I’m not the only person who learned to code in their spare time and then hoped to start a career in tech. I see more and more posts on forums, and meet more and more meetup attendees who are in the same shoes I was in just a few months ago; No formal qualifications, just a few amateur apps on their phones and a raging desire to break into the industry. I know how it feels to not know how you could possibly stand out to employers whilst large swathes of computer science graduates are applying for the same roles that you are. I felt completely out of my depth and a large part of me had worried that I’d made a terrible mistake, sacrificing so much for an unachievable pipe dream.

Thankfully, my own gamble paid off, and those sacrifices were absolutely worthwhile. I made a few mistakes along the way though. There are lots of things that I wished I had known in advance or could have done better in order to land the right job for me. Having been through this process, I’d like to share a few of the things that I learned that might be useful for fellow DIY-ers.

You have what it takes

The biggest hurdle I had to overcome was the fear that I was so severely under-qualified for the jobs that were being advertised. I didn’t see a single job ad that didn’t have most or all of these requirements, in some form or another:

At least 2 years’ commercial experience

University-level degree in computer science or similar

At least one app on the app store

Experience in TDD, BDD, DDD, SQL, TCP/IP, HTTP, HTML, CSS, RESTful API, XML, JSON, CI, CD, etc. etc. etc.

In the meantime there’s surely thousands of recent graduates, or teenagers with unpaid work experience, fighting for the same positions that you are, and probably match quite a lot of the criteria. How do you compete with that?

‘At least 2 years’ commercial experience’

The obvious problem with this is the chicken/egg paradox. How do you get experience without first getting a job? how do you get a job without experience? Employers are actually well aware of this and I’m beginning to see this requirement crop up less and less in junior-level job ads. But even if it’s there, don’t take it as gospel; it’s more of an indication that an employer doesn’t expect to have to teach you how to write simple code, and expects that you’ve spent a lot of time learning as much as you can, with at least a passable amount of skill to be able to do the job. Companies know that when they hire junior-level developers, they’re not going to have found someone who can just turn up on day one and start shipping awesome new features.

‘University-level degree in computer science or similar’ (and ‘Experience in x / y / z…’)

I grappled with this in my mind, and had considered spending £1,000’s on intensive bootcamps or Masters degrees to level-out the playing field a little. That was until I began speaking to developers at some of the free evening meetups around London. It turns out that while students at colleges and universities were being taught how to code (algorithms, data science etc), they’re not actually trained to be software engineers. Anyone can write a ‘for’ loop. Not everyone can spin up an EC2 instance, or set up analytics tools. I realised that as long as I could write good, clean code, and be able to demonstrate my abilities (either through my open source projects, or coding on a whiteboard) I could learn the rest on the job. And it turns out that employers feel the same way.

‘At least one app on the app store’

Fair enough, this is one where I would certainly encourage you to achieve this before approaching employers. Whether it’s a mobile app, website or a plugin/library, build something from scratch, and publish it. It’s hugely advantageous to be able to demonstrate to an employer that you can take an idea from concept – to development – to shipped, because that’s what your job will actually be. Fortunately this is most likely something that you’ll have done as part of your own learning. If you haven’t shipped anything yet, it’s very easy to do so, and there are a lot of free online resources (not to mention platform/store documentation) that will walk you through the processes. Get your code out into the wild!

My main point here is that you probably know more than you think you do, and anything you don’t know, you should be willing to learn either on-the-job or before you start. You most likely have what it takes.

It’s all about Clean Code

After about 12 months of teaching myself to code using books, youtube and online ‘how-to’s, I felt that I had learned enough to call myself a developer. I could build Android apps from the ground up, and had even published my first. I could read other people’s code and more-or-less understand all of what was going on in there, and I had explored various platform APIs. There’s a very popular twice-annual tech job fair in London called the Silicon Milkroundabout and I figured that I’d attend, not to land myself a job but to actually talk to people in the industry and get a flavour of what to expect (and by the way, I’d recommend doing this yourself). I got chatting to a guy at one of the booths and asked him what I should do to take my skills to the next level. He had one piece of advice, which was to read Clean Code by Robert C. Martin (‘Uncle Bob’, as he’s affectionately known throughout the industry):

The code examples in the book are mostly written in Java, but the lessons apply to a heap of languages. I read this book from beginning to end, then went back and re-read quite a few parts. Then I looked back at some of the code I’d written before I bought the book, and was disgusted! It’s certainly one thing to know how to code, but if you write code that’s messy and not easily understood by someone else, then you’re going to struggle. Read this book, and others in the series. Learn about S.O.L.I.D. principles (I was asked about my knowledge of those in every interview I had), and the other lessons that this book contains. Doing so will be hugely advantageous, I promise you.

Your attitude is what really counts

You’ll hear people say this, that attitude is just as important as aptitude, but it’s more true than I thought. In fact if you’re trying to land your very first job in tech, I would say it’s even more important than your ability to code. Why? Because, if you’ve been reading up until now, you’ll probably have realised that your skills are in short supply. Employers know this about you already. What they’ll be looking for is someone with the right attitude; the sort of person who has a real passion for coding, and has enough enthusiasm to learn both on the job and in their spare time. I’m quickly realising that software developers must be life-long students, constantly keeping their skills relevant and up to date as technology evolves and changes. Your skills in C++ or Java might not be as relevant in 30 years’ time as they are today, and you need to have a passion for learning to have a successful career.

Show your passion in your cover letter, and let it flow out of you during your interviews, and you’ll be on to a winner.

You’ll never ‘feel’ ready

My biggest mistake is spending too much time trying to learn as much as I could, and publish loads of apps. I’ll be honest; I began learning to code in late 2014, and I didn’t feel ready enough to throw my already well-established career in media away and take my dream tech career seriously. For all the reasons earlier in this post, I just didn’t think that I was ready to approach employers just yet. I was thinking to myself, just launch another app, contribute to a few more open-source projects, I’ll get there eventually. But two years later I still hadn’t even written a CV. When I finally did, and began applying for job vacancies, I still didn’t feel prepared enough. I thought I’d be laughed out of the interviews. That’s why I was so surprised when the job offers started coming thick and fast…

They need you more than you need them

This might not be so relevant in years to come, but presently, the rumours are true: There is a huge shortage of coding skills, and a huge demand. Tech companies are competing with each other to snap up talent. This was very different to I was used to, since the media industry is the opposite way around (lots of graduates wanting to work in media, but not a lot of jobs available). I don’t think that you should take this to mean that you don’t need a decent skill level before applying for jobs, because that won’t work to your advantage in the future, but believe me when I say that right now, those employers want you, and they’re paying a lot of money for people like you.

Because of this, when you start applying on job boards (Get on as many as you can. I’d recommend Stack Overflow‘s job board, it has a lot of opportunities on there and provides you with a fantastic profile, which can work in favour of people with no experience), don’t be surprised to get flooded with emails from both recruitment consultants and direct from employers. A quick note on 3rd party recruiters, which I may get some challenging comments about, but don’t assume that they’re out to swindle you. I had some very good experiences with most of them, and I learned a lot from what they had to say.

I hope that this helps to allay some of your fears about finding your dream tech job. If you’ve found it useful or if you have stories of your own, then I’d love to hear from you – comment below or get in touch!