Congratulations! After all your hard work and perseverance through the highs and lows of your coding journey, you finally got a job offer.
We want to hear all about it
Hey yāall,
I guess Iāll go first? I actually havenāt been on codecademy in quite some time, but I began my journey here back in Late January/early February.
Look ā Met with my CEO today to walk him through my first portfolio project
Iām really excited to share that my CEO reached out today to offer me a junior dev working on full projects that other devs do not have time to do and a pay increase (unexpected).
Disclaimer is that I went through 50% of codecademyās fullstack course and then broke off and started indepently learning from other sources, my own projects, and documentation etc. Codecademy did give me the foundation to do that and if I have any recommendation is to use all resources available to you and the courses more like a guide into where you should look into next. I donāt know if Iāll get shamed here, but I donāt think you should expect to really have a full grasp after taking a full course unless youāre doing your own research outside of codecademy.
I think towards the end you can see I started learning just want I wanted to learn.
How long have you been studying for?
8 months give or take. One thing Iāll say is I was and still am putting about 8 hours a day after my job dedicated to learning, because I find it fun and enjoyable. Weekends sometimes were all learning and coding.
What was your support system? (friends, mentors, communities)
My girlfriend is supportive enough to allow me to do the ^ above haha!
Also my CEO and dev team who kept track of my progress offering advice and support.
Did you prepare a portfolio?
Not really. Most of my projects were more internal helpers for my company, but I did recently create this CLI
Hi all,
Although I have always had an interest in technology, like many people I thought the subject was unapproachable and a career hard to find without years of experience. Technology as a subject always seemed to be very broad, and it was difficult to see how someone could make a contribution without having detailed knowledge in numerous different areas. At university I studied music, and after I graduated, I found it hard to find meaningful employment. I worked as a kitchen porter, a commis chef, a barman, a property manager, a private piano tutor and volunteered as a secondary school teaching assistant.
The covid-19 outbreak hit the UK and we went into our first lockdown. This led to a high in youth unemployment and as I knew it was likely that I was going to be unemployed for some time, I decided to start learning how to program with the hope to find employment post-Covid.
During this time, I used Codecademy for a few hours every day. The platform provided clear learning paths that assumed no prior knowledge and each lesson seemed to develop on what was taught before. Articles, videos, and a practical learning environment lessoned the steep learning curve, and after each module, not only did I understand new concepts, but felt comfortable applying them in different scenarios. Codecademy seemed to have built an interactive eco-system that allowed my learning to thrive.
After completing 3 or 4 Codecademy certifications, I contacted the Princeās Trust who put me in touch with Generation - a non-profit organisation that aimed to train young people and launch lasting careers. They were very impressed with the work I had completed on Codecademy and placed me on an AWS re/Start intensive bootcamp for cloud engineering. Throughout the three-month course, I continued to use Codecademy to further develop my knowledge in software development.
Shortly after completing the course, I was interviewed by Resonate and successfully gained a position as a junior software developer. Again, the Codecademy certifications played an important part in my interview, and they seemed to be quite impressed with what I had studied.
Resonate as a company developed out of the research division of British Rail. The UKās train network is a collection of different technologies (legacy and new) working together to build a safe and efficient service in transportation. Resonateās role is to develop and deliver cutting edge technology that improves this service. My new role focuses on the back-end development of these applications.
Firstly, there is a skills gap in the UK with regards to technology and there is lots of work especially in Cloud engineering, Data engineering, and Frond & Back end development. As technology moves quickly, there is a feeling that everyone within the industry is learning, and therefore companies seem to be happy to employ if you show them you have a genuine interest. Codecademy, personal projects, and attending webinars help build this picture.
The career paths on Codecademy are exceptionally good. They contain much of the content from the languageās paths, but also encourage the student to work on their own local development environment by providing further reading, videos, and articles. Once the path has been completed, not only have you gained considerable knowledge and a certification, but you will have built personal projects that you can showcase to others. These paths also encourage teamwork and acts as a really good introduction to the tech community.
Some concepts take a little more time to understand than others. Working through a path slowly and adding to your knowledge a little each day is good. I found I worked better after I understood that concepts that seem difficult in the moment only require more time, and with a little perseverance the reward you get makes it worth it.
I like working on projects that matter, I like making a difference to the lives of those around me, and I like the freedom to try something new. Technology is an incredible industry to work in, and Codecademy helped me gain employment.
Congrats @web2463521456 ! This is amazing, and congrats on your role at Resonate!
Thanks for sharing your journey and your advice for other learners.
So I got a job in IT Japan a few months ago!
