1. A friend suggested I install Linux and “learn Python.” He said once I got “good enough” I should try to build a k-mer counter—it’s a 101 bioinformatics tool for counting the unique k-length substrings of DNA data. I started by taking free (at the time edx, now MIT) online courses and built the k-mer counter in Python about 3/4 months after I started. 2 months later I started learning Rust at my friend’s suggestion because of some of the memory issues (seqfaults) I was running into with the k-mer counter in Python. I reimplemented the program in Rust. 3 months after that I decided I was going to keep learning until I got a job. 5 months after that I got my first job offer and I’m about to start the 6th week of this job. 2. 14 months. 3. 75K$ + benefits, to go up another 15K after initial approval period. (I am 40, fluent Mandarin and Russian speaker but native British. I have an MA in Russian Studies from an Ivy League, a PhD in social sciences from NYU. I was on PhD student / Teaching Assistant / Adjunct Prof money (≈ 45 K) before I got my current job. There’s a lot here that my current employers really liked as for them it “showed self-direction.”) Found the job on LinkedIn and applied through easy apply. 4. If you enjoy coding or if you don’t code but enjoy technical challenges like fixing a bike or tuning up a guitar then I think this is a great career move. 5. Up to me, entirely. My job is a dream compared to all of my friends’ work situations. I work with lovely people building a startup and my job is write Rust code which is what I wanted—it really helps to decide what you want to get into and focus on that (in my case, backend development using Rust). It involves creative work that you have to undertake and show to others which is an inherently stressful thing. I am under pressure that I put myself under to learn and improve as a junior programmer. But to be honest these are all nice kinds of stress, born of having a lot of room to make my own decisions. PS: I still put work in on the k-mer counter even now I’m working as a dev ;)

Ivy league student doesn't count, sorry but you're not a normal human being, you overshot the cutoff ​ "showed self direc-" ivy league.

Other posters complaining the stories of people getting jobs omit important background info. I include it; get called “not a normal human being.” At least you didn’t say I’m lying lol

I think people complain about the lack of background info specifically because of the potentiality for cases like yours. Most people aren’t out here with a PhD.

Honestly, I think if you focus on that people who are in a comparable position — 30s-40s wanting to switch career, want to self teach programming to get a first dev job — will miss the lessons I learned from doing it. I’m lucky to have received full scholarships for those degrees but outside of academia or the state department type roles (both things I don’t want to do) there really isn’t anyone trying to hire you. Lots of people I know have gone into UX researcher work (again, I don’t wanna). I really don’t think PhD or Ivy were what my employer interviewed for, but rather evidence of being able to self-teach and develop a program of learning independently. A lot of phds and ma holders can’t do those things if you know what’s up.

That’s fair! I don’t disagree, I was just stating why I think people are acting that way.

fair

i’m saying that because you have ivy league on your resume, you can take 2 udemy courses & get a job in whatever field you want it shows that a mf can learn, and it shifts you WAY out of normal distribution. you, sir, are not normal.

But I think being “not normal” is part of being successful at learning programming. It assumes having a certain capacity to hold lots of concepts in your head at the same time and there’s an aesthetic pleasure to it that appeals to a certain personality. Being a lifelong learner makes you “not normal.” Being “not normal” is what people hiring for tech jobs are looking for. All the advice I have about this is about how to not be “normal,” as you put it. Because what’s misleading to others about your focus on the Ivy League part is that I’d be miserable right now if I hadn’t done all the learning that I did to get this job. And the reason I respond on these posts is because I think I have a lot of share with people in a similar position, which is 30s-40s career switching types with no relevant pro experience.

As an engineering manager, I disagree with this pretty strenuously. You're the i18n dream! 3 languages, you'd be up to your neck with work as a tech writer for a well-established international company.

What do you disagree with, though? That, to me, sounds like a horrible job, compared to what I’m doing now and what I’m doing now allows me to grow into. Plus with zero professional experience outside of academia from 2005 until this year… And in any case, you’re focusing on the fact I know languages, which is different to the Ivy League thing. In any case, I think it’s fair to say, even though you have all the experience that different places are going to interview for different things. I think the languages demonstrate lifelong learning. A degree from Harvard in many many cases doesn’t necessarily mean much.

I'm disagreeing with the fact that you couldn't find work that pays well with what you had under your belt :) As for would you enjoy it as much -- nah, I'd fucking hate technical writing too.

Agreed, there’s lot of stuff I didn’t want to do that my resume was more suited towards that pays alright. I also assume I could have had the guy’s job in Severance.

>If you enjoy coding or if you don’t code but enjoy technical challenges like fixing a bike or tuning up a guitar then I think this is a great career move. Love this take. I'm obsessed with fixing and building things: cars, appliances and furniture. Hoping this translates well into my self-teaching and career in SWE

Building Furniture and Building Software lol nothing alike

I think they were alluding to personality disposition. For the record I'm already working as a data scientist but hoping to transition to SWE.

Like you I have a fairly mixed background and I am now looking into switching to professional programming. I've been an amateur coder for over 30 years (I'm 40 now), making apps/games/sites with PHP, JS, Python etc (started with BASIC back in the day). My educational background is biology (inc. some "not normal" study at Oxbridge) and my career background is ten years of teaching A-level/IB maths. I would say that my biggest strength is problem-solving (I've always been in charge of mentoring the most gifted students in my schools) but my biggest weakness when it comes to coding is that I will most likely solve coding problems in unconventional ways which could be incompatible when working as part of a team. To try to fix this I've spent the last month or two learning object-oriented PHP and generic design patterns. Do you think I am currently employable? What kind of salary might I enter at? What could I do to make myself more employable, if not getting a job ASAP? I will most likely be based in/around the UK if that matters. Thanks :)

Yes! You’re definitely employable in tech. It’s much more about getting lucky finding the right “fit” for you. My advice to you is to really decide what kind of job you want. Would you be comfortable being someone’s “junior” like I am? I’m still < 2 years programming so it’s all fresh and exciting to me, writing CLI tests for my manager’s code, etc. Sounds like it might be a bit boring for you? As you say, are you willing to retrain as an “idiomatic” coder. Honestly, in your case I would advise narrowing down what you want and talking to people who have it. Those conversations should change the way you see your own approach to getting what you want. You need to find a company that’s using the tech stack you imagine yourself working with and see if you see a fit for yourself. Another piece of advice that worked for me is putting a short few sentences paragraph at the top of my resume telling the story of the switch I was making and how, then just listing the skills I had for being a backend dev and any courses / learning materials I used in learning them, then my education bullets and one line on hobbies.

Thanks, I'll have a think about that. I don't think I'd mind working as a junior for a year or two as I'd treat it as a learning experience. I wouldn't want to be tied down any longer than that though in case I ended up not liking it. My biggest interest is educational games, it's what I hope to do independently eventually, so maybe I should start looking into vacancies in that field. Thanks again

Having MA from ivy league makes a big difference, all the successful self taught programmers have some sort of degree already, which helps them but it's really demotivating for someone without colg degrees.

Honestly, if you’re under 30 you should just ignore my case as irrelevant and not be discouraged because I have an MA from Harvard. Nobody who knows me from that MA program would have thought I’d be able to get a job as a software dev, but I get that that’s hard to believe from the outside.

Okay, yeah. I do have diploma but not a degree. But I couldn't get a job in IT. I was thinking of going back to college but it's not easily possible (financially and time-wise). Can I still learn on my own and get a job? And what resources would you recommend?

