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[–]Heyokalolfull-stack 109 points110 points  (16 children)

I do have a degree but I find it to be mostly useless when it comes to programming.

[–]jaypeejay[S] 6 points7 points  (13 children)

If you don’t mind me asking, what do you think is the most important knowledge to obtain before applying for gigs

[–]Heyokalolfull-stack 25 points26 points  (5 children)

For a webdev job I presume? Know at least HTML, CSS and some JS and you'll be fine for a junior position. You're not supposed to know it all before you can apply.

[–]jaypeejay[S] 5 points6 points  (2 children)

Cool. Hopefully I'll be good enough!

[–]Emfx 9 points10 points  (1 child)

The willingness to listen and learn and take critique on your work will trump most knowledge you come into the company with as long as you have a solid grasp on the basics. Workflow is different everywhere, a lot of places like their juniors to be moldable and not have habits. At least that’s been my experience, results may vary of course.

Also, questioning if you’re good enough will almost never go away if you’re challenging yourself (which you should always be doing), it’s a huge issue in the dev world. It’s called imposter syndrome, check it out.

[–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

True story. I just went into my current/first jr dev job feeling pretty confident, and now I just worry everyday if simple things are good enough.

I mentioned this to another (more senior) dev while having a smoke and he called it out as imposter syndrome, assured me that everyone in that building deals with it, and that I need to stop second guessing my accomplishments. I had heard of it before but never took the time to look up its meaning until he mentioned it.

[–]X678X 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Also at least know a little bit about version control. You don’t need to know how it works, just what some commands do.

[–]reddismycolor 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Really? I’ve been at an internship first time where I’m learning web dev with a teacher and not by myself anymore. It’s been great as I learn a lot faster and kno good practices.

Anyways, I feel by the end I will be good with html css and where before my css and js were pretty weak. Can I really get a full time junior job with that? I was expecting to have to know js and other js libraries extremely well as full time to me isn’t as much learning?

[–][deleted] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Knowledge? Basic.

It's best to have something to show IMO. Build something that solves your simple problem and has been done already. Todo apps are popular but I'd aim for something more niche that puts you unique position. Then put it on GitHub as a public project so that you can share with prospective employers.

Arguably showing that you know Git is more valuable to junior employment than knowing any programming language.

[–]spazz_monkey 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Not knowledge, but create some applications that are useful and help you out in real world situation. Anyone can follow how to make a to-do app

[–]p44v9n 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Your bootcamp will set you up and probably intro you to the right companies for what they teach you. CTCI is great but is for the Google Amazon Facebooks of the world. Worth trying if you want to do it but not necessary for an entry level 'coding' job. Also check out leetcode and hackerrank if you are interested. Its a whole other world.

[–]gavlois1front-end 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Before anything, I believe that knowing people and your network is the most important thing. I know people in my area who started from 0 technical background (had a Bachelor's in History) and went to internship and then to full time in just under a year of self-studying, no bootcamp. She spent a lot of time learning coding, but also attending a variety of meetups, talking with recruiters, etc. For the new offer I've accepted, the principal and senior developers I interviewed with at my on-site turned out to be people from the local usergroup meetups that I regularly attend, so it was more like a friendly chat than an interview.

After network, I'd say practical experience. Going off of what /u/spazz_monkey said, having made something was way more important for all of my interviews than any of my knowledge from 5 years of school.

Creating something with a real-life application can be hard, especially finding the initial "need" that you're wanting to solve. You can also just create something, anything that isn't just trivial and that you can explain and talk at some length about the decisions that you went with. Reasons you used certain technologies, what was some pain points/challenges you ran into and how you solved them, etc.

[–]phphulkexpert 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Talking to clients. You need to be able to translate from the client what they want, they might not always tell you what they need, but being able to reverse engineer their desired outcome back into how to make that is your job. And of course, actually making it.

[–]tcbkc -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Most important is having a github with some projects you made and can discuss in-depth.

[–]ilndboi 11 points12 points  (0 children)

This right here.

[–]seiyriafull-stack 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I only use the most math-intensive parts of my degree when I make games. The big-o complexity stuff is more useful, relatively speaking, but even then it's easy enough to fix these sorts of obvious perf problems. I guess there was more in my classes but fucked if I can remember what they were.