I Got Hired After Harvard’s CS50 | My Self Taught Software Developer Story

in this video I want to share with you my story and how I managed to learn how to code and then after that I managed to get hired for remote Tech job so for the past like 10 years I've been working as a video producer doing freelance work and about a year ago I decided that I wanted to switch careers now at the time I was 31 and going back to school for me wasn't really an option going to a boot camp was also not an option for me I set to continue working and I didn't exactly have the budget to go move to a different city to go to the boot camp so my only real option was to learn to code online so I did find an online bootcamp called microverse and they have like this entry requirement that everyone that wants to apply for the program has to do some pre-course work now these this pre-course work is done through the Owen project essentially it's just a website that teaches you how to code how it teaches you the basics of HTML CSS JavaScript so I started with that I actually ended up making a really nice updated landing page for one of my my side businesses and about two weeks into it I felt like I had learned a lot but I felt like the program wasn't really teaching me much and right around that time I found out about Harvard's cs50 they have an amazing course it's around 10 11 weeks they teach you everything from the fundamentals of computer science and how a computer works all the way up to building your full stack app and right around that time is actually uh New Year's and every January 1st cs50 publishes the new version of their course so I signed up for it right away so at the beginning I struggled I mean I really struggled some of the homeworks took me three full days to complete I was expecting maximum to spend six hours on homework but here I was spending upwards of 20 hours to complete a single homework and most of the lectures I had to watch twice so early on I realized that it is a ton of material and it is a ton of work to finish cs50 and I figured that you know I'm not at Harvard I don't really have to finish each week on time I can take as long as I want to finish it really it really took me about double the amount of time to finish the course than what the course syllabus says but that's what I had to do if I wanted to stay healthy and pass the course and not get burned down that's something I figured early on that I need a steady work life study schedule where I only devote two hours per day to the course the rest of the day I'm free to do all the other things that I have going on in my life that way I can control feeling overwhelmed and no matter what my focus was not making progress in the course my focus was just to show up for two hours a day I gave it my 100 best I could but after those two hours were due I would go on with my day and I started seeing like I was making progress you know and I was focusing on just showing up yet I was seeing some progress on coming through and I would say around week five so by week five I mean like 10 11 weeks on my end into the course I really started to feel like I was understanding and I started to feel like I was a computer scientist would you believe and so I decided maybe I should figure out if I can get a job with this course so I asked around and the main answer that I got was a resounding no you cannot get a job which just haven't taken one computer science course that's ridiculous and I'll tell you what ever since I was a child I have always felt like I have to do the opposite of what everyone else is doing I was always the kid that would always get in trouble for stuff I was always in the principal's office I was always doing things that the system didn't want me to do so with that spirit I said to myself I'm just gonna put together a CV and I'm gonna start looking for jobs obviously in the CV I didn't put that I was still taking the course I wrote that I had already finished the course I started applying to every single job I could find and only you know a month two three months later I start to hear back so by that time I had already finished the course and I was so surprised I could not believe that recruiters were interested in high hiring me it seemed ridiculous to me everybody was telling me no you can't get a job and here are literally four Recruiters on the same day asking me if they could have a zoom chat with me out of those four companies that I interviewed with one of them told me within the first five minutes of the interview no and I think it was mainly because they had a very specific way of working and they're looking for someone who's willing to commit to that workflow that they have I wouldn't have learned anything from that that I could take to my next job I would have basically had to stay with that company and grow within that company and it wasn't something that I could put in my portfolio it's hard for me to explain this video exactly what I'm referring to but there's a certain skill set that this company wanted their employee to have and so when the crew the recruiter asked me where do I see myself three five years from now my goals didn't match learning all these random workflows so they told me it's a no we're looking for a very specific weird kind of employee so it's a no okay so that was the first company I interviewed okay fine so I moved on went to the next Century for a different company and actually made it to the second round so I had my first round with the technical I insert maybe 50 of the questions correctly I didn't think they would ever call me back and behold they called me back a week later from HR they want to set up a zoom meeting I actually did not end up getting an offer from that company I don't think I did so well during that Zoom meeting I actually have a video on the channel here somewhere where I dissect this interview and explain why I think I didn't get that job and what I could have done better on my future interviews and I talk about the potential things that I said that you know cost me the job interview so if you're curious you can take a look there so the third company that I interviewed for actually made it through the third round so I had the first interview with HR and she seemed pretty happy with me she asked me a bunch of questions which I tried to answer with just minimal amount of talking and I think she really liked that and she sent me like a technical test to do which actually did it in like 30 minutes it was supposed to take a day and I did in 30 minutes it was very easy it was just like basically to implement some type of widget on a JavaScript website I mean something really simple shipping gave me the documentation so it was a matter of copying pasting in the correct Place could have not been easier and after that they sent me to speak to like the technical director who would have been my boss at that company and he really liked me he said you know this is great I'm so happy that you're answering other questions correctly so they you know moved me on to the next interview which was with like the head of HR and I'm not sure what happened over there let's just say that that company ghosted me but at that point the fact that HR is the one ghosting me and not the technical interviews means that the technical knowledge that I have is enough HR must have seen something in me that they weren't so comfortable with and that's why they didn't call me back but the technical people loved me all right so the fourth company that I interviewed on it was actually for a fully remote position which is great and so I had a couple of interviews with them and none of them were about anything technical they didn't ask me a single technical question before they sent me this email with a job offer for becoming their T project manager now I've looked this up and project management is usually a tier 3 position meaning that a guy usually spends a couple years in the tier one help desk then he moves up a couple years in tier two and eventually he makes it to tier three actually in the first company that I interview for the one with the weird workflow they said to me that the highest thing I could reach in their company was tier three and here I am getting offered a tier three position with no previous experience and with nothing more than cs50 in my CV it just goes on to show that companies are not so much looking for the technical you know if I was applying for senior developer of Facebook I get it they want me to have a computer science degree they probably want me to have some type of experience they want me to know a bunch of Frameworks they want me to compete in a bunch of different code challenges I get it but for the 95 of the other jobs in the tech industry you do not need to be a computer code whiz in order to get hired for a computer voting job the main thing that companies are looking for is the overall package not just the technicals obviously the technicals are important but they're really looking for the communication skills they're looking for you know is this guy reliable is it going to show up on time if is he trustworthy can we can we trust them to deliver is this person open to criticism is this person a healthy person or is he a toxic person I think this is the main thing that companies are looking for as long as you have the bass and technical stuff they're willing to teach you the rest but what they can't teach you is how to be a decent human being

Channel: Kombina

Views: 49,863

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Id: ZN7X3wD0-jg

Length: 8min 34sec (514 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 22 2022