Eliot SanfordAre you a junior web developer fresh out of bootcamp or college and struggling to find work? Even if you're self-taught, then you could still do the things in this blog to gain experience.
Look for ways that you can get experience working on your own projects, working with other developers, and helping people in the community. One of the more helpful things that you can do with these things is to broadcast them to your network of friends, so others will know that you're looking for work.
Here are some ideas to do that in the midst of the Corona Virus Pandemic:
👤 Shadowing
Shadow a dev that you've met on Twitter or at a virtual conf or live stream or an in-person job
This kind of thing will give you pseudo "internship" experience.
You'll see what day-to-day dev jobs are like + you'll start to be exposed to things that will really stretch your growth.
Interact with devs on Twitter
Like and RT the posts of all the cool tech Twitter devs that are amazing
Engage with their tweets
Share the things that they find valuable
Become a known name for them b/c of all the good reasons (don't annoy them)
Ask to dm with them
🙋🏻♂️ Volunteerism
Volunteer to help your local meetup organizer to make their job easier.
Don't have a local meetup, then join a virtual one in NYC or the Valley or anywhere else.
Feeling extra gung-ho, then create your own meetup.
Meeting people and learning will be great exp.
👷🏼♀️ Build
Always always always build projects of the things that you are learning
Don't watch a course or do a tutorial just by reading/watching/consuming only
Build something really simple and avoid getting too complex. You won't build a full-fledged Spotify clone starting out. But, you could start by building a unit converter, tic-tac-toe, or some other simple app.
Create content and ship
👩🏾🏫 Meetups
Teach at a meetup how to do one simple thing that took you a while to grasp.
Talk/write like you're just talking to you when you were learning
Your learning will grow so much while teaching others.
The opportunity will also give you an opportunity to find like-minded people and potentially network with future colleagues or managers.
💬 Groups
Create a discord study group
Invite and talk with bootcamp-ers and CS majors about what they are learning.
What are they building, then try to build their projects and ask them when you're stuck.
Go through a free course with them in the study group and learn from them.
🙌 Hack-a-thons
Go to virtual hack-a-thons
You will likely be surrounded by CS majors and newbies of all sorts
Plus, the engineers who have experience that you network with can potentially help you get a job through a referral
Brushing shoulders with those new friends will also give you a chance to learn from those who know information that they've learned from expensive degrees.
👍 Events
Attend virtual conferences/ YouTuber live streams and participate actively
You might be one of 3 people in the live stream, but that is a great place to get one-on-one answers
it can also help an awesome content creator get better at live streaming or giving chats so it's a win-win.
📍 Self-employed
Start your own contract self-employed business opportunities
Start dirt cheap but get paid to learn
Start with the low-hanging fruit skills that you know how to do today, then skill up and scale up and raise your rates.
Ask people to refer you to their friends
If you do an amazing job volunteering or at a hack-a-thon or attend a conference, then hey someone their who knows your abilities might know someone that has a role.
Even if they don't have a role at the time, then they might think of you at a later date.
🏗 Create
Make content
Make a game/tutorial
Make a course
Write a blog/book
Making some content that helps others will help you become an authority and known by others—even if only a few people use it
📄 Projects
Build some take home projects as if you're doing one for a job interview
Try to get an interview coding assessment that you know you will fail
When you fail, just build it through anyway (no one knows that you failed and took longer than the deadline unless you tell them.
Fail forward
Need ideas, build some of these take home projects.
🎙 Podcast
Have a knack for talking, then start doing a podcast about tech.
Again you can collab with people in tech and grow your knowledge with yet another opportunity to find people who can help you out and you help them out.
Doing the podcast consistently will force you to learn.
🧑🏽💻 Beginners
Teach kids, career-switching adults, anyone who is interested in learning HTML, CSS, and basic JS.
Apply for roles over the summer to teach teens how to code like at INTechCamp.
Not only will you learn more deeply what you know already, but you'll feel good about it.
😎 Mentor
Offer to mentor someone one-on-one who is just getting started that has no idea what they are doing.
You might feel like you don't know what you're doing either, but hey neither do I.
Go for it. I'm sure you'll gain an amazing friend from it, too.
That small amount of interaction is huge and again you'll find a support network at the same time.
You'll have someone to share knowledge.
You can practice interviewing, resume writing, or helping you and your friends improve your LinkedIn profile and portfolios.
😺 Open Source
Contribute to open source.
Do Hacktoberfest in October, but keep the momentum going into also in November and December.
Contributing doesn't have to be massive.
Fixing typos in documentation or correcting a small amount of css or picking up a beginner "good first issue" and asking for lots of help is ok, too.
✍🏼 Go Public
With anything that you're doing to gain experience use #100DaysOfCode to #LearnInPublic.
If you have been gaining experience, but hardly anyone knows about it that's a huge missed opportunity.
Leveraging social media helps. People tell me every week, I saw your post, idk u coded.
Tweet your non-tech interests, too.
Some only like others' tech tweets.
Share what makes you unique because maybe the FAANG developer whose tweets you ❤️ also likes Baby Yoda and might just invite you to a zoom call with friends to watch Star Wars and geek out.
You never know where a random interaction might end up.
Fin
Well, that's all I've got for this blog Hope you enjoyed it. Leave a comment for ways that you've gained experience.
