How I Got a Job Programming Without School or Bootcamps
Hey, I am Dano. I am a husband, father of two, avid gamer, and programmer. I love to program and do it not only as a career, but also as my favorite hobby. I have spent the last 6 years working as a software developer for start ups, a multi level marketing company, a development firm, a luxury fashion company and lots of side work. Outside of the work that I do with the companies that I work for I usually go down the stairs (cause I work from home) and play with my kids. After they go down my wife will watch her tv shows while I whip out my computer and work on all of passion projects. I love learning and I love being challenged. Programming provides me with both.
Background
I didn’t start naturally gifted or even drawn to computers. I was into sports and was terrible at school. I was good at math and that’s about it. Once I got into college though I quickly realized that school was not for me. Not only did I not enjoy it, but I didn’t have money and didn’t want to get into a ton of debt when I didn’t even know long term what I wanted to do.
So I decided to drop out of school and went to go sell alarms for some money over the summer with some friends. I ended up selling two summers after the first summer went really well. The second summer I only made enough to make it through the summer. It was real challenging and I was in a desperate need of some money. I really was at $0 in the bank account. I ended up finding a job with an Ebay company that provided me with enough economically to allow me to start exploring what I wanted to do.
Starting on Code
I went to my brother, who is a programmer, and we had some classes on how to program. I remember him telling me how an if loop worked. It went so far over my head and I was like, this is not for me. Luckily I did find it really interesting and very challenging. He started with teaching me PHP and I went home and found a cheap service online that had some courses so I could learn the basics. First I flew through the HTML and CSS and was like, boy is this easy! PHP was a different story. I was able to copy what the courses did, but I knew in order to really learn this I would need to apply it to something of my own. I needed my own project.
I love music. More than anything I love unique music. I would always drag my friends to these weird indie concerts. I once brought them to Tokyo Police Club. There were 8 people there, 4 of them us. It was a blast! I used to spend hours a week looking through the internet for new songs and artists. If I was spending that time doing that research. Why not double down and make a site where I could put that research down. So I built a simple wordpress site. I also love bacon, so I called the site Bacon and Music (even if the site had nothing to do with music). Those friends thought the site was interesting and started writing articles with me.
That site actually did really well and we hit over 1k unique visitors several days. It was very motivating and we would get requests of features and I would search online of how to do accomplish that. Then I would build it. I did that for a year… til I deleted the whole database and screwed up the code. It was early into my learning and backups weren’t on the list yet. But boy did I learn that lesson. That was the end of Bacon and Music.
Getting paid to Code
This opened a bunch of my time and had taught me a ton about WordPress and PHP. I didn’t feel like I was a programmer though and decided to look to see if I could get some experience having a client to get direction from. Someone I knew had heard I was building sites and they talked to a friend who worked at a local theater company. It is a non-profit and they needed a site rebuild for cheap. They weren’t going to find anyone cheaper.
I met with them a couple times and learned a lot about gathering requirements. I had read Pragmatic Programmer and it taught me a lot about working with stakeholders and doing freelance work. Working directly with the clients luckily I had experience with also from selling alarms. I was able to get the deal and made some money. I worked my butt off for 2 months and built that site. I charged $1,500 for the 2 months of worth and it was definitely worth it. They were very happy with the work and I had something to put on my resume.
I ended up getting 3 more jobs just like that one. Each one I charged what I thought was a fortune at the time, but for the companies was pennies. It was definitely a huge win for both and I worked hard to make them something to show off.
Becoming a Developer
Even after doing those 4 projects and having been paid to do them. I still didn’t feel like I was a programmer. I didn’t feel good enough to get a job as an Engineer. Until my brother called me and asked how things were going. I told him all I had done and he asked why I didn’t leave my job and get one as a programmer? I told him I wasn’t good enough. He told me everyone had imposter syndrome when getting started, but that I had proof that I was a programmer. That I just needed to go out there and try and get a job. He gave me some conviction to go out and get a job.
I applied at several places and it took a couple weeks. I went and applied at a place that needed a Laravel developer (which I didn’t know), but I convinced them I could learn it. Two days later I got a call and a job offer. It was amazing and terrifying. I finally was going to work as a developer, but I felt so inadequate. The biggest step was over, getting my foot in the door. Next step, in my eyes, was don’t get fired the first day.
The Goal
I will go into greater depth in future posts about the next couple years and how I overcame some tough projects. My goal with doing this blog and youtube channel is to help people to get jobs in Software Engineering. If you already have a job, it is to get you the next promotion. Currently I am an Engineering Manager over 3 software development teams. It is always my goal to help them to grow. Now it is my goal to help you too!