How I Became a Self-Taught Software Developer

hey friends welcome back to my channel today we are going to have a very candid conversation i would say about my journey as a self-taught developer my experience really how i became a self-taught developer and what i would recommend to you before we get into it though make sure to hit that subscribe button for more tech and coding related videos shout out to some of the subscribers here thank you for being amazing okay let's get started i wanted to sit down and have a really candid conversation with you because i feel like a lot of you um just like myself are going about the same path that i did where you are teaching yourself how to code had no prior experience had no schooling experience for coding and want to get a job not only a job but a really awesome job and make a lot of money and have this whole new career and it totally is possible now thanks to thanks to the internet and being able to take different courses online for free and really everything that is accessible through our fingertips now which is pretty amazing so i wanted to share with you my story and how i got to where i am now as a software developer and technical consultant at ibm and also of course a youtuber who talks about coding and tech and makes tutorials and all that stuff when i first i guess we gotta first go back to the beginning not the beginning but a ways back when i was graduating from high school i knew i wanted to do something that was hands-on that i felt like i was creating and building different things and also too that i felt like i didn't have a limit on how much i could make if i worked hard i thought i'm a really hard worker and one of the things for me is i didn't want it constantly working hard only to know i could achieve so much especially with income and that was something i was constantly looking for like what would be a good career path for me at the time like many of you i'm sure i didn't even really think of coding as a career path that i'd want to go down or even an option i don't even know if i really had thought about coding at all so i went to school for fashion and it was good it was great because i learned a lot about um you know i guess the fashion industry and also too i learned more than anything what i didn't want to do and what i mean by that is i loved it and i learned a lot but i knew this isn't something i wanted to do forever and then as many of you know and i won't go into detail about my whole story again and i'll link some videos down if you haven't seen them that i do go into more detail for them but i ended up moving to hong kong lived there for a year for some modeling and still was in the fashion industry which was really exciting and a lot of fun but when i came back and i knew i wanted to get some schooling and uh pursue a different industry it still was not coding i still did not know i wanted to get into coding so i went to school for graphic communications management and it was there that it was my last year i was exposed to coding and i fell in love with it i thought this is amazing it's a skill you can build whatever comes to mind it's like a superpower and you know you can work for a company make a lot of money but then you can also work for yourself and make a lot of money or do both not like it's just about money but just the freedom it brings for you even to work from anywhere was pretty cool so let's kind of dive in though now that you know a bit of my background as to how i became a self-taught developer my first thing i did was i started with the basics the very basics i didn't know even really about front end or back end or anything like that so if you know that you're you're doing better than i was i should start with html javascript and css well first html and css and then javascript i had a lot of trouble with javascript a lot someone coming from no tech background no coding background it was hard for me i struggled a lot and i questioned a lot why am i doing this but i kept on coming back to it because i knew once i had once i went across the bridge or pushed through to the other side of this learning curve i would be so happy i stuck with it and that's something i really want to highlight to you all because i get a ton of messages from people being like i want to learn coding or i am learning coding but i want to give up and my biggest piece of advice is be kind on yourself and take a step back but keep on going if it's something you're passionate about you will it will click and you will get there and you will be so happy you did not give up so i started with javascript really liked it took some i used different i used udemy a lot udemy youtube even w3schools i used quite a bit to understand the basics and i hit a roadblock though at a certain point where i knew that i needed some more more support with my learning from there i went to a coding bootcamp brain station and it was a great experience going to a boot camp and maybe some people would consider that not self-taught but i still think it's kind of in that realm because i was learning a ton every day and still teaching myself i had the support of the boot camp but you know it's a 10 week 12 week 10 week boot camp actually so it's really just such a blip in your coding journey but it was a great resource and support system that i needed but after i graduated from the coding bootcamp i still felt like i needed to continue to learn so after i learned javascript vanilla javascript i went to learning react react was super popular and it still is really popular but it was like in react's prime back then now i feel like vue is really popular as well and uh so i learned react struggled so hard with learning react once again thought i should just quit but i didn't thank goodness i didn't and once again if you are feeling that way just keep on going so once i learned react i thought this is all great and everything but i really want to dive into the back end and what it has to offer so from there i learned express and node and loved it like it was i still do i just think it's the best it's you get into a rhythm you get your music on you get coding and i don't know it just kind of transports you into your own kind of world and i just the back end side of things is is really fun for me and i really love it um so i found my sweet spot there it was about since the time it took me to learn code to getting a job i would say is about four four to five months but my first job was as a qa it was not as a developer but i knew when i did that that it would lead to a developer role because it was with a small startup and i just knew that this would would lead to a developer role so i took the qa job and continued to teach myself how to code and then from there i just pushed and pushed my managers to be like please let me let me pick up some coding tickets let me you know become a developer and they did and it was in php so once again i felt like i was starting from scratch because i didn't know php but i think throughout my entire coding journey and coding career one thing i've learned is be comfortable with being uncomfortable stick to your gut instincts if you feel like you should be doing something just keep on pushing forward but take breaks and be kind to yourself and the other biggest thing is you deserve to be there as much as everyone else and i think that's so important to remember because so many times i would think these people are so smart they're way smarter than i am i could never do that and it's a myth it's a total lie of course there are people who are smarter than other people but on average these people like you're working with they're not that much smarter than you or at all or you're probably smarter than them they just have more experience so i really wanted to highlight that because that really helped me overcome imposter syndrome with learning how to code is that if they can do it so can i if they can drive a car so can i if they can put on their pants so can i like what makes them special i can do it too and that really helped me by just staying focused and realizing if other people can do it well why can't i and from my startup days then i moved to i applied to um where i am now at ibm and it was some technical interviews some personal interviews it was really really great interview process but it was nerve-wracking the nerves i put on myself and once again went through that stage of being comfortable or learning to be comfortable with being uncomfortable i remember after one of my interviews i cried not because of how the interviewers were but just because of how nervous i was so yeah and now here i am ibm software developer technical consultant and who knows what will be next i guess the point of this video i'm really trying to hone in on is stick with your gut keep on pursuing what you are interested in and you will get there i just get so many messages of people who give up or decide that you know they can't pursue it anymore because they're not smart enough and these are all myths that you make in your head or society puts on us you can do whatever you want to do and i'm telling you this firsthand if i could get to where i am now you can too i promise you i'm sending you all so much love and encouragement on your journey and i want to be here to help you with any kind of aspects you need so leave in the comments other videos or questions you have that you want me to answer and as always i will do my best to do so i hope this video was valuable and supportive and helpful for you make sure to hit that subscribe button for more tech and coding related videos give this video a thumbs up and i will see you all soon thanks everyone

Channel: Tiff In Tech

Views: 9,409

Rating: 4.9725084 out of 5

Keywords: Self-Taught Software Developer, How I Became a Self-Taught Software Developer, Tiff In tech, TiffInTech, self-taught software developer, self taught programmer, self-taught programmer, learning to code, self taught web developer, self taught software engineer, teach yourself programming, software developer no degree, self taught software developer, how to code, how i became a developer, women in tech, self-taught software engineer, how to become a software engineer

Id: ahoTwtWeqfw

Length: 9min 54sec (594 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 05 2021