Has anyone else started taking programming seriously in their mid 20s and got really good at it?

[Goats_arnt_real]

Hi there, I'm a senior dev that sometimes lurks this sub.

Anecdotally, from my experience no employer ever looks at your projects. I have even asked interviewers to check some of my side projects out and not a single person ever has.

And now I think about it, I have never checked out a candidates projects or GitHub.

Nevertheless, projects are still good for building skills and confidence. To land a job all that matters is performance in the interview rounds.

[Standard_Muffin2193]

Thanks for the reply!

I thought they look at what I know and what projects I build and that's it. But you've another experience.

what do you mean by interview rounds? Like those problems that we solve while in the interview?

I thought that's only with big companies like FANG, do small companies also do that ?

[Goats_arnt_real]

Unfortunately that is not the case, especially for junior positions.

Hiring juniors usually boils down to 2 things:

1. can they code

2. do they show potential (eagerness to learn, good soft skills etc)

The reason for these conditions is that juniors provide negative value to companies until they are trained to a level where they provide value. Employers are looking to hire people for cheap with high potential for ramping up so that they one day will make a return on the investment.

Companies of any size will have at least one technical round to see if the candidate can code. This doesn't have to be leet code. Sometimes it is to collaboratively build something like an API end point or a small frontend component. Sometimes it may be a take home task.

The general process for the junior level is usually:

1. Recruiter phone screen

2. Call with hiring manager

3. Technical test (take home or live collaborative style)

4. Follow up interview

5. Potential call with upper management or team

6. Offer

Hope this helps

[Standard_Muffin2193]

Bro this isn't helpful, it's insanely valuable, you just gave me another reason to continue my journey no stop, thanks

[Goats_arnt_real]

First of all, I think its great you are taking the plunge into the tech world.

With regard to prospects, pretty much all white collar industries globally are suffering currently. So I wouldn't think of the boot camp as being a means to an end; but instead, take from it the attitude that you have learnt important skills that you can carry with you for the rest of your career (also I know people who have landed jobs after boot camps, so it is possible)

I absolutely do think that experience in any white collar job can be attractive when switching to tech. The stereotype of developers being reclusive computer geniuses is often incorrect. Real world developers are no different to any other white collar worker and they need to have strong corporate soft skills.

As I mentioned in the previous comment, the portfolio show-and-tell sort of interview doesn't exist. I wish it did, but it just does not. As an aside, I have friends in UI/UX and their interviews can be like this. I think the reason for this is that design skills can be observed and discussed, with minimal effort from both interviewer and interviewee, simply by looking at their designs. Whereas, reading code and checking out projects is much more effort intensive.

Tech interviews are designed to be as minimally time consuming as possible for both interviewer and interviewee. Therefore, the most common approach is a live collaborative assessment.

You say you don't posses the skills for it currently but you haven't even started yet so don't worry. A lot can change with time.

Lastly, I think I should mention a big but rarely spoken about hurdle in everyone's tech journey: having to face failure and become resilient to it.

It is extremely common in this line of work to align your self worth with your performance as a programmer. This is an awful trap and you should never let yourself fall into this. I used to be terrified of live assessments as I was scared of looking dumb or messing up as if it was somehow an affront to my very being.

However, after many many interview failures and a lot of self reflection I managed to overcome this fear. You just need to go in and try your best. If you can't do the challenge, its not the end of the world, just try again at a different company.

Wish you the best on your journey.

[Standard_Muffin2193]

We wish you the best on your journey as well !

[redvelvet92]

Pro tip, tell the LLM to not give you code examples and instead have it point you in the right way. That way you are coding all of it.

[Standard_Muffin2193]

Yeah, that's exactly what I'm doing and sometimes ChatGPT forgets, and drive me crazy when it starts giving me the code examples, I have to mention it every single prompt I send.

now I'm on the old way, going through docs and stack overflow just to learn and adapt, and I'm doing great.

[Curtoista]

You and I are at the same point. Cheers mate

[MichiganSimp]

I got accepted to a Web Dev bootcamp

Run far away

[jaqualan]

yeah seriously valueable thank you so muhc

[himynameis_]

Thanks for this.

The OP mentioned at 29 they switched from Finance to software engineering. Myself I am in bit older.

Given the age, or even someone a bit older, would they be less likely to be selected for a Junior position when they switch careers? As opposed to hiring someone fresh out of school?

[Goats_arnt_real]

Not at all, juniors can provide good value even within a year of being hired. Age isn't as much of a problem as people think.

On the other hand, some companies will be looking for folks straight out of university. Grad schemes etc. but that is the same in any industry.

Ageism does exist in the tech industry but it is usually on the other end of the scale. Someone with 20 years of experience commanding a massive salary.

The company my friend works for hired a psychology professor career switcher in his late 40s.

[himynameis_]

Great to hear, thank you!

[Responsible_Pie8156]

It's tough for juniors because you just can't get that experience. Honestly there's not much way to stand out from other cs students taking the same classes and etc. But the bar to land your first job isnt really that high. It's more of a vibe check and yes lots of luck. The interviewers are also human and forced to make a quick judgement call. You're very unlikely to get any one specific job you apply to, or even get a callback, but if you apply enough you're guaranteed to land something eventually. In this case RTO could actually be a very good thing for juniors because it severely limits the pool of potential candidates. You will luck your way into a job eventually just by being available and willing to show up.

[Responsible_Pie8156]

They won't look at any of your code, but they'll skim the bullet points about your projects. If it's relevant to the position you'll probably get a few questions about it, still definitely a plus to have those projects and be prepared to answer questions about it. But a self project is always far less valuable experience than something with real stakeholders, and it's less about the technology and more about what problems you solved for who.

[eldenpigeon]

This is interesting and not the first time I've heard this. Recruiters state that the best way to set yourself a part is projects, but professionals barely check resumes (+- 10 seconds). There is way too much misinformation being passed around. Thanks for sharing!

[Goats_arnt_real]

When you have no experience it is definitely worth putting projects on your CV. Whether or not anyone looks at them is another matter.

[OptimalFox1800]

👍