My Journey from IT Support to Self-Taught Web Developer

what's going on youtube welcome to another video so today i am going to be talking about my personal journey from going from a i.t support specialist all the way over to a self-taught web developer it's been a year now roughly just a little bit over a year since i started my journey to becoming a web dev but i actually have been introduced to coding prior to that i've always like played around with like php when i was in middle school i knew a little bit of html and css before i actually stuck with it but believe it or not i actually went on a long like year year and a half hiatus of coding i was always interested in it but i never could get committed and then finally and i think it was september of 2019 is when i finally said okay i gotta commit to this thing so let's bring it all the way back to where like my it support career started so in the year 2018 january-ish i decided that i want to go to a computer store to kind of figure out what i wanted to do and make money while i'm doing it so i said you know bring my passion for for computers and repairing stuff over to an actual computer store so in january of 2018 i actually decided to join a local computer store here in california called central computers only found in the north bay so you're not going to find that anywhere else really like i said started in january so i started as a sales rep i was working the floor you know doing all the walking the floor helping customers out and you know asking if they had questions giving them advice or answers and then you know selling product and trying to move inventory and things like that i quickly moved kind of up that ladder and made it to where i was doing like bigger roles so i was making some posters i was doing a lot more like inventory checks and doing transfer stuff so it was it was something like that where it was very very just like low-key and mundane tasks it definitely was hard work and it was like cumbersome at times but it wasn't what i wanted to be doing we had a back area where you would actually go in there and repair computers you know like there were test benches i wanted to be in the back doing the dirty work fixing computers building computers specifically building computers and that was what i was okay at so i wanted to go do that and like get better so eventually over the couple months i worked my way into the back and started becoming a tech that's when i started getting into the weeds of real real i.t where we were dealing with linux machines building machines for actual corporate companies and doing all that stuff and that's where i started to get more ingrained in that space a year passes by and it's now around january february of 2019 that's when things started to change so we actually had a customer that i had good connections with i always talked with him when he came in and he actually ended up saying that he needed somebody to come on to his team he was a contractor he owned his own consulting company and he needed someone to come on to take on a client that he had and he had he didn't have a second body pretty much he asked me if i wanted to i said absolutely i would love to move on and go into the actual it support route so i signed on with him as an independent contractor and worked for a hit one of his clients in an actual enterprise environment and did it support there that started at the end of february beginning of march of 2019 and that's when i started to really like learn okay this is how enterprises work this is like a real cubicle nine to five job where i had to stay in an office and you know do that whole thing there at first this was great like for that first half of 2019 it was awesome i was making better money wasn't working like pretty close to minimum wage anymore i mean for my age at that time i was what i was 22 at the time and you know it was it was good it was literally a year ago now that i think about it it's pretty much a year ago and again making good money first half of the year was ecstatic not working for a store anymore dealing with customers that was dealing with actual employees and fixing their computers and doing that kind of stuff learning things that were completely out of my scope at first to now knowing like things like networking how to do routing hardware repairs on laptops doing the software onboarding new employees and kind of things like that so i was learning a lot of new things midway through the year it was starting to get stagnant you know it was a lot of repeat scenarios a lot of repeat situations where i was just kind of getting bored i wasn't learning anything new and being an independent contractor in a corporate company you only have certain amount of rights because they don't actually give you all the internal tools that you need sometimes to get the job done or you actually can't access certain systems because you're an independent contractor so they can't actually give you certain access for like i guess maybe legal reasons but more so for privacy's sake just in case you know they don't bring me back on after the year so in california there's a there's a law after a year you either have to sign on your independent contractors or you have to terminate them if they work full-time if they work part-time it's okay i guess that's the like that's the loophole in that so yeah i didn't have access to everything so i couldn't really do much so i had to hand off a lot of the tasks over to other my team members who were actual full-time employees of this client company so again halfway through the year was starting to get a little bored and that's where i started to pick up coding again you know something came up on my instagram personal instagram where i saw people like aral or andres where they were posting their setup photos and actually going through the journey of learning how to code specifically for andres and i was actually following fidol as well if you guys don't know them i will have their instagrams linked down below but they actually inspired