How I finish my non-cs degree with a developer job
April 30, 2021 — that was the day I wrote my last ever exam from my undergraduate education career. May 22, 2021 — that was the day I signed my contract for my first ever programming job. You would think I graduated with a computer science or computer engineering degree but nope! I studied materials engineering and have been entirely self-taught with any programming knowledge that I know of today. Really, I have only started to seriously teach myself web development starting just about one year ago. The process of teaching myself and applying for programming jobs has been what seems like an insurmountable task and so, in this blog, I will be recounting what I have done to reach this point. Hopefully to serve as an inspiration to those of you who are in a similar situation to me a year ago.
Ok maybe I lied
Technically, I wasn’t just magically be able to program applications in a year. My interests in programming have been implanted in me five years ago as a first-year when I took an introductory Python class. For some reason, I really enjoyed that class and was able to apply what I have learned to write little scripts for the odd laboratory jobs I had throughout my undergraduate studies. So yeah, I did have some experience in programming and you might also say that being in an engineering program is also really helpful in how I was able to transition so quickly and I would say that you are probably right lol. I know how often I compare myself to other people more successful than I am and I guess the point here is that if you are feeling bad comparing yourself to me — don’t — because I was in quite a lucky position to make my transition. Just go at your own pace.
The internship that makes me take the leap to a new field
So in my program, every student is able to take a year-long internship at the end of their third year of studies. I got my placement in a non-tech R&D role which quickly makes me realize that I do not want to spend the rest of my time in a lab — which was where my career was heading. The reasons are not worth going into right now as there is too much to go on but I wanted out. Luckily, an ironic stroke of luck presented itself as a global pandemic.
Now, I know that COVID was an especially hard time for many of you out there but I was able to turn my work into a software project because of the lockdown. Basically, I saw an opportunity where I could add some automation to our workflow so I proposed to work on this project. That turned out to be a quite complex desktop application at the end of the 2 months that I was working on it and I was hooked — I was convinced that programming is what I wanted to pursue as a career.
The year of self-taught
So the end of my internship marked the beginning of my one-year self-taught web development journey. What did I start with? Well, I wasn’t exactly sure so I did what everyone would have done:
Tutorials tutorials tutorials.
I watched every tutorial that I could find on programming and I ended up with web development because it seemed to be the easiest to get into. So yeah, from that point on I watched and follow a bunch of tutorials on HTML, CSS, and js — happy to provide recommendations in the comment section if anyone is interested. Then I got started on the React tutorials which quickly segments into what I did next.
Projects project projects
My very first self-directed project was an extension of the tic-tac-toe tutorial on the official React doc. I extended it to be a multiplayer game and gave it a make-over.
Then my second big project was a Spotify clone. There is nothing that makes you learn faster than trying to copy what the greats have done. By the time I finished this project, the summer was starting to end and the final year of school was starting.
Although I came into my final year of school with a sense of dread (because I didn’t really care about the subject I’m taking anymore), this year was crucial for me to get my current job. The first crucial piece is the capstone project in which I was lucky enough to lead a front-end development portion. I wrote about that project here. The capstone project also led me to join a design team in which I was working on a full Angular dashboard used to control a Hyperloop pod. I believe these two items were instrumental on my resume which really helps during my job search.
I began my job search about halfway through my school year and was able to get about 10–15 interviews. There were times where I spent two whole days on the weekend just to complete a take-home assessment only to hear rejection from the company. Lesson learned — never do a take-home assessment that takes over 1 hour. I also had an interview with Amazon which I was able to get after their usual online assessment. As you would expect, there were holes in my data structure and algorithm knowledge so I did not pass that interview. A company even rescinded a verbal offer during this period. It was a tough time along with finishing a seven-course semester but all that matter was that final offer in the end.
What’s next
Even though my year of self-taught has ended, the learning never ends for me. I’m excited to learn more about working with other developers and working on gigantic applications at my new job. I will also of course be still working on my own coding projects in my free time just because I find it fun and rewarding. If you are interested in seeing some of the stuff I have made and will be making I will be posting more about them in the future here on Medium.
