tl;dr
I want to get hired at colabel as a software developer within 6 months. This series is to document my progress over time, and if you want, feel free to follow along!
The decision
The plan has been made: I have decided to switch careers from being a manager at a global logistics company to becoming a full stack developer. I am making the attempt to get hired at colabel, founded by the two fellows @thilohuellmann and @gerokeil. These guys are fantastic and I just love the product they are building. They can afford to set a very high bar for new hires, meaning that not only do I need to buckle up but I will be working with really good software developers - if I can make it on the team.
The plan
What?
I want to become really good at web development with all bells and whistles and machine learning. Hence, there are a few things that I want to be comfortable with. Here is a not-yet-complete list:
Full stack (web) development
- Databases
- Building APIs
- Docker & Kubernetes
- Deployment
- Make it look ok with React & Material
Machine learning
- Bleeding edge of research (computer vision and NLP)
- Keras & Tensorflow
- Cloud deployment
How?
Full stack (web) development:
- Udacity Nanodegree
- Own projects, such as my website (please don't run any SQL injections yet 🤫)
- Free Code Camp
Machine Learning:
- Unpaid internship at colabel
- Read 1 research paper per day
- Kaggle
Also, since I have been sleeping under a rock for most of my life, I also want to become more active on selected social sites. Just recently I started using my dusty-since-creation Twitter account @_ajascha (the first two weeks have been surprisingly informative!) and I found this fabulous community here.
... and most importantly: routines! More to that in a future post, but it all comes down to (spoiler alert) Four disciplines of Execution.
When?
Planning is guessing but by the end of May, I want to be fully employed - that leaves me with 6 months and 5 days. That timeline is ambitious but with more time I would simply procrastinate more. When I read Austin Tackaberry's great article on "0 to job in 9 months", I thought that my plan must be doable. Plus, with fast-growing startups the opportunity window does not necessarily become bigger over time.
Disclaimer: I am not starting from zero
... but neither are you if you are already on DEV. I have a business degree and no formal technical education. My first Hello, world goes back about three years and I have been treating programming as a hobby for most of it. I am able to build websites with Django and Bulma (I love it!), deploy them and recently got into building (working) machine learning models. But to put things in perspective: Whenever I see HTML, CSS and JavaScript as a prerequisite for something, my mind takes a quick vacation. But that of course should change now in a hurry!
Why DEV?
I want to give back to the community of developers that has made all this possible. Not too long ago, I used to think of software development as an entirely frustrating experience for regular people like I am. But thanks to countless people who are devoting their time to build fabulous things, those days are over.
Perhaps Medium would have been the natural habitat for this. However, I think that such articles should be free to read. I used to be a fan of Medium but now I think they are exploiting their market dominance too much, hence the party venue has changed to DEV!
To finish things off, a note to self: Now get back out there and code!
Top comments (26)
You can do it! I did it in 7 months and some odd days while working at a tire shop and supporting my wife and 2 kids. You got this! If you need inspiration or to see how I did here's a shameless plug to my article “I Got My First Job Offer” by Chandler Baskins link.medium.com/yGilgg1pX1
I also took a full plunge into the journey that is becoming a full stack web dev. Lambda school was my choice and I am already loving the ride
May I ask, did you initiate that through Lambda school?
I did. I hesitated slightly because something that delivers quality with nothing up front seems too good to be true. But after a little research it seemed to be a model that made sense for me.
I’d always had an interest and near zero actual education (1 Java class nearly 10 years ago). Now I’m enjoying the rollercoaster of apprehension before starting a project, the moment when you hit a block, and the relief of overcoming it.
Awesome! And are you already working as a dev? Or are you taking the classes right now?
Currently I’m very early on in the program. We’re on holiday break at the moment but we’re in the middle of learning React.
Awesome post! This inspires me to start a 0 to 6 month journey because my 0 to 1 year journey clearly did not work out. I'm curious though, will you be studying full-time or studying while working full-time?
Thanks, I really appreciate it! I am working part-time for now but I have factored in other side projects. So focus is of the essence!
If you want, we can try a mastermind tandem. Just drop me a note if you like
I have so much Moody for creating some ideas but after I create my start project on the middle of the progress I feel like I'm losing my mood for the next chapter, can u told me how to avoid that thing?
And it’s the same for me! I find it hard to keep my motivation up after the honeymoon phase is over and the stupid package still won’t install on my machine. There’s no quick fix to it but I’ll talk about how I deal with this here soon!
Ill Waiting dude
That'sexactly were I'm and were i wish to go (not the exact company😅) would you be interested in starting a study group were we can share resources and progress, Good luck.
Sure, let's give it a shot! You can either connect with me here or Twitter and we figure things out from there
This was just the post I needed to see today,I am also self learning software engineering hopefully on.the path to becoming an Machine learning engineer.How do I reach you to get more info about the study group idea?I tried to message you on twitter but couldn't.My handle is @maxikambona
Great, this id my twitter handler @ffragalla
Well , this is the article I have been waiting for! , from last year.I started learning python., and I was aiming for back-end , then after some reading I decided to go for full stack , but know I'm studying MS and I got to know IoT in health-care field , and that's what I fell in love with , I want to go to full stack then machine learning , I hope you do well , unfortunately I have a full time job and I'm thinking of leaving because I couldn't get much time with it plus my studies . I hope you keep sharing your progress because it is inspiring. Thank you
I'm starting on a similar journey - just completed a four week html/css/js bootcamp in my spare time, will continue to work my full time job as I learn full stack web dev starting in Jan 2020. After that...who knows what the future holds for me?
Best of luck to you, Arne!
Same to you! Jan 2020 is still far away though, you could build a full project with what you’ve learned starting... now 😉💪🏼
I think you might want to set your sights on a backend developer role, as that seems to be the stack and skillset you've laid out. With that stack, I wouldn't hire you as a fullstack developer. I would expect more frontend and design ability. In reality, the fullstack moniker is almost unicorn-ish in nature. I started as a backend developer and have grown over 10 years to gain some semblance of fullstack, but that's a difficult title to live up to.
Backend is indeed the piece that excites me the most. Design I leave up to designers
Are you currently employed? How much time do you think you can dedicate to this "project" (please allow me to name it like this)? Between a job, family and other life obligations 6 months might be just a couple hundred hours in total
If you are referring to the 10,000 hour rule, don’t let that distract you from committing to program 1.5-2.0 hours each day and — more importantly maybe — get right back on track when you got distracted. I will be far from mastery by the end of 6 months but that’s not the point. For me, I was able to reduce my hours and still get by financially. That’s a luxury but it didn’t come without any cost either. Question some fundamental assumptions, it’s your life after all!
Feel free to get inspired by another Austin's 0 to 6 month journey too. I we not from music teacher to full stack. Best of luck on your journey!
That's great! Can you share how you did it? I hope the name is not the sole ingredient