me to learn code again and actually pursue it this time and commit 100 to it and this was around september august september-ish is when i started to actually like commit to this thing september of 2019 is when i officially started my instagram account if you guys don't follow me on instagram then you should definitely check it out down below in the description but that's when i started it that's when i started to just say hey i need to document my journey i need to take this one day at a time i need to keep myself accountable and what better way to do it than to try to grow a following on instagram and post every single day talking about what i'm learning how i'm doing it like what my progress is and what concepts that i'm actually focusing on right now i treated instagram sort of like a blog but also to kind of assert my creativeness in terms of photography because photography was something i was always into so i try to use that medium of instagram as it's very like obviously primarily photo based and use that to document my journey and then treat the captions sort of like my blog if you will so documenting my journey my day to day i was posting literally every single day on instagram when i say every day i literally mean every day like i was at work posting i would take sundays to take photos in bulk so that i had something ready through monday through friday so that like during my lunch break or whenever in the mornings before anyone got there i would post my photo get the caption ready and then go from there on instagram i was a lot more active back then trying to get followers you know i would be commenting on people's posts going on hashtags commenting on people's posts there hitting people up in the dms like all that kind of stuff like i was so active on instagram i think there was even a point where i was posting like three times a day like it was getting excessive but i wanted i wanted it i wanted to work hard and i wanted to actually come into this coding thing so posting three times a day i would actually wake up early in the morning so in those times i was waking up at 4 00 a.m and coding up until i had to leave to work at seven and then when i got to work then obviously it was work time at lunch i would be coding i would go down on my lunch heat my food up go back to my desk eat my food while i'm watching a tutorial or reading an article about code or actually like following a tutorial and coding and eating at the same time so it was pretty hectic and i but i was so determined to actually make this thing work that i needed every single break time lunch time any off time that i had when i wasn't working to be coding even sometimes when there were lulls in work because sometimes you know there were a lot of times where people weren't walking up to my desks or i didn't have any tickets to do like there was pretty much no work so i would actually just be coding or reading something until someone came up to me or a ticket came my way so again all that down time i spend if i had any i was coding all day long come on the weekend saturday sunday code code code code code like i was all about it i was on it 24 7. like it was unhealthy now that i look at it now but it was something that i was really passionate about so again that's how i made it work working doing a full-time job plus balancing friends in the gym any downtime i had i was focusing on code on my commute i was stuck in traffic i'd be listening to podcasts on code so the syntax podcast with wes boss and scott telinski i'd be listening to them all day long trying to learn little tidbits trying to learn new things while i was not working i was trying to commit myself 100 to this thing so that's where instagram came in that's where finding all the downtime that i had and like hiding sometimes in the office just to code was so necessary for me to make this transition and make it at the pace that i did and i'm not saying that you have to do this like i was very very committed to it so i was just like desperate to find time to code because there's actually something that i love to do if you're working a full-time job that's kind of what you like the sacrifices i think that you should be able to make on your lunch times like find a spot where no one's going to bug you and read or watch a tutorial read an article on your breaks 10 to 15 minutes and you know that's enough time to get a video out of the way in a course or read an article or do something right like it's enough time for you and there shouldn't be any excuses if you really want this thing then on the weekends that's when you put in all your time or you wake up super early in the morning so i had to leave to work by 7 a.m or else i was gonna be late because of traffic so i'd wake up at four and that would give me that amount of time in between to actually get some uninterrupted work done before i had to leave to work so i was making use of all of my time and then you know when i went when i got off work it was straight to the gym so i couldn't do anything there after the gym i'd come home eat dinner and then try to like maybe work on some coat if i wasn't exhausted which wasn't the case most of the time i was pretty tired so i would just go straight to bed after dinner but sometimes you would catch me watching the rest of a tutorial doing some code or something building something to make use of my time and that's where you would catch me a lot of the times is on the computer just like doing something that was related to code now around november or october is when i actually started my youtube channel and that's where i started to take on the form of video to document my journey so that's when i started really focusing in on creating content where i was catering towards the self-taught devs out there who are on the same journey as me the whole point of this youtube channel for me is to one document and to make the journey a little bit transparent for you guys to show that you know sometimes we do hit mistakes sometimes there are roadblocks sometimes there are