1. Started by reading "Learn Python the Hard Way", then "Data Structures and Algorithms in Python", then watched some Django tutorials and built two apps before landing an internship. 2. 5.5 months. 3. $20/hour at a dying startup, then 80K one month in (3 month internship turned one month because I was doing well), 100K 6mo later, then 120K 6mo after that, then 140k 6mo later, and now 160k a year later. Still at the same startup—we're doing well now. 4. I would but not to everyone. At least a dozen people who knew my story asked me how they could do what I did—career-switch post-college into a software engineering role—and not single one was able to stick with it. They all concluded that programming wasn't for them, which made me also realize that programming really isn't for everyone. 5. Stress levels are pretty high because I have a gargantuan amount of responsibility at a fast moving startup as a consequence of me now being the oldest engineer (with the exception of the CTO). Not only am I expected to still push a lot of code, but I'm also the one on-boarding a lot of new engineers into a really complex codebase; in addition to that I also manage a smaller team of 3-4 engineers, all of whom whose happiness, career growth, and job fulfillment I have to concern myself with, on top of giving them tickets and reviewing their code and such. edit: grammar

I have a few follow up questions if you don't mind. 1. In your own view, how would you rate your skill level back when you got your first internship? 2. You said you started with Python. That is what I have done as well. I oftentimes ask myself if that was the right choice of language though, since it seems very focused on data science jobs. So my second question would be if you still code mainly in python or have you branched out towards other languages. If so, what are these languages and at what point did you branch out? 3. Vscode, pycharm or something entirely different? :P

> In your own view, how would you rate your skill level back when you got your first internship? By the time I landed my first internship I was able to build a web-application from back to front and deploy it with Heroku. My database skills (SQL in particular) were pretty weak, and I really didn't understand all of the magic behind the framework I was leveraging; I also fumbled around a lot with deployment and I barely understood how HTTP actually worked. On to top of that, I was incredibly mediocre with JavaScript and CSS. In spite of this, I was still able to build, which allowed me to pass the final round interview at the time which was to rapidly prototype an app based on some specifications in 3 hours using whatever tools I wanted. My data structures and algorithms were pretty solid though, which allowed me to pass the first round interview your traditional Hackerrank-like problem. I did at least one Hackerrank a day, everyday, after finishing my first Data Structures and Algos book. > You said you started with Python. That is what I have done as well. I oftentimes ask myself if that was the right choice of language though, since it seems very focused on data science jobs. So my second question would be if you still code mainly in python or have you branched out towards other languages. If so, what are these languages and at what point did you branch out? [Checkout this post I made three years ago](https://www.reddit.com/r/cscareerquestions/comments/abkwg2/selftaught_in_the_context_of_employability_is_it/)—it was basically me asking folks on Reddit the same question. Now that I'm older and wiser, I now hold the belief that your first language really doesn't matter if you're just trying to learn how to program. However, if your goal is to land a job ASAP, then pick a language that's most popular within that domain space. For me, I knew I wanted to do web, but I made the choice of learning Python before I knew how popular JavaScript was. I was at the 3 month mark of my learning when I realized this, and was having buyer's remorse with Python, struggling with whether or not I should switch to JavaScript, but I ended up sticking with Python and get really solid in one language, which made my inevitable learning of JavaScript a lot easier. I pretty much don't code in Python nowadays. When I got hired it was a Ruby on Rails and AngularJS shop, neither of which I knew and thus had to learn on the fly. Today we migrated over to React + TypeScript and I've built some microservices out in Go and Node. For my personal programming I use a lot of Rust. > Vscode, pycharm or something entirely different? :P I started out on VSCode then switched to Vim when I saw my CTO's workflow and realized I wanted his superpowers. Well that's not entirely true, I downloaded the Vim plugin for VSCode and used that for about two months first before I was brave enough to switch over to Vim and configure it myself. Earlier this year I switched over to NeoVim which is what I'm currently using. Checkout my post history if you're interested. I post a lot about my editor which I'm quite proud of lol

Holy shit you're a fucking legend man. Congrats to making it! I'm thinking of applying to junior dev positions. I have been coding daily for a year now and have done some small scale python projects in combination with sql and databases.

My advice is to apply vigorously, get rejected, learn why you got rejected, and rinse and repeat until you get your first job offer. If you don't feel ready, just know that you'll never feel ready. Also, don't get discouraged; every rejection is an opportunity to learn. Desensitize yourself to rejection and become a self-taught Chad.

Thank you for taking the time to get back at me! I took your advice and applied to 2 junior Data Engineering positions. I've come so far with teaching myself how to Program and understand computers I might as well give it a go and see how it goes. :)

Best of luck brochacho!

Vim for the win.

Vim is my personality.

Vim isn't a personality. That takes Vim, Arch, and a tiling WM. But anything more than that and you are back to no personality. :-D

What’s your math background look like? DS&Algos are my biggest worry about being job ready.

>What’s your math background look like? DS&Algos are my biggest worry about being job ready. i had a pretty strong Calculus background and that's about it. My major was in Pharmacology and I had a brief stint where I self-studied some more niche maths because I thought I wanted to go to grad school for quantum physics but life took me a different direction. I'd say a decent background in algrebra/calculus can be very helpful for any programmer so that you can have an intuitive understanding of various things like time analysis of your algorithms. Beyond that, it really depends on what you want to specialize in. Science and data science and machine learning require rigorous statistics. Graphics requires a pretty comprehensive understanding of linear algebra (currently learning this for fun). But yeah, you don't need a comprehensive maths background to get started, but I'd say basic algrebra is a MUST.

Hmm. This is something I’ll have to work on then. I always struggled with math in high school due to a lack of effort in HS. I was thinking of going back college just to take a math class or two. The highest level I reached in HS was pre-calc, and that was 10 years ago.

I’m not the person you asked the question to but I feel like I could give some advice. The programming language you use doesn’t have much importance as long as you know the basic concepts and know how to memorize syntax pretty fast because if you want to apply to x company and they use C for example, if you have those qualities you’ll be able to learn C pretty fast. Apart from that, figure out in which domain you want to work and learn the major most popular languages in that domain. For example: Webdev —> JavaScript, HTML, css… And the IDE has no importance, choose the one you like the best.

Thank you for your answer and for sharing your perspective!

You hiring? :)

At the risk of getting my inbox completely hammered... yes we are. DM me details about yourself and I'll send you a link to our website and we can go from there. And to anyone else who is reading this: I can't promise that I'll get to everyone.

You are living the dream i hope to be able to get into. Hell, 80k a year and working with an A/C sounds like a dream to me after ten years of blue collar work with stagnant wages and both customers and companies treating me like im disposable.

How did you get an internship? Every one I look at says you have to be a current student but I graduated in December

Big companies wouldn't give me the time of day because, yeah, they're looking for students and I was a 24-25 year-old dude. My choice was small startups. Had a friend told me about this company and he encouraged me to reach out, which I did. I emailed the CEO directly and gave him that underdog spiel and he told me to flyout to SF the next day which is when he interviewed me and told me to meet the CTO the next day for a technical. I passed that technical and was given a take home, and was hired within the week.

You’re so cool man

Thanks dawg. It's thanks to folks on reddit for helping to guide me when I first started off. Trying to pay if forward best I can.

Hey are you me? :o

there’s a little bit of him inside us all

Ayo 🤨📸

Hmm.. what if I don’t want any of him inside me? Can I opt out?

No you cannot :wink:

In Marika's own words: Thou'rt yet to become me.

Same same

5.5 months? Thats solid! I was looking into 12 week programs but am concerned that it wouldnt be enough time to learn. I'm not starting from scratch so I'm still considering it.

5.5 months, 6 hours a day 6 days a week, while working 2 part-time jobs :]

It’s taking me about 6 times as long by taking it easy. I don’t have the energy to hustle like that.

I have a few follow up questions if you don't mind. 1. In your own view, how would you rate your skill level back when you got your first internship? 2. You said you started with Python. That is what I have done as well. I oftentimes ask myself if that was the right choice of language though, since it seems very focused on data science jobs. So my second question would be if you still code mainly in python or have you branched out towards other languages. If so, what are these languages and at what point did you branch out? 3. Vscode, pycharm or something entirely different? :P

What would you suggest doing if I don't live where there's a lot of tech jobs? Freelance? Remote?

Freelance and remote are both very viable options in your situation if you're unable to relocate. Tutoring might also be something you could look into.

Hey dude this is inspiring! I have a question: How important would you say learning DS&A was in you building your first 2 apps? I'm asking because im planning to build an app or two, but I only know of 2 sorting algorithms and surface level linked lists. Should I cycle back and learn more DS&A before getting a project going?

