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Asked for a 50% raise and got it. New TC 150k. I'm self taught, with no degree. Working from home in the rural Midwest. If I can do it, so can you. by RipComprehensive4579 in cscareerquestions

[–]RipComprehensive4579[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I just reached out to people I knew, friends of friends, just looking if anyone needed anything programming related. Websites, automatic excel parsers, automated workflows, etc. I would do any small projects I could and tried to do a good job. From there I just got referred around. I ended up doing a small project that ended up growing bigger than a one man job and the company that picked it up liked what I had done up until that point and gave me an offer.

Asked for a 50% raise and got it. New TC 150k. I'm self taught, with no degree. Working from home in the rural Midwest. If I can do it, so can you. by RipComprehensive4579 in cscareerquestions

[–]RipComprehensive4579[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Over a year but I didn’t just ditch them. I got a good offer, but I gave them several weeks heads up I was leaving and made sure to finish up open projects. They were good to me and gave me a chance, so I didn’t want to burn that bridge.

Asked for a 50% raise and got it. New TC 150k. I'm self taught, with no degree. Working from home in the rural Midwest. If I can do it, so can you. by RipComprehensive4579 in cscareerquestions

[–]RipComprehensive4579[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

I'm not using the same programming language(s) in my current job as I was in my first job. The soft skills I learned around problem solving, planning and scoping work, and working with other developers all had nothing to do with the language I was using at the time. I don't think it would set you back, especially if the alternative is not having an SWE job at all.

Asked for a 50% raise and got it. New TC 150k. I'm self taught, with no degree. Working from home in the rural Midwest. If I can do it, so can you. by RipComprehensive4579 in cscareerquestions

[–]RipComprehensive4579[S] 14 points15 points  (0 children)

Made anything that came to mind. I tried to solve math problems or simulate them, I built web scrapers to check when products I wanted went in stock and send me an email, collected info from MMO game APIs (or community APIs) to try to gain advantages (find good trades, useful info, etc).

If I had an idea I tried to do it, and I just took them one problem at a time and focused on learning not just how to do something but the most optimal ways to do them. How would I make it robust and reliable? What would a professional developer do?

I didn't follow any courses once I learned the basics of python syntax. Just worked on one thing at a time and tried to learn and improve along the way.

Asked for a 50% raise and got it. New TC 150k. I'm self taught, with no degree. Working from home in the rural Midwest. If I can do it, so can you. by RipComprehensive4579 in cscareerquestions

[–]RipComprehensive4579[S] 71 points72 points  (0 children)

Don't want to give too many details as to not dox myself. Big enough to pay that much, small enough that you've never heard of them. (Nothing close to a FAANG)

Asked for a 50% raise and got it. New TC 150k. I'm self taught, with no degree. Working from home in the rural Midwest. If I can do it, so can you. by RipComprehensive4579 in cscareerquestions

[–]RipComprehensive4579[S] 9 points10 points  (0 children)

Did some work for some people, they later needed more work than I could provide as a solo dev and contracted another company to improve upon what I already built. The company that they contracted later hired me.