The easiest way to get your first job as a software developer (The Course)
Course Info
This course includes 1 attempt.
It may come as a surprise to you, but many professional programmers are self-taught. And many of them have been able to reach fairly high positions in their career. Therefore, it is not only realistic to get into the software development profession without any formal programming qualifications, but it’s also possible to become successful within this industry.
Software development industry is probably the industry with the least amount of bureaucracy. Once you have some professional experience under your belt, very few companies would care what formal education you have. As long as you are able to demonstrate your programming skills during the recruitment process, you will be able to get a job as a software developer.
And there are many reasons why you may want to be a programmer. Smart technology is everywhere and its amount is only increasing; therefore software developers are in high demand and the demand for them is not going to go down any time soon. This makes a programmer one of the most highly paid professions.
If getting a job as a programmer is something you are interested in, this course will guide you through the process. It will cover the following topics:
- Pros and cons of a software development career
- Misconceptions about being a programmer
- Which programming languages and technologies to learn first
- What skills you will need besides the programming languages
- What are the best strategies for getting your first job
- How to choose a good bootcamp
Course Material
- Introduction
- Welcome
- About me
- How to find me
- How realistic is it to become a self-taught programmer
- Statistics on self-taught programmers
- The benefits of programming career
- Why programming salaries are good
- Why you will get regular and significant pay rises
- Why being self-taught is not a stigma in the industry
- Why the demand for programming jobs will remain high
- There are many niches to choose from
- Why changing job frequently is a widely accepted norm
- You can work remotely
- Why flexible hours are norm in the industry
- Your job will be protected against lockdowns and crises
- Summary
- Further reading
- Why programming career is not for everyone
- You’ll have to be working it total silence
- You’ll be working in a loud and distracting environment
- You will need a good ability to focus
- A lot of work is repetitive and boring
- Having to work with incomplete information and requirements
- Some of your colleagues will be annoyingly “religious”
- You will need to be able to take criticism well
- You will have to keep updating you knowledge
- You will need to have good negotiation skills to earn well
- You may encounter toxic sales people
- For truly big salaries, forget about personal time
- Summary
- Further reading
- Strategies for getting your first job
- The most effective way of getting the first job
- Case study: how I got my first job as a programmer
- Case study: from law firm to software development
- Case study: from tech support to programming
- How to get an office job without special qualifications
- Summary
- Further reading
- What skills are the most important to learn
- How to choose your first programming language
- Why you shouldn’t learn either C or C++ as your first language
- Why Python is a probably the best choice
- Why knowing the syntax is not enough
- Which best practices are the most important
- Why you should not neglect soft skills
- How to choose online tutorials
- Summary
- Further reading
- Misconceptions about programming
- Why you don’t have to be good at maths
- Why algorithms and data structures are not critical
- Why algorithms and data structures will still be helpful to know
- Summary
- Further reading
- How to choose a coding bootcamp
- What is coding bootcamp and how it will help you
- What kind of bootcamps to avoid
- Signs of a good bootcamp
- Summary
- Further reading
- Wrapping up
- You did it!
- What to do next
- Keeping in touch
Instructors
I am a senior software engineer working for Microsoft. I have over a decade of professional experience and am a past recipient of the Microsoft MVP award. I primarily specialize in .NET and Microsoft stack. I am enthusiastic about creating well-crafted software that fully meets business needs.
Throughout my career, I have successfully developed software of various types and various levels of complexity in multiple industries. This includes a passenger information management system for a railway, distributed smart clusters of IoT devices, e-commerce systems, financial transaction processing systems, and more. I have also successfully led and mentored teams of software developers.
I enjoy sharing my knowledge with the community. This motivates me to mentor aspiring developers and create educational content, which includes blog posts, technical books, and online courses. I regularly write about software development on my personal website, scientificprogrammer.net.
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