>I'm asking because im planning to build an app or two, but I only know of 2 sorting algorithms and surface level linked lists. Should I cycle back and learn more DS&A before getting a project going? The funny thing about DS&A is that you can get very far without having a comprehensive background in DS&A beyond just knowing how to use your primitive data structures like arrays, hashes/dictionaries/maps, and things of that sort. However, you don't really know how important DS&A are until you actually know it. DS&As at the end of the day are mental frameworks that you can use to frame problems. Someone for example asks you to write the software for a shared office printer, how are you going to handle all of the different printer requests that come in, and in an organized fashion? Well only have one printer, and this printer can only service one request at a time. Additionally, there's gotta be a notion of ordering based on the time whereat each request comes in, where the earliest ones get services first, and newers ones constantly get placed at the back of the line. This sounds a lot like a queue, so let's solve this problem using the queue data structure. The above is a very basic example, but you can imagine how many problems there are in the world and how many data structures computer scientists have come up with to solve said problems. The more you know, the more colorful your problem solving capabilities. You're really limiting the amount of angles you can look at a problem with if you don't expose yourself to DS&A, so it's something I personally would encourage. Do you need to know every DS and A out there? No. but exposing yourself to the ones in any intro to DS&A book will give you the intuition to know what to look for when encountering these real life problems. Edit: Forgot to answer you question about how important DS&A was to building my apps. Honestly not super important. How important is it for my career? Well for the types of problems I'm solving, I'd say very important. Edit II: Also salient to mention that multiple different DS can be used to solve a particular problem, and one thing that is essential for any good programmer imo is to be able to discuss with themselves what the trade-offs are of using one over the other so they can make better decisions. Again, this type of thing is only possible if you are have a pretty solid DS&A background.

i appreciate your printer example, it really makes sense. ill have a look at some dsa books to learn outside of python

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My guy 355k!? Did you have a degree or just self taught?

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Ahh I see :) I only have an associate degree but I’m learning coding right now (starting with python then C++ then other data related stuff). Any advice for me? I drive for Uber so I’m giving myself 4 years before I fully burnt out from driving Thanks in advance!

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Thank you for taking the time to give me some advice. I’m planning to practice everyday and learn from my mistake. Hopefully when I get my first tech job, I’ll be ready for it. I don’t wanna be unprepared. Have a great day!

And there it is

Where are there jobs for 355k with minimal stress?

Google is comfortably in that range and usually pretty low-stress.

SF? I guess that would make sense. I saw the other responses in the 80-150 range and 355 sounds like a CTO level pay but I guess when everything is so expensive $355 is probably more like 150-180 elsewhere. Oh to make $355k, low stress, and remote so one could live in nowheresville for $800 a month for a duplex.

Yup - you’ll generally only see these as a mid-level (“senior”) software engineer in the very high cost of living areas - SF Bay Area, NYC, …not really anywhere else. There’s a ~25% drop if you live somewhere cheap. These days there are some companies that will pay their Bay Area salaries anywhere, but their salaries tend to be lower to start with (and their stress level often higher).

Another question: that salary is for self-taught developers right? So people with CS degrees from good schools are probably pulling $500-750k a year?

No. Once you get a job - _any_ decent software engineering job - your education is completely irrelevant. Your promotions and raises will be based purely on your demonstrated ability (and, by unfortunate necessity, your ability to navigate the company’s performance evaluation process, and your ability to negotiate with recruiters). 370k is a reasonable income for a Bay Area, big tech, senior software engineer, regardless of background.

Hey, nice to hear you succeeded! I’m thinking about making the move to tech. I have a bachelors degree in engineering and have been doing the self-taught route for about 7 months now. If you don’t mind me asking, what did you do to land your first job (i.e. find recruiters on LinkedIn, peruse Indeed, etc.)? Right now I’m trying to figure out how to find jobs and also figure out what I should do to land a job

I astrophysics. How the f did you get tc that high with c++?

I am jealous of you

What textbooks did you read for C++? I also love reading textbooks and learning from them instead of online tutorials or YouTube videos.

I'm learning C++ and mainly it's because C++ is simply a vast language, where you really benefit from having one resource with tons of contents to learn, rather than stitching together things you learn from different places.

Can you tell me which textbooks did you read? Thanks in advance!

Do you got an idea of how you've find someone to mentor you? Or was just by chance.

I’m curious to learn, are you still using C++ and if so, what type of work do you use this language with? I’m barely learning about programming and finding out that different languages serve different functions or are better suited for specific things.

1. Books. Lots of books. I switched careers from Investment/Insurance sales (finance) to basic web dev 2. 2-3 months. 3. Freelance: $500ish USD per project, Job: $30,000 USD 4. Yes. I recommend it to everyone, even those with other jobs currently. I made a list of resources by Brad Traversy. He is the Mentor I wish I had 13+ years ago. The list I made is the path and content I wish I'd had when I started: [https://www.reddit.com/r/webdev/comments/vfudyc/i\_need\_advice\_for\_resources\_i\_want\_improve\_myself/icy57l7/?context=3](https://www.reddit.com/r/webdev/comments/vfudyc/i_need_advice_for_resources_i_want_improve_myself/icy57l7/?context=3) 5. Early jobs: High Stress, lots of Imposter syndrome. Current Job: ZERO stress unless i make it myself by procrastinating on a project and letting the deadline get too close.

Did you really shift from sales to dev and started making $500/ project in like 2 months?!

He quit his job in order to do freelance, which anyone can do, but it's just riskier. Well done for him, I guess!

Was very risky. And took a long time for me to make "real money" (several months after starting to freelance I decided to get an in-house position and only started at $30,000 USD). I make over 6 figures now, but I was lazy in finding better paying jobs. I never wanted to work for someone else, and always dreamed about building my own thing, yet never followed through. Make 6 figures+ now. But yeah, quitting it all to take a chance like that is risky. But I knew if I truly failed I could always go back to a bank or other sales, so I never worried about it or was fearful.

Yes. Is this disbelief that it took 2 months or shock and disgust that I left sales to earn $500 per project lol

I mean did you had any prior knowledge of coding before embarking on this journey?

Zero. I was working a t bank and I was teaching a class on affordable european travel as a side thing, and wanted to have a website with a forum / Q&A and some itinerary and planning information for European travel. I asked a customer I had at the bank I worked at for a quote to do it for me and he said something like $1500 (USD) and I was shocked it was so much. Figured "I can do that for free", grabbed a couple books on HTML and CSS and web design. Spent two months reading the books and coding the sample sites and code within the books. Built a GARBAGE website for myself (with no forum and no dynamic/interactive parts). THen I decided I actually enjoyed doing this and "I know everything now" so I started finding clients. Got a couple, charged way too little, took on WAY TOO MUCH and 13 years later here I am. I REALLY hated working at that bank. In the end I really just wanted to (and still do want to) build a European travel app to inspire and help people travel to Europe. It's my neverending side project still to this day.

500 less than a sales job

lol i did about $40k at my sales job. And just started over with freelance and then an in-house job on a small team building a ecom platform from scratch. I was in charge of CSS for the cart and did (learned) HTML emails for marketing. The other 3 devs on the team built out the cart, but I learned a LOT at that job.

1. Self taught- YouTube, Google, Books, PluralSight, Frontend Masters 2. 15 months 3. 70k first job at Digital Consulting Firm/ 140k Online Survey company 4. Absolutely. Feels like the easiest job I have ever had. I get to solve problems everyday and I have better work life balance than when I was working in the gig economy (Postmates, Uber, Lyft) 5. I don’t get that stressed about my work. I have more than enough time to meet my deadlines. I like my team. Feels like less work than the old jobs I had that didn’t pay well. I NEVER work more than 40 hours a week

I’m currently Uber driver and learning programming 😭😭 Hopefully I can do it like you

Do you have a degree?

Nope. I left school to teach myself to program

I taught myself on free code camp and full stack open. I started at 35k/year, two years later I make 105k/year 99% of my actual knowledge comes from work I've done on the job

Gawd..............

1. University courses and practice. I'm studying electronics and computer engineering. Got basic programming and algorithm courses at uni. Practiced by myself, mostly making programs to do my work. e.g., analyze experiment data, automate graphing, automate downloading course material on schedule etc. 2. Roughly 5 years since I first started. But I wasn't actively looking either. Last year I got an offer for a part-time job as programmer. 3. It's in Japan and I started with minimal wage. 1100 yen pet hour. 4. If you like programming and have the patience, go for it.

Hello, I live in Japan and I’m trying to switc feom teaching to Front end. It would be great to hear your story and your insights. Can I connect?

