One Year After Graduating Flatiron School
Career switching complete ✅
I went to a coding bootcamp from November 2019 to March 2020 and graduated just in time for the global pandemic to hit — worst timing to be looking for a job.
Fast forward to March 2021, and I’m happily employed and loving my first job as a software engineer. How did I get here?
Bootcamps are very intense but well-structured. Your schedule is all planned for you, you just need to keep up and put in (a lot of) effort. You know what you need to do in order to make progress, and you’re too busy to think about what’ll happen after the bootcamp.
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After graduating however, things are the other way around. Suddenly you have zero structure and a ton of things you should be doing, with no clear idea what will move the needle.
Throw in a total chaos of the early pandemic, and you get the picture.
I wrote this blog post right after graduating and outlined strategies I was going to use to find that first job: ⬇
I mostly stuck to the daily structure that I set for myself, but with one important change. Between applying for jobs, learning algorithms, reaching out to people and working on my project, I was getting overwhelmed by all the things I should be doing. Too often I’d try to do everything at once, and end up not accomplishing anything.
In the end I designated Monday/Wednesday/Friday as my coding days, and Tuesday/Thursday as my applying for jobs/networking days. The weekend was for blogging and rest. This way I could focus all my attention on one thing, without worrying that it’d compromise other things. It worked out really well and I recommend trying to do something like that if you’re in a similar situation.
Flatiron School has Money Back Guarantee, that if you don’t find a job in 6 months, you’ll get your money back. Naturally, it comes with some terms and conditions. Every week, you should reach out to 8 people, make 5 commits to GitHub, and write 1 blog post. Obviously, not having to pay money can be a good incentive to keep up with these requirements, but they’re also very useful at what they’re designed to do — keep your momentum while looking for a job. Adhering to these weekly requirements was a good way to have more structure and keep myself accountable, so I officially declared my job search in June 2020.
Summer was spent networking, applying for jobs and practicing data structures and algorithms. No job search is without ups and downs and I had my share of them.
After failing a couple of technical interviews because I had a hard time with algorithms, I went back to study them and didn’t apply much to jobs for a while. Once I felt I got better, I went back to applying.
Not only you need to practice your technical skills, you need to make sure you’re visible and can be found.
You can be great at coding, but if you don’t have online presence, it’ll make things harder for you. All things being equal, would you hire somebody who has a social presence and active in the community, or somebody who’s not?
I took a hard look at my LinkedIn and revamped my profile. I wrote summary , asked for recommendations, passed assessments, added a ‘Featured’ section — did all the things you know you should do, but usually don’t get around to. And then I was active on LinkedIn every day — sharing my blog posts, sending messages to people, commenting on posts and applying for jobs.
I’m pretty sure that being active on LinkedIn increased me coming up in search results for recruiters. In the end, that’s how I found my job as a software engineer at Church Pension Group — a recruiter reached out to me.
Signing that first job offer was surreal. Suddenly I didn’t have to look for a job! Looking for a job defined my existence for the last few months, so without it I felt weird and didn’t know what to do.
While waiting for my job to start, I went back to study Rails and React, because that’s what I’d be using at work. I actually went back to Flatiron School’s online curriculum and started going through it from scratch. Not surprisingly, it’s gotten much easier since the first time I did it, and I was able to pick up some things I missed before.
Once I started my job, the hardest thing wasn’t coding, but getting to know all the products and systems at work. People were talking in abbreviations, and it was hard to follow their conversations. This is normal and it’ll soon pass. When you’re new (and even if you’re not), it’s okay to ask questions — nobody expects you to know everything right from the start.
Seeing the codebase of the app I’d be working on was OMG 😳. I was used to working with maybe a few components max, and seeing close to a hundred was a shock. It took a while to adjust and just be able to find your way in the app.
Back when I was a bootcamp student, I didn’t like looking at other people’s code. It was hard to follow, and many times it didn’t make sense to me. That’s why I was kind of afraid of working with existing codebase. I’m now realizing it was because most students’ code is badly structured and doesn’t adhere to the best practices.
When you look at code written by experienced developers, it’s (usually) self explanatory. Proper function/variable names, syntax etc, makes looking at code that much more pleasant. As a junior developer, rarely you need to code something unique. So it really helps to kind of walk around and see how it was implemented in other parts of the app. You can track down the flow and recreate the behavior.
6 months in, and I feel both comfortable and uncomfortable. I’ve learned a lot of things at my job and feel like part of the team, but also I’m still very much at the beginning of my journey in software engineering. The app that I’ve been working on since September just went to production and I couldn’t be more excited — it’ll be the first time my code goes to production! I feel like drinking champagne, and I’m sure we’d have a party if we were at the office. Talking about that, due to COVID-19, I still haven’t seen my coworkers IRL. That’s the reality of 2020–2021 — you work everyday together and you still haven’t met each other in person. I’m so looking forward to the first day in the office!
Final Thoughts:
Finding a job takes time — be in it for the long haul.
Networking may be hard at first, but the only way it’ll get easier is with practice. Don’t overthink what people may think of you, just reach out! Worst case scenario they don’t respond, best case — they’ll be helpful.
Don’t be afraid of interviewing and failing interviews, just think of it as practice. You only need one first job, and one day it’ll just click :)
If you’re a recent bootcamp graduate and would like to chat — add me on LinkedIn and let’s set up a coffee chat.
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