mental issues or whatever the case may be like there is a journey and a path to this this isn't a curriculum where like you have computer science students go to a school and actually go through some sort of structure with self.dev there is no structure you create your own like it can get hectic at times it can get undisciplined and messy so making that journey open and transparent to you guys is something that i wanted to do with this channel and that's why i started it back then in september or october of 2019 so i had instagram going that was starting to grow really really fast youtube wasn't growing as fast but i really really liked making videos always had a passion for it so i was on two different platforms doing something that i love doing on a topic that i loved the most so i was doing photography on instagram video on youtube both had to do with coding so it was just like a match made in heaven for me and that's where i started to put my chips in so between octo november october to february of 2020 i was doing a lot of tutorials let's go through the process of what i was actually doing to like teach myself so free code camp was something that i started with to learn html and css but then i moved over to code academy and then some udemy courses that i will actually link below as well if you guys want to check them out to the specific ones that i actually took one of them being coach steele's web developer bootcamp and then the other one being jonish i can't say his last name but jonas's javascript course that's the one i definitely took all the way through and those were like the most beneficial ones for me i'm a visual learner so i have to have video and i have to have someone who could teach it correctly for me so those two were the main focal points as far as tutorials and resources that i used to learn whether it was html css and or javascript and then i would supplement with codecademy on the side because i actually liked the curriculum that they had when it came to you know having the built-in ide the way they worded things was actually beautiful for me because it just made the most sense and then you know having those exercises at the bottom and they wouldn't let you through unless you actually completed them was beneficial for me because it actually forced me to write code and get it right based off of what they were teaching so those are some of the main resources that i use and i use those all the way up until february and then you know after javascript i transitioned into react where i was learning about components and you know teaching myself how to make a website out of react only you know building these different things and learning about state and all these different things you know utilizing es6 all that stuff that comes with react and after that i learned a little bit of react native and you know kind of went all over the place from there and i got a better grasp of react especially with redux there was a course with stephen grider where he had a course on react and redux and implemented the both and that's where i started building these projects i started building you know there's this project that i had an mba stats app where i was pulling data in from a third-party api that i found online and displayed it in a way where you can actually search up a player's name see what team they were on see what stats they had for that season and things like that which is pretty cool and it would display in a modal showed in a little table graph the the actual stats and it was laid out pretty nicely in my opinion it was a simple app but it actually took me a long time because redux took a little bit for me to grasp and i was a little bit slow on learning and i'm typically a little bit of a slower learner i have to rewatch a lot of videos in order to actually grasp a concept so definitely took me some time so at this point we're in like february of 2020 let's fast forward over to like june and may of 2020 now that's where things started to take a toll so at this point you know we're obviously all in covid we're all in quarantine and we're all in remote work so that allowed me to kind of branch out and do more coding while i'm at home but also work on the side i have to wait for tickets to come in and things like that so around june late june may-ish that's when things started to take a turn for me i got word that obviously due to the effects of covid my the guy who picked me up over from the computer store he my boss he couldn't really keep me on like uh the money was becoming an issue and workflow and workload wasn't actually there anymore because of cobit at the end of may i believe i was actually dropped from that job and now unemployed and i had to make a decision you know whether or not i go for a try to find a job push for a job in front end development or try to find different avenues to make a living and thank god like living with my parents like that just saves me a whole other like expense that i don't have to pay and i can actually stay on my feet while pursuing something and that's where i was in a little bit of a jumble like i knew how to code i knew how to make websites i knew how to do all these things that other developers knew how to do is it the same quality i don't know but i definitely would work hard to do it but being a self-taught dev there's the problem of not being able to get a job as easy because you don't have a degree i didn't go to school for software development or web development and i didn't go to school really at all right like i kind of quit college halfway through and decided to go my own route because i didn't really want to do it college and school in general wasn't really for me so i decided to just kind of call it quits and end it there once i was laid off i was looking for all these different jobs and on linkedin on indeed all these different job listing posts sometimes on twitter i would go out and try to see if i could find like some people would post these remote positions on twitter and i would have tried to apply for them obviously