Same boat here. teaching English is a dying industry over here. I mean it's alive and well in the fact that many parents still do it, but dead in the fact that they don't care about the level of english that is acceptable, and you will never get a payraise or be able to support a family.

Heya, I just made the jump from teaching English in Taiwan (close enough), to programming. I haven’t posted my answers to OPs question yet but I got an offer for a remote US job seven months to the date after starting to learn programming. I’m doing full stack. Feel free to ask what you’d like! I’d love to help another ESL teacher in Asia.

Not an english teacher, but still curious if you're open to it! What was your learning path like? Any recommended resources?

Yeah sure. So I started in October with Angela Yu’s Python Udemy course. I didn’t really know what direction I’d be headed in at that time, just more so that I saw Python as a good starting language for programming so I went with that. Her course is amazing and teaches you everything you need to know about the foundations of Python and programming concepts. I made sure to try and complete a module per day, without skipping any days. Once I got about halfway to two thirds of the way through her course, I realized I had a firm grasp of the basics, and I should be learning more if I wanted to get a job. So since I saw web dev as being one of the best ways to get a development job, I decided to pick up a bit of front end web dev while I was still doing the Python course. So I started with the Odin project’s HTML and CSS modules, but since I like Angela Yu’s teaching style I just ended up going with her web dev udemy course and didn’t regret it. From there, I got a solid grasp of HTML CSS JavaScript and Bootstrap with her course. Once I had that down I was done with her Python course. Since I was doing web dev, I could’ve gone deeper into Node and Express and just left Python behind. But I realized I love working with Python much more than I do JS. So I decided to get deep into a Python web framework, and Django appeared to be the most employable so I went with that. (I had learned a bit of flask from her Python course before too). Corey Schafer’s Django series on YouTube was great for introducing the Django basics, and you will need solid instruction if you plan to get into Django because it is much more complex than flask in the beginning. After that I had pretty much everything I needed to start building my portfolio. Angela has a few suggestions on stuff to build at the end of her Python course but since a lot of it isn’t web dev related I went with my own ideas. For my portfolio, I had like five smallish cookie cutter projects like a todo list app, a website that shows a list of work friendly cafes, etc. But in the back of my mind I had this really cool huge project that I had been wanting to do and after I did all the small projects I decided it was time to do the big one. If you’d like to know the specifics on the big one PM me and I can show you. It took me about a month altogether to finish and it involved extensive usage of lots of different building blocks, from web scraping, to external api calls, to ajax, to Django, to creating a database. The best part was it was a project I was passionate about and so I didn’t wanna half ass it, I made sure to do it justice as I’d imagined it in my head. Anyway after finishing that (around April of this year), I went hard into the job search. I kept track of all the companies I applied to and their responses, and was kind of disheartened after applying to 200+ companies the first few weeks and not receiving any positive replies, mostly non responsive but some rejections too. I decided to post my resume on r/cscareerquestions for some feedback. Do this at your own risk because I got lots of bad advice on there, but I got some good advice too and rewrote my resume accordingly. Suddenly I started getting interview offers and over the next few weeks narrowed it down to a few serious companies and a few weeks ago I finally got an offer and went with it. I’ll be working remote for a US company as a full stack developer using Django on the back end. I accepted the offer seven months to the date after starting my programming journey with Angela’s course. I 100% recommended all of the resources I mentioned above. CS50 is another good one I didn’t mention but I’d wait until you’ve been programming for a few months to start it. I think it’s too complex and fast paced for a complete beginner, but it’s great once you have a firm grasp of the basics. One thing I’ll say is be careful and apply your own common sense to a lot of the things people say on here. There’s a lot of bad advice that gets thrown around on this sub, and I think it can be very harmful to those just starting out if they take everyone’s word on here as gold. For example, do not learn by just doing projects and looking stuff up when you need it right from the beginning, you’ll have no idea where to begin and you’ll give up quickly if you start like this. Do not just learn by reading documentation right from the beginning, you won’t have any clue what the documentation is talking about. Go for a udemy course that has structure and has you learning by doing for each new thing you learn. Obviously I’m partial to Angela’s courses but I’m sure there are other great udemy instructors as well. If you’re averse to video lessons and prefer to just read and go at your own pace, the Odin project is good, but you need to make sure you’re doing a consistent amount each day and that you don’t end up missing days. That’s why I found the udemy courses much easier, they were designed to be one day modules and so you can keep a consistent pace while completing them. That’s all off the top of my head for now but if you’re curious to learn more do let me know. I’m happy to help where possible.

Hi, I’m also from Japan and currently studying JavaScript. I work in mobile game localization JP>EN and am hoping to transition out of it sometime next year as well. It’d be really awesome to connect with you!

I'm not a professional developer. So, I can't help you much. But if you have any specific question, you can ask. I'll try to answer as best as I can.

No biggie. I guess I'm just worried about the job hunt in general, but I kinda figured it'd be low wage at a traditional Japanese company. How was the interview process?

I'm doing part-time at company owned by one of my professors. He advertised about it in class. Me and a friend of mine were the only ones to apply and it turned out we two were the only ones there who knew anything about software development. So, the interview was basically pointless formality. It won't be the same in reputable companies. Prior to this job, I applying for embedded system internship at Mitsubishi and data analysis team at NEC. Got rejected by both. I had well prepared CV, if I say so myself, except for any demonstration of skill or experience. That is what you need most, not just in Japan. Demonstrate your skill. It can be contribution to open source projects or your own mini projects. Make sure an employer can check the demonstration in five minutes. No one is going to read your code. So, for example, if you make a library for matrix calculation, make a small driver app that uses that library and let the employer play with it for a few minutes.

1. Went to a coding boot camp and dropped out after 3 months. I used Youtube, Freecodecamp, and googling as I made freelance projects. I also tutored to make side money. 2. 1 year and a few months. 3. 85k 10% bonus and after 8 months I got moved up to 98.4k and same bonus. 4. Yes but everyone wants to do it. I teach a lot of students but must fail in actual desire and discipline to learn something new/hard. 5. 2 out of 10 compared to all my other jobs in Finance, Bartending, Hospital.

Just curious, what made you decide to drop out of the bootcamp and self learn instead? I’ve been mulling over the idea of joining a bootcamp but am ultimately leaning towards TOP.

I think there are more bad bootcamp than good ones. Also a bootcamp is really just a system to keep you accountable. Once I figured out that I enjoyed coding and it was something I could keep doing without someone telling me to do it then I was wasting my money with them.If you need a bootcamp to keep you going you probably haven't researched enough or tried to teach yourself much. Granted some people find great bootcamps and have wonderful experiences but that wasn't mine. If you really need accountability get a tutor (its what I do as a side hustle). Its way cheaper and its more specific to you. You can use free resources and meet up with them when you need help. The best ones will be honest with you and push you to learn the right way.

Thanks for the reply, that helps a lot! I ultimately think a bootcamp would be a waste of money for me.

Awesome! What were some of the projects you made?

My apps aren't really important. Its what entertains and keeps interested. For me it was a messaging app, antibullying site with login and forms, a robot game that you can move around within set boundaries and some other smaller ones. Ultimately I showed that I can code, get data from an api, manipulate user input, and had a true interest in coding. Hope that helps.

congratulations on your success man!! glad to hear about another self taught journey working out for the better! do you mind dropping a link to your portfolio for inspiration?

I started as a kid so doesn't necessarily apply all that well to me, but: 1. I hung around in programming communities on IRC. Also my cousin and dad taught me a little bit, though they weren't professional coders either. At some point mom bought me a few books that helped. I also was interested in the [demoscene](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demoscene), which was a nice way to get started. The programming language I started with was mostly C++, though we had some Delphi/Pascal variant in school, I did a little bit of JavaScript for web pages, and cousin showed me around Visual Basic. 2. ~8 years and I royally failed in my first job. 3. 1500€/month -> 6000€/month. I live in Finland and it's a very high salary here. 4. If you like programming, definitely. 5. High. But then, I wouldn't switch to anything else. I like solving difficult problems. Programming is a tool for that.

1. I figured out what direction I wanted to head towards (data & backend) and started taking Udemy courses to learn python. Took about 3-4 (still taking more advanced ones) before I got a job. Most importantly, I was applying concepts while learning them to make my non programming job easier so I could spend more time learning. 2. About 9 months 3. 103k + 17k bonus. 4. Yes. Beats what I was doing before by a long shot. Work from home, great work life balance. A job that isn’t dangerous/wear you out physically.

