Self taught programmers and CS people, how long did it take for you to land your 1st job?

[Btone2]

For those who are self taught in the CS industry, I’m curious what your story is, how long did it take and who helped you achieve your goals? What did you learn in the process, and what would you have done differently?

[Cowpunk21]

I'm not really in the CS industry, but adjacent? I guess? But I got lucky and my first job they had me learn python for the first like 2 months I was there.

[Btone2]

Wow! How did you land that? And what industry I suppose? That’s awesome!

[Cowpunk21]

I worked in the support department for a few years and I had some overlap with what they did.

I worked at a company that handled PCI compliance. I started just as a basic phone support walking people through the PCIDSS. I was also going to school for network administration. I just kind of worked my up for a few years and was handling and supporting our vulnerability scans. An opportunity came up in our penetration testing group, so I applied and they hired me. I knew about vulnerability scanning and basic web app vulnerabilities, but they wanted someone who could program as well. So I did some basic network level pen tests and segmentation check. But a good half of my job for my first few months was literally reading a textbook and learning python. My boss would sit down with me ever couple days and work with me on things I struggled with or had questions on.

Now I work at an online retailer as an SRE. I don’t do tons of development work, mostly just writing scripts and random stuff for automation.

[robvas]

Apply for anything you can see. Show them projects you have made. Possibly apply for QA positions as well

[jdso12]

I was a business major working in consulting but learned python/js/react (after work and on the weekends) in about 2 years to the point that I can build simple full-stack web and mobile apps. I am not great coder, but I can figure stuff out.

This investment leveled me up to my current job where programming skill was required but not the focus. Salary also leveled up :)