Steps to Landing your FIRST Programming Job

hey guys welcome to the vlog so let's just jump into it I got a question here I thought would be interesting for people hi Stefan I've been learning Python for two months and have completed several modules and various Python courses around the interwebs problem is even though I know significant amount of Python I don't feel closer to getting a job freelancing or otherwise and the problem is further compounded by the avalanche of resources on the web could you please suggest what approach should I take to get a job as a full stack as a full stack developer with focus on Python I work part-time and so I have 40 to 60 hours a week to work on this you don't need 40 to 60 hours a week to work on this you can get this done for less hours but if you have 40 60 then fantastic so what you have to do once you have your fundamentals and I'm not sure if you do he didn't specify whether he did my web stack course so first of all you should do to my courses a lot of the problems that people have out there's a lot of these courses kind of teach all kinds of little bubbles here and there about coding they don't know how to think like a coder perhaps you know Oliver sir perhaps you have your fundamentals already maybe you feel comfortable writing code and you feel that you're ready to go but you don't know how to take it from being able to write code to to get a job so how do you get a job here is the Stef's rules of getting a job here two steps number one learn your fundamentals so I'll soon but you have at number two you have to put up a website even if you want to do Python coding outside the web put up a website your website is kind of the modern-day the 2020 business card you put up the website number one make sure that website looks good even if you're selling yourself as an AI develop or make sure that website looks good because people are gonna judge you based on the quality of your site how it looks and how easy it is to navigate they're gonna base they're gonna base a lot of their initial opinion on you as an individual based on that much in the same way if you go out on a date you go out on a date people are gonna judge you based on how you dress and whether you have you know you're properly groomed and so on so make sure your site looks good no matter what type of programming work development work any type of work you wanted to number two what you want to do is once you get that site up you want to go out there and do one or two maybe three small free freelance gigs working for somebody our stash work for a month or two working for somebody just so that you can build up a bit of a portfolio and complete a real-world project for somebody else from A to Z doing a bunch of tutorials on YouTube or wherever else and then saying look I did these tutorials it's not going to sell it a big part about being a developer is being able to sit down with people figure out what they want figure out the requirements etc etc etc I teach this my freelance course step by step again not trying to be a shameless self-promoter but I'm just saying with this this is key to the whole process being a developer is not just being able to write code at the end of the day your your your solving problems you are using your knowledge of development to solve problems for particular clients and that's why I always say you got to be language neutral meaning for some projects you may want to use Python you may use a certain module in Python to solve the problem but other times you may want it to do just JavaScript or other times you may want to go native mobile development Iowa's and the Swift it depends on the needs of the project when you become an advanced a developer you will be able to do that you have to say you have to get away from I want to be a Python the bow or I am a Java coder or I am a PHP developer etc you want to get away from that mindset and you want to be more like the world's best mixed martial arts who are they have a particular Forte they may be more inclined to be strikers or they may be inclined to be grapplers or submission fighters but at the end of the day they're mixed martial arts they have a plethora of skills arrange the skills that they can apply given the circumstances of course again you have your preferred languages you have your preferred frameworks no question but you just got to be open-minded in my career as a freelancer I would walk into projects and I would sit down and I would say okay what do we need to do here for you and I'm talking to the client and I take notes I say okay now what's your budget and it's a water you need a budget Kent's give me a quote wow there's many ways to build a house right there's many different types of houses there's many ways to build the car do you want a Ferrari or do you want a Toyota right so you go in there and you you assess the needs of the project and then you choose the technology stack accordingly so that's what you have to do that's what the whole process that's why I'm getting your first free freelance job is the stash work which allows you to learn how to take your coding skills and to put it into something real you have to understand as a real-world developer especially when you're first starting out it's not all going to be a step one Duva step one it's not going to be super clear about the way in which the which particular code or particular libraries you might use etc every projects is very every project is very circumstantial it's unique that being said yes there are set processes there are particular libraries and we call them design patterns and programming they're design patterns that most of us use most of the time and but design patterns are guidelines and not necessarily something set in stone you may break away from my particular methodology or design pattern or structure based on the needs of the project but generally speaking you fall back to these design patterns and these set structures I'm going off on some new tangents here so I apologize so bottom line is fundamentals get a website up so people can assess who you are make sure it looks good the website and if you're not good at design it's just get a template and modify it then you go out there and use one or two one or two freebie projects even if you don't know all the tech which you may need to implement for a particular project make sure it's a small project I'll do a huge project small project and then just learn as you go I call it the need to nerd philosophy I'll leave you with this because it's a very common concern people have no coder in the world no developer in the world knows everything about development in fact no developer in the world knows five percent about what's out there and I'll take it a step further there's no Python developer in the world who has used more than maybe five percent of Python it's the development world is vast and there's so many options and that's why it's so important that you get away from trying to think about coding as learning the key frameworks or the key technologies that will make you pro and then you go from there now what makes you a pro is your ability to code and you'll use whatever technology are in demand at the time that's another major thing that people have to get into their heads is that you may think that flash ActionScript is the best programming language ever invented and you can't understand why people would not want to use flash ActionScript now if you don't know what that is at one point ten years ago it was huge it was huge she was so dominant now it's dead because Steve Jobs effectively killed it amongst other things but so you have to you know adapt to the times so right now react is very popular EU is rising up in terms of front end the web stack html5 css3 jobs were perpetually popular on the server JavaScript node very popular PHP very popular PHP PHP laravel also just you know more low-level WordPress development content management development heck I've even seen job listings for people who get papering of salaries being a Wix developers basically implementing Wix right yeah anybody can use Wix right they can just point and click but when you will you know there's information architecture has to be taken to the cleaners consideration planning out the global strategy with the site visa vie social media marketing and search engine marketing then if you want to get into functionality shopping cards private groups etc then it's a whole new level now it's not just my opinion even Wix has an API layer with JavaScript right so they know but yeah the pointing click is fine for simple sites but then if you want to go beyond the cookie cutter templates what they provide then you got to get into code once again now so anyway that's pretty much it I've gone off on tangent so you got to get out there fundamentals put up a site so people can judge you and you can say a check out I'm I can do clean work and do small little projects and and you're gonna go in there blind you're gonna go in there like oh boy I don't know exactly what I'm doing but don't worry that's why God invented Google and that's why when you're armed with Google and you have good fundamentals and you'll be able to research oh okay I need to use react or I need to use view here or now this is a simple WordPress type of implementation here and you put it together if you're wondering how you how you handle the client how you budget it etc etc shameless self-promotion my freelance course which I'm selling pretty cheap now the price about to go up that will guide you step by step in fact I've had a lot of people tell me about my freelance course really put it all together for then I showed them how to take their coding skills and how to monetize it monetize is just a nerds way of saying make money with it anyway I hope this is helpful I was answering a question of a foot to be very common question again learning how to code is not just learning the code you have to learn the environment around the code you have to understand the workflows and and you have to understand the various options that you have at the end of the day when you're writing code you're just sending commands to a computer if you're writing JavaScript code you're probably sending commands to the web browser or maybe on the server writing Python code you know you're doing all kinds of different things one of Python strengthens is its flexibility anyway that's it for now bye bye [Music]

Channel: Stefan Mischook

Views: 15,681

Rating: 4.9765534 out of 5

Keywords: developervlogs, developermentoring

Id: 9wqF4WVM4zA

Length: 12min 12sec (732 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 10 2020