nothing came of it you know people would see my resume and they would be like ah you don't really have a degree we're gonna kick you off to the side we don't really want you we have better candidates so this went on for like about a month or two and it wasn't really working out i wasn't being i wasn't able to find any positions even the ones that were entry level those were ones they still declined me and said hey we're sorry but we're gonna go different routes on this one so that was a little rough for me at the very beginning and i had to make a decision you know i can't get a job as a developer do i go work like at a local store to like try to make some money and then figure out what i'm gonna do or do i put all my chips in onto this youtube instagram thing and try to make this a thing because i had been making some money from instagram at this point you know my instagram had blown up it was pretty huge i don't know what follower count i was at the time but my instagram was was huge now youtube was definitely growing a lot faster than i had imagined it to be you know obviously at this point we're at like 5k subs right now so the growth on youtube has been insane and making videos has been awesome so there's that avenue that i thought about and i was like okay i don't have a job right now i love to code but i can't get a job right now in that either let's try to go into this content creation route and see where this takes us i obviously don't have high expectations just because you know early starts in content creation you're not gonna make a lot of money and i wasn't expecting to i just knew over time this was something that i could lean back on and say i built this thing up from the ground up or from ground zero all the way up and i want this to be able to make some money but this is just what i love doing like i love making videos for you guys no matter if it's just talking ahead or if it's a day in the life where there's a lot of b-roll this is something that i love to do so i want to kind of push my chips into this thing and like actually enjoy life right now even though i'm not making enough money being able to stay with my parents like i said has helped me with that i can actually come back home and just create create create create create just have fun with it so that's what i've decided to do for a couple months now for the past couple months i've just been creating content i've been focusing on youtube focusing in on instagram and today i actually just started a blog which is kind of cool you know and i'm trying to find different avenues i have the podcast going for me i'm trying to find different ways to make money but also have fun at the same time and i think that this whole personal brand thing and becoming a self-taught dev has helped push me into that direction because i have a community behind me i have a skill set that i can actually build content off of and actually build skills off of you know it's it's been kind of cool to see within the year what that transition was from going from zero knowledge i wouldn't say zero knowledge i would say some knowledge in coding to now being able to build a product or build a website from scratch and to be able to document that and now show you guys the process show you guys the final product or whatever it is i'm building and either live stream it create a video on it create a photo talking about it blogging about it like there's so many different avenues with code that it's taken me in my journey is only beginning like this has only been one year just saying that doesn't really make sense to me like to think that it's only been a year and to see the progress that i've gone through now has been like humbling in a way to see what next year is gonna bring is going to be insane right like i want to push so much harder into this and like learn different things right now i want to learn the back end i want to see if back inside of things learning node express if those things are something that i want to be in or you know there's going to be upcoming series where i teach myself swift python go other different technologies c in java like i want to challenge myself and try to learn these different technologies that's just like a small like fraction of what this journey's going to be but i wanted to show you guys and tell you guys my story about how and what i did to get here to show you that there are other people out there who are self.devs who have gone through either the same or a very similar journey i know a lot of people on my instagram have been it support or in the it field as well and want to get more into the coding experience and go go more into the coding route because they're they find their job stagnant or they actually don't like their job to be able to show you guys my journey to be able to show you guys that it's possible and like actually be able to pursue your passion is something that i find joy in and i i love doing so hopefully that whole journey thing was something that you enjoyed watching my progress gross if you guys have been with me since day one that you've seen the progress and you've seen the journey unfold and you've seen how crazy this whole thing has been so hopefully you guys enjoyed that video if you guys liked it hit the thumbs up button hit subscribe i would thoroughly enjoy it if you guys have any questions for me hit me down in the comments but i will see you guys in the next one peace

Channel: Chau Codes

Views: 30,588

Rating: 4.940856 out of 5

Keywords: My Journey from IT Support to Self-Taught Web Developer, self taught web developer, web development tutorial for beginners, web developer, web development 2020, web development, learn to code, web development course, learn to code for free, learn to code for beginners, how i became a developer, teach yourself programming, free code camp, self taught programmer, learning to code, my journey, justin chau, chau codes, chau, chau_codes

Id: FKXDphLrNCQ

Length: 21min 11sec (1271 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 31 2020