How to start a career as a software engineer
Following up on my previous post on “how to create jobs in Africa” , here is another post on software engineering, an area where I think there are still many opportunities to be explored by jobseekers.
I am always surprised by the number of people who are still not aware of available resources to learn almost anything for free. From Web Developer, Artificial Intelligence, Augmented Reality, Blockchain, Data scientist…The contents are of very good quality and some of them are proposed by world prestigious universities such as Harvard, Stanford. There are also online different types of help, mentorship, forum for groups taking the same class, to ask questions, share tips…
In addition of that, there are resources dedicated to help start a new career as a software engineer. The resources have information on creating online profile, preparing for interviews, doing game-coding, sharing personal work on platform like GitHub where recruiters can review.
It is advised to contribute to open source project which is very appreciated by recruiters.
During my trip in Rwanda, I did a few workshops to share resources that I hope would help newly graduated students to find a remote job. I have created a list of links which offer some advice on how to land a remote job or start a new career as a software engineer.
1. Outsourcing Job / Remote work website (where to look for jobs)
https://www.indeed.com (search for remote jobs)
https://codeable.io/ (wordpress) 53% worldwide websites built with Wordpress
Guide https://zapier.com/learn/remote-work/
2. Prepare for an interview
https://www.codingame.com/start
(Math oriented https://projecteuler.net/)
3. Learn how to code
My Recommendation: first start by learning HTML/CSS,
then learn at least one language for Front-End and one for Back-End:
Example : Front-end (Javascript) / Back-end (Phython, Java, Php, Ruby….)
http://codecademy.com/
http://www.freecodecamp.com/
https://www.udacity.com/
https://teamtreehouse.com — Learn how to design and develop for the web and iOS.
Codecademy: Learn to code — Interactive, fun way to learn how to code with friends.
codeschool.com — Code School — Learn by doing
Coursera | Online Courses From Top Universities. Join for Free
RubyMonk — Interactive Ruby tutorials
https://www.khanacademy.org/
University Consortium | Google Developers
https://developer.android.com/training/index.html
https://www.youtube.com/user/phpacademy
http://www.w3schools.com/
Help : http://stackoverflow.com/
https://jsfiddle.net/
French: https://openclassrooms.com/ : En francais et très bien fait
Web development
I have personally created a list of resources dedicated to website development that you can find here
Learn how to work on collaborative project
Git and Github for beginners => https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z9fIBT2NBGY&index=3&list=PLkbmdtbypn7TwufH3veAJ6dweRvTw57tO
More tutorial videos
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLkbmdtbypn7TwufH3veAJ6dweRvTw57tO
4. Build your portfolio
Publish your work on Github to increase your visibility
Bonus
Do one thing well: https://medium.com/small-giants/do-one-thing-well-list-2016-winter-8c12c5049601#.v4tdvgfah
What is a code : http://kiq.li/11N1
Hackers news: https://news.ycombinator.com/
Photography: http://www.diyphotography.net/stanford-professor-puts-entire-digital-photography-course-online-free/