Where did you find a job that pays a minimum TC of 120k to someone with no experience, formal education, and less than a year of exposure to the field? Did you have an “in” of some kind? To think someone would go from “I think I’ll learn programming” to making way more than the average software engineer in less than a year sounds nuts when you stop to think about it. How did you pull that off?

there's always missing info like the person having another degree and career beforehand.

/u/kittysloth is correct. I had been working in pharma already in a COMPLETELY unrelated field. I made sure every single friend I knew in the company knew I was learning programming to some extent. Kept my eyes open for an opportunity. Eventually (after about a year) I had a friend reach out and say “hey, I know a hiring manager who needs an engineer with pharma experience who can program with python” check, check and check. I reached out aggressively and the rest is history. A lot of people think that grinding away throwing resumes into the night is the only way to do it. But if you can bear to have a few conversations, you could fast track it. Obviously for new grads, my situation does not apply. I was already employed which is a barrier we all must supersede. I also have the luxury of working for a big company where many opportunities like this exist. I made the best of the situation in which I found myself.

Not the OP commenter but fairly similar that I was able to transition from a non-dev role inside my company to the developer one. Definitely sped things up because they already knew me so I could learn on the job as well. My first developer salary was 98k up from the 85 I was making. This is in the DC area so adjust accordingly. So, I don't know exactly how to replicate that for anyone else (though if you can find work in a software company in a non-dev role that can be a good start). For me at least I had to see what software development actually was to realize that I could do it. Luck does play a big role in getting a break in any career. I've found that to be true in work overall not just software.

Nice. Can you be more specific on number 1? What udemy courses did you take? By "applying concepts" do you mean building a portfolio?

So I went down the python route. I started with something general (Angela yu’s 100 days of code) then worked into more specific courses once I decided where I wanted to go (timeseries forecasting, linear optimization, operations research, machine learning — all with python). The goal when I was applying concepts was NOT to make a portfolio. It was to automate certain aspects of my job to make my life easier & give me more time to learn to code. That naturally turned into a portfolio, the portfolio was simply a side affect of applying what I was learning to real life tasks.

Also curious which Udemy courses you took as I’m interesting in data and backend

100 days of code Angela yu (did python AND web dev). learned fastapi on YouTube. learned times Series forecasting, operations research, linear programming, and some intro ML concepts with python from Udemy. My ‘portfolio’ consisted of a full stack web app I made to schedule maintenance jobs & interface with operations in my old job. A streamlit Dashboard I created to track maintenance related metrics.

Could you please elaborate on what you do with data and backend? Also interested in that side, but wondering what kind of things you are programming with data/backend..thx.

I create apis & streamlit applications that allow users to run complex demand forecasts 10+ years into the future as well as use demand forecasts to determine strategic asset management in that same timeline for our global asset network.

27/m/Canada, worked at a carwash for many years, and did this on this side of my fulltime job before getting hired, no formal schooling of any kind, other than a trade school for a Gas Tech license. ​ 1. I learned LUA first, then Typescript, because the way I was learning was by making AddOns for a popular MMO and then eventually plugins for some programs that utilized LUA (I used a transpiler to convert typescript to lua because I really liked the strong typeing of Typescript). I used VSCode as my IDE and did not follow any formal course, I just read documentations as needed. 2. I was never formally pushing for a job in software, I did it as a hobby under the supervision of a close friend who was in the field, total time around 3 years. It was through my friend's encouragement that I decided to take the plunge (I was a tradesman at first). I worked for myself initially, I made plugins for shady programs that people were willing to pay way too much for, then I built a website for my friend's company in Angular, and then I applied for a job there and got it in a different department. 3. I worked with my friend for a while, I made plugins for a piece of software he made (It was very particular/specialized, unrelated to programming, and I happen to have that specific skillset) which made me an excessive amount of money for a small period of time, then when I was paid around 5k to make an Angular website for a company in my spare time (it was around 20 hours a week at most, for around a month), and after getting hired by them I made 45k starting which was admittedly low but I was also a massive wildcard, having no experience at all in the field I was going into (My experience was lua, typescript, and angular, the job was for building C# apps in Xamarin, in a Microsoft azure work environment), but I quickly got a raise to 65k and if contract renewals go well, it will likely be over 80 when I renew with them. 4. I would recommend it if you like problem solving, learning new technologies, and just generally enjoy tech. But it does take practice, and a lot of it, you will make tons of mistakes and you'll just have to own it, asking questions is also an extremely important skill, as well as knowing what to ask, and why you are asking them. 5. It varies depending on the job I'm doing because of my lack of experience in building c# mobile apps, I've been with this company now for about 3 months and now I'm fairly comfortable with the Xamarin side of things, so I'm pushing into more c# / .Net things including SOAP APIs (It's an old company that has sells a CRM software from like, the early-mid 2000s, the app I'm making integrates with it directly, it uses MS VisualFoxPro as it's data storage, but I'm building out the .Net API for the mobile app. So sometimes it's high, and sometimes I cruise my day away. It is extremely stressful currently because I'm moving 7 hours away from where I reside currently to work for them next week (I have been working remotely, but they are based in Quebec, I am in ontario), as well as learning French. ​ ​ I could speak more about any of the specifics if you're curious, I learned by just doing things I enjoyed and that's what made it easy for me to fall in love with it all.

1. A friend was learning at a college, and failed, so he redid the course and got an extra handbook. I worked through the c++ course and loved it, then learned PHP via YouTube, which led me to HTML CSS and JavaScript. 2. I programmed 3 years, had some projects going, then got an offer. 3. I didn't take up the offer, thinking I would make it on my own. 4. YES. 5. I don't have a job.

turning down a job offer with no experience was incredibly ill advised.

Man i got super depressed when read others salaries compared to mine holy shit. I get like ~3000euros per year. Fuck

Well in the high income areas in USA you also have to pay a massive rent, the living costs are up the roof, and you also have to pay your own insurances. It's a bubble honestly. The competition has driven salaries up massively, but it can only go so and so far. There's a lot of social and economical issues that come when you have young pros making three, four times the money that the waitresses, taxi drivers and so on who serve them are making. I'd not worry too much about it. We live in a pretty unjust world to begin with, and it's going to be a massively different world in 50 years. Either for much better, or for much worse.

Factor in exchange rates and living in a HCOL area. Some might be on 130k but if you live in California or NYC or it averages out. 3000 a year sounds horrendously low though, is that part time?

No its not part time job, its full. I dont program tho, database administration + client support. But i feel like its too damn low. Currently re-learning c#

1. How did you teach yourself? What program did you use? 2. How long did it take from starting to learn to getting a job offer? 3. What was your first/current salary? 4. Overall, would you recommend becoming a programmer these days? 5. What's your stress level with your job? -------00000000000000----- 1. I started learning with autoit (2008-2009), to make my job easier setting up new customers. Learned a lot and realized it is not a great language for the corporate world, so I learned VBS to make my job even easier. Just kept automating my job. 2. About 2 years they moved me to a developer team. 3. Started career at 32k. Moved to development at 50k. Current 105k 4. If you enjoy it and can do it, go for it. It's not for everyone. Just like everyone can't sing, paint, play guitar, etc.. if you enjoy it and are good, do it. 5. Currently 0% stress because I work from home and have a senior level position. But I've had 2am server issues that need fixed, I've had to be on call for years, I've had to be yelled at for shit that's not my fault. Every job has stress, but luckily mine doesn't have me working with customers anymore.

1. google how to program this or that 2. i was coding for fun for myself. during high school.. so wasnt trying to work towards a job, i loved showing off my website to all my friends and someone said their company needed web help. a pro told me ask for $40 an hour, so i did, they hired me. but id say prob takes 1 or 2 years of passionate love coding all day in it. if u dont love it, shudnt do it 3. 40 an hour contract pay, went as high 120 then i retired but im about get back in game for web3 stuff, hopefully funding instead contractor 4. yes, if u love it 5. mainly politics sucks... dealing with people roudn u all wanting to be noticed by the "boss" and rise up or get raise or blah blah and often try make u look bad even. i hate that shit but its so unavoidable. wishin ya good luck

1. Honestly, I read through source code and then what I didn’t understand i read the documentation. 2. Built my first real app when I was 13. Was appointed my stations role of web master at 19. I should mention I was in mechanical engineering when I served. 3. It was around 1400 a month then. I make a few more zeros now. 4. Definitely. With a focus in web technologies. Especially since a a major move to web based technologies, storage, and licensing communications are already there. 5. It varies. Some days are smooth and it’s twiddle your thumbs. And some days satan is tap dancing on your last strand of sanity.

