This friend convinced me to ditch that program and start applying. And so this calendar month I made a portfolio and a resume. The post-obit month I would first applying.

Month vii - Testing, Job Hunting

This month I focused on touching up my projects and applying to jobs. I also wanted to learn testing and Redux.

I added flexbox to CodeClub.Social to make information technology responsive. I improved the mobile UX on jobSort(). I added testing to jobSort() with mocha/chai/enzyme which was hard to prepare, easy to become started, and then difficult to get 100% coverage.

By the end of the month, I had practical to 63 jobs. I viewed this as a self-assessment. Was my portfolio/resume good plenty? If so, what did I need to work on to set for interviews? At first, I practical with Hacker News: Who is Hiring, and Indeed.

On Hacker News, I used jobSort() to determine which listings to utilise for. On Indeed, I tried non-software companies to see if I could fifty-fifty get a phone call or an interview anywhere.

At first, I was applying apace and not personalizing my resume/encompass letter of the alphabet. Then, I decided to personalize my cover letter and resume, and then try to send an email to someone from the company. This method was clearly amend than the shotgun arroyo.

I received five calls that month — two from recruiting companies and three from software companies that included:

a contracting DevOps/testing office at a dotcom company
a serial B food analytics company, and
a fairly large and successful startup that was recently purchased by a major corporation

I made it by the HR screen in ii of these, merely none of them yielded an onsite interview. I was pretty happy with the 3 calls, and I learned a lot from them.

Everyone mentioned online that junior developers aren't expected to know that much from the kickoff, they simply demand to exist passionate and excited to acquire. So I thought, easy. I am passionate and excited to learn. What I learned from these calls, however, was that nobody was looking for a junior developer. They wait you to know what you're doing from twenty-four hours 1.

These calls taught me that I needed to

be good plenty to add together value from twenty-four hours ane
be confident enough to convince them that I tin can add value from 24-hour interval one

Month 8 - Dark Shift, Redux, Open up Source, Onsite Interview

I started this month working the night shift for a 40 day stretch at my full time job - six days a calendar week, 12 hours a twenty-four hour period, 5PM to 5AM. Ugh.

I knew I wouldn't be able to get as much done this month, but I had a goal and I wanted to run into it, and so I couldn't take a month off.

I refactored jobSort to use Redux which was surprisingly not as difficult equally I thought it would be. I listened to a lot of podcasts about information technology and read blogposts about information technology, and it never quite made sense to me until I started using information technology.

I actually like the flow of data with Redux. It's interesting now seeing people complain nearly Redux. I don't think I'g qualified to spout off my opinions strongly, merely I exercise similar the reducer pattern.

This was supposed to be the month of open source for me. I was going to make my first open source contribution, and it would be a great contribution to a fantastic library. I was going to contribute to React!

Anybody said it was a difficult codebase to read let alone contribute to. Simply I needed to stand out, I needed to be unique. I knew that my contribution wouldn't exist significant, simply I still wanted to do it nonetheless.

I would first by reading the docs all the style through and then pouring through the codebase. Watch every issue, every PR. Reading through the React docs in full was a great exercise, and I'm glad I did it. But I quickly realized that the issue with contributing to React is that at that place just aren't that many "adept starting time issues," and they get snatched up quickly.

At one of the meetups I attended, Anthony Ng recommended that I try out Downshift, an autocomplete library by Kent C. Dodds. This was a gamechanger. It was right in my wheelhouse. The correct difficulty, right corporeality of bug to assist with, not as well many collaborators, super helpful maintainer, make clean well-tested code. On elevation of all that, information technology was a perfect solution to some issues I was having with my jobSort() awarding.

About halfway through the calendar month, I received an e-mail from i of the companies I practical to in the previous calendar month. They set up up an initial telephone screen, and then a technical phone screen. The technologies they were looking for were exactly what I had learned - React, Redux, and D3. I mostly just talked about my projects and why I made sure decisions. Later on this, they asked me to come onsite for an interview. My first onsite interview!

I hadn't prepared for interviews at all, and so I went into it with the expectation that I wouldn't go the job, but I would gain valuable interviewing experience. I also was running on three hours of slumber since I was all the same working the nighttime shift which didn't help. Luckily, the technical portion wasn't whiteboarding, but a one-hour pair programming session. Information technology was a fairly straightforward claiming, but I was very nervous.

At kickoff, I was worried about making sure I knew everything without looking it up. When I realized that I wasn't going to finish the challenge, I realized that I needed to end worrying what the interviewer idea of me and only google/stack overflow to find answers. I didn't stop up finishing, and I thought I failed miserably.

Since I thought I failed the pair programming, I felt relaxed for the residual of the interview. Ultimately, I left the interview with my chin up. Worst case I got some valuable interviewing feel, and best instance I got my first job offer.

Month nine - Job Offer

I concluded up receiving my first job offer nine months and 7 days after that start solar day when I decided I was going to dive head first into programming with the intent of changing careers. I felt confident given that I received an offer after my outset onsite interview, just at the aforementioned time, if I didn't take the offer, what if this was the but offering I would receive for several months? I ended upwards taking the offer, and I am happy with my decision. I wanted to get paid to code!

Communication

Upwards to this point, I take mostly shared my story with some communication sprinkled in. Chances are if yous're reading this, you either are thinking well-nigh changing careers or are in the centre of learning to lawmaking with the intent of changing careers. I hope that the communication below will help you develop a program or stick with your electric current plan and attain your goal.

Find out what motivates you and use it to your reward. For me, it was checklists, documenting my progress, and interacting with various programming communities. If yous are not motivated to reach your goal, then null else matters considering you won't finish.
Make goals and meet them. I would argue that you lot should have monthly goals and maybe even daily goals. Monthly goals to make sure you are on rails to meet your principal goal, and daily goals to make sure that you really make daily progress. One strategy that worked for me was to make my daily goals the night before. That style, you can't do unproductive work all 24-hour interval and feel like yous fabricated progress when y'all actually didn't. It forces you to compare your daily accomplishments with your daily goals.
Go to meetups style before you think you are prepare. Going to meetups can feel scary, but as I mentioned above. But, in general everyone is dainty and willing to help. You might find people that aren't interested in talking with you, merely they are the minority and no one volition exist judgmental. Also, everyone loves to give communication (like I'm doing correct at present).
Contribute to open source way earlier you think yous are set. When you first kickoff programming, Github seems like this scary identify that you lot never want to get to. It is really very welcoming to beginners and is a dandy place to see expert code and get your own lawmaking reviewed. If you lot're however not convinced, cheque out my post, Why you should contribute to open source correct now.
Commencement applying way before you call up you are ready. This one was tough for me because I thought I was different. I thought I didn't need to test the market to get a feel for what to work on. I idea I would know when I would be set up to apply. I'm telling you correct at present. You volition non know when to apply. Then you might equally well start at present. Yous shouldn't go crazy and apply to 300 companies earlier you learn for loops. Only you should know that the best fashion to know what yous demand to larn is by applying and testing the market place.

I promise this post has been useful to you lot in your coding journey. If you are interested in meeting with me for advice on your career switch, please fill out this brief survey.

Now get back out there and code!

Learn to lawmaking for free. freeCodeCamp'due south open up source curriculum has helped more 40,000 people get jobs as developers. Get started