Mostly generic backend. Lots of python command line apps. When I started applying to jobs I started to target core skills that came up alot in job ads:
-sql ā moshās mysql course
-html (with codecademy)
-mvc websites(googled āruby on rails tutorialā and followed the first one)
-before I got hired it was about 8 months
-My wife and her family
-The tokyo python society(sounds very formal, itās a bunch of people meeting up and going through famous books on python chapter by chapter)
Mostly itās not so good, but it showed I could code.
Iām working mainly as project manager, which is a bit similar to by previous job but still letās me do some programming.
I can work in the same city as my wife and the company has much better work life balance than my previous job. Itās a permanent contract which is gives me a feeling of security and is good if we need to get a mortgage or something like that in future.
Just started as a PHP/MySQL Development Intern this february! So happy!
Itās just a start of something wonderful!
Starting my web development internship from tomorrow!!!
Helloo : )
Maybe I didnāt get a job offer but this was a real carousel of events for me. I have been coding for a year now and it has been quite rough. I started with python but quickly lost motivation for a whole month after learning for 2 weeks because I was just a newbie and didnāt know a lot about coding. Then I had a group project at school and I decided not to draw a website template but instead I wanted to build a real oneā¦ that ended horribly. Project was due in one week and I could build a basic website but it wasnāt responsive and you could see a beginner did the work. After that I took interest in an other online course and kept on building website with basic HTML and CSS. Then in the summer of 2021 I started learning Javascript. Then autumn started and school started againā¦ and I had an internship as an IT technician. I didnāt have a lot of work so I coded a basic website that generated tests from a massive array of objects ( around 6000 lines ). I learned what cookies are and made a great website for a beginner. I made a good impression at the company I was working at and not a month later I got a job offer as an IT technician but I turned it down because it wasnāt what I wanted. I wanted to fix my code not to fix computers. After 2 hours my ( I donāt know how to call him - intern teacher?) called me and asked if Iām open, there is an internship position available for you as a web developer (he noticed I coded a lot through my internship). Now I have contacted the web developer department and met the employee that will be leading me through my another internshipā¦ nice guy.
I will be keeping updates on this post if anyone is interested 
My journey as a web developer began in 2020, as a 29 year old. At the time I was working for a print publication in Northen Virginia as a graphic designer and advertising accounts manager.
Like many others, I was furloughed when the pandemic hit and found myself unemployed and stuck at home for the foreseeable future. Not one to sit around idle, I decided I would try to learn how to code. I wasnāt expecting to make a career out of it, and to be honest, I didnāt expect to enjoy it very much. I thought coding and web development would be too dry and technical for my tastes. But not long after I saw that first āHello, worldā appear on my screen, I realized that this was what I wanted to do with the rest of my life.
My learning began with the HTML/CSS/Javascript books by Jon Duckett and the web development courses on this site as well as freeCodeCamp.org. I then enrolled in a year-long web development career studies program at my local community college. Once that was complete, I focused on building several full-stack projects along with a portfolio site to showcase them. (Note: If youāre at the point where youāre building a portfolio, I highly recommend https://www.frontendmentor.io/ as a resource.) All in all, I probably spent about 40 hours a week dedicated to learning, for about one and a half years.
With a finished portfolio under my belt, I set my sights on finding a job. Expecting this to be the most difficult part of my journey, I prepared myself for painful interviews and the inevitable disappointments. But not even three weeks later, I found myself with a full-time job as a Front End Developer, building and maintaining career sites for companies around the world. All that hard work finally paid off
Three months into my new career, I am so grateful to every person and tool that has helped me along my way. Especially Codecademy, which showed me how fun coding can be. Choosing to learn how to code is without a doubt the best decision I ever made. Good luck to all of you out there who are just starting your own journey!
Iām new here and looking to expand my knowledge base. Iām also from Northern Virginia. Could you elaborate about enrolling in the year-long web development career studies program at your local community college? Iād love to follow your footsteps if you believe the program was helpful!
I have been working as a front-end developer for about a year now. I went through a program in the US called LaunchCode. Itās a free program based in Kansas City, St. Louis and Philadelphia. They do not charge for the classes, but make their money on the back end by placing students in apprenticeships (along with significant donor and NGO support).
I had always been interested in coding and dabbled in various languages through the years but COVID is what finally convinced me to take the leap. We learned HTML, CSS, and JS for front-end, then Angular, Java, and SQL to round out the full stack. We had a mix of lectures, small group sessions, and homework, and finished with a group portfolio project primarily built on Java (using the Springboot and Thymeleaf frameworks), MySQL, and Bootstrap.
The small group sessions were probably the most impactful for really learning difficult concepts. Coding projects are best done in groups, and learning should be too!
Now Iām here to continue learning with the Full-Stack Engineer path. I want to build up my back end skills to transition in that direction moving forward.