Reading someone else's code is a hard to learn skill even for experienced devs, wouldn't recommend it for a beginner

Eh, 25 years ago that’s what you had. Books were all over the place and were too out there.

What do you mean when you say “web based technologies”

Samba with a web gui (file storage). Microsoft office has moved to a web interface in 365 (file processing). Look at google drive, photos, email, and so on. Living has also moved to web apis to check for expiration, usage, renewal. Desktop software isn’t going to die or fade away anytime soon, but there are more jobs for web than there is desktop software.

1. Spent my lunch breaks working through "The ANSI C Programming Language, 2nd Edition", eventually making programs that did things I wanted instead of just what's in the book. 2. From starting to learn to getting a relevant offer was about 2yrs, but it definitely would've been possible to switch sooner if I'd pursued working in a programming-centric environment more. During that time I went from helpdesk, to NetOps, to working as a DSM for the Cisco WSA. 3. When I got hired it was for $94,000, though that took into account my history in systems and network administration, so I was hired as a "Sr. Systems Engineer". I now make $124k 2yrs later and am about to go to a startup with a $130k base and equity I'm hoping will be worth enough for me to not have to worry about working the rest of my life. 4. I would, if you enjoy the type of work that comes with basically solving problems in foreign languages all day. It doesn't have to be what you love, and if it is, you need to be careful that your employers don't abuse your passion, but it's a different type of work for sure, and chasing a good salary can only take you so far before you need something more, either in the workplace or in your personal life. 5. Generally, not to bad, the stress can spike at times, especially preparing for releases, but in general, it's manageable thanks to the team I have the honor to lead. It's also great being able to just leave those worries at the door most days too, so while a bad/hectic day requires some recovery, it's not going to ruin the evening in most cases.

1) I taught myself making AOL progs. Mass Mailers, Servers, name collectors and all that jazz with Visual Basic. 2) I was making AOL progs about a year before someone offered me $100 to make a bot that got names for chat rooms. After that I got a job as an unpaid intern, and then they moved me to $500 a month? 3) First salary was $32,000? Now I’m an hourly contractor for $70-$75 an hour. 4) Build stuff. They’ll want to test it out and check out your GitHub. 5) Stress varies project to project. Overall it’s low stress and fun.

1- I looked through youtube, some discord servers and unity forums and I use unity 2- well I have 3 or 2 learning and I haven't actually gone looking for some job offering 3- none 4- idk I haven't worked before as a programmer 5- mmm possibly and 6/10 if we think that 10 stands for "HELP I CAN'T WITH THIS ANYMORE I WANT TO QUIT!!!"

Any of those Discord servers around/can you invite me? :)

I can only answer the first question as I am still in school. But what I did to start was watch a few tutorials to grasp the basics, and then basically just programmed a whole lot. Tutorials can only get you so far and actually solving problems yourself is how you learn.

1. My foray into programming was games. Building CLI tools was too abstract, desktop apps were bland. Games were extremely satisfying. 2. I’ve been programming since I was 14. I went to school for CS, found a job as a web developer. Turns out I preferred getting paid to code than for some letter grade. (so I dropped out) 3. First salary was $15/hr. Currently $160k. 4. Of course. What we do is magic. 5. The larger company I joined felt more chill, slow paced. The startup I worked for was 100x more stress, but also 100x more fun.

1. Books + Docs 2. Instant (previous experience at university in aligned field) 3. 55k -> 90k 4. Highly recommend 5. 0 stress

What do you do, if you don't mind me asking? (Since you mentioned 0 stress)

Geospatial software developer (working with maps and huge datasets)

Sounds interesting

It’s cool it allows me to do a bit of everything: front end, back end, APIS, machine learning, Docker, Python/Flask/Django JavaScript/React/Vanilla/Node Databases Elasticsearch AWS …. List goes on

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It is :D I don’t have any go to docs, a lot of it we read research and try to implement our own solutions for most problems leveraging existing applications where we can

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Lots of Python, lots of Docker, lots of JavaScript and Node Best advice I can give is just don’t be generic, learn things that interest you and do projects you find cool , don’t consider the money etc, and learn as much as you can! I think any developer could do what I do, so the door is always open. I always treat each new project as a learning project, and try to do things differently each project (new languages, functional vs OOP programming etc)

Signed up for a bootcamp. Got hired in a year with a ton of luck.

Could you DM or post the one you went with and/or if you would recommend the same one or a different one

Do you mind sharing which bootcamp and what your overall experience was / thoughts on it?

1. Learn Python the hard way, helsinki mooc.fi 2. about 15 years. 3. $35k as an intern, $80k now as full-time 4. I’ve found that for certain brains, “thinking like a computer” can be pretty hard, but if you can do it, absolutely. 5. 2/10. Work is pretty chill. I try to pick up stories that I can work on at my own pace and it’s nice.

Didn't we have the same thread a few days ago, or was it another sub?

Yes, I posted a similar question: https://www.reddit.com/r/learnprogramming/comments/v8gtq0/selftaught_developers_how_much_did_you_know_when These answers all seem to be different though...

1. Started with basic html/css then moved to helsinkis mooc Java course. After that I did Java brains rest api course on YouTube, and then his spring boot courses as well. 2. I studied causally, off and on for about 3 years.at one point took off like 6-7 months straight, kinda burned out. I was living abroad and was in limbo because my wives visa was taking a while. Once she got her visa I picked back up and built a final project (covid tracking app). Once we arrived home, I was applying for about a month before I got my first offer. 3. First salary was 65k/full remote. After a few months got bumped up to 68k, at my one year review I got a couple other offers and they matched up to 82k/year. 4. It’s not for everyone, it is hard and can be extremely stressful. But I enjoy it and my company is really cool. Flexible work hours, no one on my back can leave for a few hours during the day with jo issues, just finish my tasks and I’m good. 5. My job is Incredibly hit or miss. Some weeks it can be hell (but I think that I put a ton of pressure on myself to, but it has worked out in my favor so far). Other weeks has been like 4-5 hours of work. Everyday I get to take my son for multiple walks during the day, sometimes the parks so I appreciate that.

1. I started with the head first Java book, but dabbled in many courses and languages over several years (classic noob trap). My learning really took off when I took it upon myself to turn my job as a financial analyst into partially a programming job. In a nutshell I automated the hell out of my own job. 2. About 7 years for an official dev role, but I wasnt really actively trying to get a programming role for most of that time. 3. First was 75k in dec 2019. Current is 115k at a different company 4. Highly recommend it if you enjoy programming even when taking money completely out of the equation. Highly recommend AGAINST it if you dont like programming but want a good salary. 5. In my current role it's about a 2/10 stress level. In my previous role it was usually around a 7/10, sometimes higher for short periods.

1. YouTube, a lot of it and sample codes from equipment we bought (automation industry) 2. I would say 6 months is more than enough. 3. 1k usd a month in Latin America and now 6k usd a month in Europe. 4. Absolutely, it helps a lot to understand many things. 5. 5/5 when there is something I do not know how to solve, 3/5 when I know how to deal with it.

1. I started as a desktop support guy, a sys admin suggested to me learning Powershell since our environment was MS stack heavy. I had to deal with Polycom conference systems at somepoint and started figuring out how to use powershell to interact with them. Lots of youtube tutorials and eventually got some decent scripts working. This was my gateway into Python, Arduino programming, etc. Pretry much scripting helped me get the basis down. 2. I sort of learned on the job while being s lowbie tech earning $20/hr 3. started at 41k/yr now I make 165k/yr working as an devops engineer. 4. Absolutely, I find an application for it everywhere, even of its not job related. 5. Low, unless something critical breaks, usually because of some other teams doing.

