Developer’s state of mind — Looking for a job
How do I land a programming job? What are the main differences between junior and senior developers? What do I need to do to become really good at programming? How do I become a senior developer and how long will it take? What technologies do I need to learn?
How can I earn more money? Do I need to work on my personality or just technical skills? What can I achieve? Is it worth to do a little bit more than just code from 9 to 5? Should I care about a company’s success? Should I care about my team members getting better? What if I need to make an important decision that has a huge impact?
This series of articles is about every part of a developer's life. You can expect to find new ideas to get better at what you do, how you think, how to achieve what you seek. The first articles of the series describe struggles of beginner programmers and later on, in the next articles, I will write about more advanced topics including having a huge responsibility, taking care of the team or even making decisions that affect lives.
Applying for a first programming job? Kinda scary, isn’t it?
Why do you want a programming job? Is it possible you will do programming for a living for the next couple of years starting today? Are you willing to earn less than others until you learn the required skills? Are you okay with people correcting you as you progress? Do you think a company will pay you if you don’t know much yet?
Can you learn programming basics in the next couple of months to be able to earn a basic software engineer salary? Are you willing to join programming classes or take online courses in your free time? Perhaps an internship? Are you fine with working the very first job for free just to have a reference on your LinkedIn profile?
What are you willing to do to make companies choose you instead of others applying for the same job? Are you willing to study and work for the next couple of years to become good at software engineering?
When I first applied for a programming job, it was for a newspaper publishing company which consisted of around 200 employees at the time. I was having a huge (financial related) arguments with my parents and at a certain point, I decided to become independent and move away because I couldn't take it anymore. I found a software engineer job in the capital city of my country located circa 100km from my home town. I was 19 years old (in 2011) and had a tiny (none) experience in PHP, HTML, CSS, and Javascript. I told my soon-to-be boss Jozef, director of the Digital Media department, that I will learn what is needed and I will do everything physically possible to keep the job and become a valuable asset to the company. I also told him that I only had 200€ in my pocket and I would spend 100€ on a monthly payment for a shared dormitory room and another 100€ on food in a next 2–3 weeks and that I would need a part of my first salary paid in advance to even make the month. I decided to be this open and describe my situation as proof that I was serious. I wanted to let him know that this essentially means I had no other choice, but to learn, make money and start being good at what I do and do it fast. He called me a couple of days after the interview to inform me that I was hired. Perhaps, there was a bit of luck, but that had nothing to do with my attitude. I was certain I wanted to do it and also that I had to make it and I made sure the company knows my thinking.
Jozef, you probably don’t realize it, but your decision was very important to me and it changed my life. Thank you. I will try to pass on what I learned.
How would you react to such a story if you were in a position to hire me? What do you think could make YOU stand out from the crowd? What are you capable of doing to get the job? What can you offer? Are you willing to sacrifice a small portion of your free time to learn what is needed? What can you do to get and maintain the job and get better over time? Would it make any difference if you tried your hardest? Would there be many other people thinking similar to yourself applying for the same job as you?
If you were in a position to hire yourself, what would you expect from yourself? Do you think it is important for the interviewer to know your thinking? In the end, it probably is all about making money. But what if you were a person who everybody likes to work with? The person that everybody wants to have in their team and company because of who you are?
What if you are the person who is learning a lot, then teaches others what you learned and then makes decisions about a project or company's future? What do you think you could do in the future?
In this story, I mentioned many things that I believe helped me get hired. The point of this article is to make you think more and discover a new perspective. Everything you need to get hired is inside your mind. So what will your story be?
Do you agree with me? Do you disagree? Do you have ideas or stories to tell? Please leave a comment below. I will be grateful if you do so. These articles are meant to help software engineers like you and me. Can we help each other? Stay tuned for the next story about developer’s state of mind coming out :-)
Continue reading the next story of this series: Developer’s state of mind — Job interview & First days after landing a job