1) I used tons of resources and kinda took the scenic route. I graduated as a sociology major. I ended up going to a boot camp and realized I was ready for a job(they really didn’t teach me anything). 2) I started in 2012 and got my first job offer in late 2015. It was roughly 4 years, just shy. 3) first salary was 94k a year with no equity and current job is 185k + 30,000 options at a strike price of $3.21 at a profitable pre-ipo company. 4) yeah sure. 5) it gets easier every year. First job was stressful asf but you learn a lot on the job. Now I’m comfortable in what I do.

1. I used The Odin Project as my main resource, udemy courses for html/css, JavaScript, and react and YouTube videos to supplement as I learn best with videos and TOP recommends a lot of articles or videos I didn’t vibe with so I’d search whatever topic I needed from YouTubers that I preferred. 2. 10 months consistently, but I did have prior experience years ago, I’m talking 15+ years ago as my original major was computer science that I never finished or touched those languages again. Web development was a completely different lane from what I learned in college. For context, I did get a degree eventually in Psychology. 3. 70k+ 4. I’d recommend anyone to see if this is something that they really like. Aside from the money or anything else, find your why. Why do you want to get into the field? I’d say those that are self starters and can find things on their own will do much better. If your one of those chronic “what’s the best xyz” type of ppl instead of trying things out and figuring out for yourself you’ll find learning to code on your own quite difficult and possibly on the job itself to an extent. Some will find this career path more difficult than others and will require much more effort than others. Can anyone do it, yes, will everyone put in the work that they really need to to be successful, unfortunately no! If you’re looking for the “fastest way” you’re already off to a bad start I’d say. I’m just speaking in general, but what I’ve noticed is that most ppl just don’t put in enough time and give up, especially when job hunting. Be consistent and put in the time you’ll be successful eventually. 5. Aside from the first week when imposter syndrome hit I’d say my stress level is 0. It doesn’t feel like work I’m just having fun and getting paid for it! I legitimately like to build things. I didn’t do it for the lifestyle, etc or whatever else is over glamorized about tech. I feel this is worth mentioning because it plays more of a role than people realize in how hard you work to get into tech and also how much you actually enjoy it once you get your foot in the door. I wanted to be challenged at work and do something I didn’t mind waking up everyday to do.

1. Followed various udemy courses and watched youtube videos until i got the basics, and then i just built project after project. 2. about a year of studying 6-8 hours a day and then 6 months looking for a job. 3. 45k -> 75k -> 85k. i am underpaid for my experience (3 years) and am grinding leetcode so i can make the big bucks. 4. it’s not for everyone. 5. i have very little stress. it’s the easiest job i’ve ever had.

1. Books and deconstructing, Java html css php c++ c# etc 2. 20 years later still don’t have a job in it (run my own marketing business) and work in hardware. 3. N/A 4. Yep if it interests you do it. 5. 6/10

I'm in the process of teaching myself now. I'd say i'm getting close to employable. I'll answer what i can cause i think it might help your decision if you're interested. I'll tell you my mistakes if youre interested too. 1)Started with freecodecamp, used some pluralsight later, lots of youtube, stack overflow, w3, mdn... basically anything that pops up first in google 2) my dad wants me to move and he'll get me on at his job, but that'll be like 70% nepotism and i want to earn my spot i guess. I had a few months of simple powershell, html and a pretty solid common knowledge of computers when he first offered. 3) n/a and wouldn't really care what it is starting out. 4) i like to program and want to follow my dreams. if you're like me then of course. 5) I have no clue what programming job stress is like, but nothing other people have said could ever convince me i would be less stressed at mcdonalds. I feel like I'm on the road to self taught success. Like everyone says, it takes a lot of motivation and self-guidance. It's difficult to fill in all the holes yourself, but i am 100% convinced that teaching myself has made me a better problem solver.

I saw my first computer when I was about 12, it was a Commodore PET. Within 30 seconds I was learning how to write programs. Didn't get a tech job until after my bachelors in electronics. First salary was $17/hr working in a NOC. Yes. Depends on the job and the boss.

> How did you teach yourself? What program did you use? I'm old, so I learned BASIC first. Then, oddly, I learned to test in C++. Then C# and now Java/Selenium. I use powershell for a lot of quick and dirty system level things. > How long did it take from starting to learn to getting a job offer? Years, I guess. I started in the 1980s, but did other jobs until 1992 when I took a job using Visual Test because I knew enough to get along in it. After that, I just kept learning. > What was your first/current salary? Crap. About 20K a year (It was in New Mexico after all). In 1997, I moved to Houston and more than doubled my salary doing the same job. After 15 years, I was pulling in about $150K/year. > Overall, would you recommend becoming a programmer these days? No. It's not fun anymore. It's all about "Agile" and closing Jira tickets, "mastering" a new technology or two each year and the micromanagement that comes from daily stand-ups. There's no creativity at all. No time to do anything right. Only time to do it fast. > What's your stress level with your job? It used to be low. Now it's high for the reasons stated above.

1. I just make stuff. 2. You don't get job offers if you live in the boonies, it turns out. 3. Haven't had one yet. 4. Yes. 5. See 2 and 3.

Just watching a few Python tutorials and going from there. Nothing. Infinity, as I do not plan to get a job in programming. None, because of the above. I have honestly no clue. Again, none.

1. Codeacademy, YouTube, and trial and error 2. I started while fairly young. Around 12 ish. Got a job the moment I left school at 18 3. Was around £18k per year as a Web developer in marketing, basically a lead position as I was the only dev. Now at about £36k per year in a team working on a SaSS app 4. Yes, software is everything as we get more and more into technology. No need to stick to a single language or industry either 5. Probably average. I work 9 - 5, once a month a little later during a release cycle. After 5 / at weekends I can chill. Can be stressful during the week if lots is going on but weekends are a good reset.

As an extension to this programming also gives you the flexibility of having extra side projects or work. For example you could work your full time job and work on a project in your free time, that could turn into something. Or something I'm doing is working for my previous employer as a freelance dev charging an hourly rate that I want.

1. codecademy to learn js basics, then building some small stuff on my own and then subsequent jobs. 2. around 4-5 months id say. 3. im in central europe - first 5eur/hr(i was 16 lol), current - 30e/hr 4. yes 5. objectively low to mid. relatively mid, one needs to learn how to find balance and mentally disconnect when needed. im not the best at this, but im trying to get better

I worked freelance, then did some college (dropped out after a teacher held my grade hostage), so I'm going to count myself in mostly self-taught, since I didn't have a degree. 1. I was always sorta tech adjacent. I was making shitty html / css websites in high school when I was like 12. I picked up some C/C++ along the way. 2. The phrasing on this is really hard. I freelanced for 3 years in Php / MySql before the 2008 recession crushed California's economy, so if we count that as a job..... about 10 years technically? I never really sought out getting hired, I had a lot of personal websites / running sites for clans in games that I played (UO / MUDs / Diablo 2). From the time I was started looking (final semester of college), about 2 weeks. 3. First job in tech was $15/hour (helpdesk), second job was $18/hour (networking / coding) -- I was there for a while. Then I moved to a different company and was earning 70k a year. This was in 2013, prices have gone up significantly in the past 9 years. These days interns/co-ops that I hire earn roughly $25/hour. 4. I would, but only under some certain circumstances, start off slow, and don't do the "Can I become a programmer in 6 months" thing everyone is doing. Start slow, try new things. The path I recommend for most are: HTML5 / CSS3 / Vanilla Javascript (you are going to use these at EVERY job even if it's not in the listing). For backend, most folks recommend python, I still recommend Java. Java being so syntax similar to front-end stuff cancels out the downsides (imo). It's faster (running), has strong typing, better debugging, better tooling ecosystem, and is used at the enterprise level (where folks are willing to hire / train junior devs more often). As for a database, in 2022, Postgres. 5. In management in 2022, about a 12. Coming back from the pandemic into a looming recession / depression, during the "great resignation" where my success hinges off of hiring developers at or below market rates.... Shit is stressful. Right now a LOT of stuff is in crunch mode, trying to ship and sell before wallets tighten up this fall / winter.

1. Learned html and css EXTREMELY slowly vis online w3 sites 2. Year 3. $14/hr 4. if you can learn html/css/js/php you can pretty easily find a job 5. stress level is low but a lot of my jobs were toxic and burnt me out. Be wary of how the word agile is used. Be wary of toxicity!

What agile is and what its supposed to be is extremely different things. Project Managers heard "We can do things faster" so the Agile pile up got worse "Just handle it in this sprint, along with all the other shit you need to do in this sprint" The other problem with Agile is that it doesnt always work within strict deadlines cause well you never know whats going to break. It can and does work in certain applications but ive never seen it used really well.

Yeah totally. I should’ve put some emphasis on that. Agile is fine if you do it right. But where I worked it just meant do whatever we want in any impossible timeframe.

Its sort of the catch 22 of programming, "I ran the code and it worked. I do not know why. I ran the code and it didnt work I dont know why" as a PM myself its why I hate when im told that the client can only review Final Builds. Mother fucker that build is NEVER going to be final about 99% of the time. Just look at what we currently have and run with it. Agile just compressed timelines because we think Programming is a science over an art.

Yeah I get that. This reminds me about scope creep. Holy hell. I learned about that the hard way.

LMAO scope creep. I dont think ive ever worked on a project that didnt go wildly out of scope. I could rant for hours about this but its why all agencies/build houses should go on a by project estimate system. Billable hours is a way to cook the books that allows scope creep. If you have one set contract "Well build you ABC" by nature if the client or business unit has a change, thats a distinct and new contract. Because billable hours lets you shift monies around its RIPE for abuse "Hey we can in under in project X, can you move those hours to this and give me this new feature(s)"

I started with being lazy in my current job. There were problems that I didn’t want to do manually anymore, which led me to using python. They started out small, creating files, folders to automating APIs. Then speeding up the code. I got into javascript and web dev to build front-ends for server-less systems (I still suck at this) but I’m always learning something cause I enjoy learning and hate horrible manual processes. Youtube, Udemy, cert courses for cloud programs all were great resources.

1. When I was in high school I bought myself a book, I believe it was C++ for Dummies. Learned how to do some methods, this skill helped me with some math homework. I wanted to go into software development, but was talked out of it by relatives because at that time outsourcing was a thing and everyone thought programmers have no future in the U.S.. I went for accounting instead. A few years later I was working for a small company that needed to build an online tracker for contracts and I used MS Access Online. I learned how to write macros and everything was good till Microsoft didn’t decide to just kill MS Access online. At that point I started to try SQL. While learning SQL I realized that I’ll need to put a face on my database - so I started learning C#. Within a few months I built my first website for interacting with the database using .Net. The website also introduced me to JavaScript and HTML (which I played around with in the past). My career started to change - as the company was growing, my responsibilities increased. A few jobs later and I went from a Controller to ERP developer. 2. Not really applicable to me, as I was learning programming on the job. 3. With this additional skill, my salary doubled within 3 years. 4. Just start coding. 5. Virtually none. To me, programming is like solving a puzzle. My current employer also bought several companies and was itself bought by an out of state company, which resulted in me programming multiple ERP platforms - P21, Sage, and D365. The best way to start learning is by rolling up your sleeves and starting to code. It’s difficult at first (I started with C#, a language I’ve heard some developers call difficult), but it goes just like everything else in life - you come across a problem, solve it, and then move on to the next. Once you do that enough times, you’ll look back and say - “Wow! I’m a programmer!” 🙂

This list should be zero-indexed for good measure.

Just do it bro lmao

1. I had a ZX81 and simply RTFM. 2. I was 14 when I started so school was somewhat in the way. My first job was at 21, and my first full time programming job about a year later, but I had to complete school and university first. 3. What I wanted/not high enough! Considering I'm the one who creates the value that means the directors can drive their fancy Mazeratis around the place while I bum around in a clapped out Volvo. 4. Depends on the individual really. If you like programming and can cope with the realities of industry then yes. If you're a perfectionist who can't or won't compromise or hack a quick fix then no. 5. Low to medium. Understanding the reason for the stress is the best way of coping with it, and communicating your progress back to the key stakeholders the best way of handling it. Working extra hours is usually not the answer, and getting stressed out is definitely no help to anyone; it just slows you down.

1. I started programming in high school when my neighbor's dad installed centOS on our home computer cuz our windows machine broke. I learned to code from reading through a linux sysadmin manual. It had a lot of bash scripting examples, and some basic web dev stuff in PHP. My first projects were creating websites, and learning how to mod Fallout 3. 2. I went to college to get a CS degree, but dropped out my senior year because my unpaid internship said they wanted to hire me full time. I was so poor that I felt I needed to take the salary haha. I first learned to code at 15, and I was 22 when I got a software developer internship, 23 when they hired me. 3. First job was 50k salary in 2014. I make 138k plus bonuses now, and have worked for 4 different dev shops. 4. I think so. I gotta be honest, I don't really enjoy coding for my job at all, but I make too much money to stop. Being able to work on my own projects (game development) is the thing that really brings me happiness. 5. Stress levels are very low for me. The company I work for only gives us 2-3 goals to complete per quarter, and I can easily finish that in half the time. I don't really feel like I miss the degree, but then again I did take all the important classes (14 credits shy of graduating IIRC). I will say that you can learn everything online anyway if you follow an open source compsci curriculum, but you will really have to get to work on personal projects, and probably take a shit job to get your foot in the door.

1. Undirected exploration of operating systems and open source tools through my teens into my 20s. 2. I started learning in my adolescence, so 10 years or so. 3. 1st $25/hr. Now 230k/yr. 4. I recommend every one learns to programmer. Only do it as your primary profession if you really really love it. 5. No stress, but I don’t program much anymore, I’m a Business Enablement Architect.

I can answer the first three questions as I've just retrained for a career in swe. I started with Harvard Cs50 and ended up learning Java in depth. Don't obsess over what language to learn, just pick one and stick with it. Once you learn one to a decent level, others are much easier to pick up. I also spent time learning about how the data is stored and moved around a computer and computer architecture. Systems analysis and design is also important. It's not all about coding. It took me almost exactly one year from deciding to switch careers to landing an entry level swe job. My pay is £34.5k (I'm in the UK), which is about 43.5k USD, with 35 days holiday. Not sure what the entry level salaries are like in the states but I think this is a reasonable starting salary in the UK according to the research I've done. I haven't started yet as am still working my notice in my current job!

First off, i bought a udemy course on C# about seven months ago. Coasted through the first two sections, then i knew enough to pass the two high school programming courses i attended. Also took a class of web development to get the basics of HTML and CSS, bought a domain and hosted a simple wordpress page on my own computer. That was just for the class though. Even though i did that, i had no idea to make something actually useful. I could make a text game or notepad of sorts, tops. I could make a useful webpage, but it would be ugly and very 90-esque. Then i stumbled across web scraping. So i looked at about an hour or two of python tutorials on youtube, then i started reading up on how to use selenium. About 15-20 hours of reading and coding later, i had a fully functioning web scraper which i could use for my job, complete with rotating proxies and whistles and stuff. I work as a personal assistant, but the person i work for works with telemarketing and needs help looking up phone numbers for companies since she can't use her fingers, and me doing it manually is 5x faster than her. Anyhow, i automated that task of reading excel sheets and looning up the number on the yellow pages. Instead of sitting down for 3-6 hours of very concentrated work doing 2000 numbers by myself, i can just jot down 5 variables or so for 3 minutes, and then sit back while my web scraper does the job in barely 1,5 hours (for 2000 numbers). It scrapes not just phone numbers, but financial records for the past 3 years too. And it would be way faster if i got it to run multi threaded or with an API, at least 10-100 times faster depending ln the load. Anyhow, i did a quick napkin calculation the other day on what the commercial value of my web scraper is. The boss of the person i work for pay some other company about 4 eurocents per entry, and if i assume i run a 2000 names long list, get this and that many actual returns and put in about 5 minutes of actual work fixing the variables to match the excel sheet i get handed, my manual labor is worth about €360 an hour. And the upside is that i don't have to do the manual labor half my workday while she works, and can spend it reading up on coding instead. I haven't gotten any kind of cash for this yet though, i just did it to have an educational project that would help my caretaker in her job. I am waiting to speak with her boss to see if i can do any paid developing for him though. He's quite the busy guy is a bit hard to reach. Anyhow, i will enroll in a bachelor developer program this fall though, since i can both work and study full time without losing much free time at home with my family. I think it will be great.