IT career and study in Poland. How did I get here

Study in Poland

Why am I here? This is a very spontaneous decision that occurred to me after I came across a similar article about studying abroad. Maybe it will also affect you and you will discover new opportunities.

Opportunities will find one who is looking for them.

Please follow the cat.

Studies and preparatory courses

Admission to the university and even abroad was quite new to me. During the year I took Polish courses. They began 2 months before the start of the semester. For all the time courses, I did not have the best attendance, but I had good results. Training in a group of foreigners, like me, very quickly began to bear fruit. Group classes simplify the threshold of entry and force to communicate within 4-6 hours a day, which of course is useful. Upon arrival of all the words I knew only one thing I wouldn’t say which word.
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Rapid integration with the help of new local acquaintances, future friends, helped me to express thoughts in 3 months, certainly not as much as I would like. But even after a year and a half here, hitting on Wednesday those who are not used to it that you do not know all the slang (they tried to be more accessible in the future), let me know that there is room to grow, the problem was not global and even very short-lived.

I remember the big eyes of Russian speakers during the first month, when the lecturer was a teacher, not a teacher of Polish, who knows how to find an approach, but there were small concessions, with the understanding that everything comes with time and the teachers did not refuse to help. In sum, it was complicated, but somehow everything was settled with time, without noticing.

General information about studying

• Study in Poland for students begins on October 1
• Winter session begins after the New Year holidays, summer in early-late June.
• Duration of training:
  Bachelor's degree - 6 semesters
  Engineering degree - 7 months
  Master's degree - 4 months
• Education in Polish is cheaper than an English-language program.
• Universities are divided into: private and public

I will not write specifically about the university, since each university has its pros and cons.

Student path

I did not have the opportunity to study at the State University. For them you need a level of knowledge of the language - B1 (Polish, English). It was possible to spend 1 year and go to general classes and at the same time study the language at the university. Since I clarified that I came without knowledge of Polish, I chose a private university, with a very international audience.

Since the Faculty of Computer Science is Engineering, I have correspondingly basic subjects. All expectations about fashionable frameworks and foreign teachers slightly dispelled. I would like to see advanced teachers of programming, and not those people who ended their careers 15 years ago and did not write lines of code except for classes.

Regarding state universities such as: the University of Warsaw and the Warsaw Polytechnic University.
From workmates, I hear much more positive reviews and I see that the knowledge base is much higher. Not to mention the fact that you can always do something extra. Speech only about the university program.

Work searches

During my studies, I began to look for work and visited Targi Pracy (meetings with employers).



Before I started looking, I accordingly resolved the issue of a work permit.
For me, the way out was to get Karty Pobytu (the type of document allowing the arrival of a foreigner, with access to the labor market).

The first meeting was not entirely successful. I got the impression that I looked better than some HRs. Of course, I was unprepared for everything compared to subsequent meetings, but for that I had the motivation and thought how to use my potential next time and what to pay more attention to and of course coffee, donuts, Playstation and interesting speeches and presentations of companies and their activities, as well as new technologies - their eyes diverged.

After I started sending out CV bundles, and of course it didn’t “shine”, the Experience (experience) column was missing. It was pretty mean and inconspicuous. Of course, there was no experience (experience). But you can write projects, even the smallest, because this is already something. What I did accordingly.

Second meeting
Actually prepared and printed CV. I already knew about what was necessary to look for potential employers and a couple of days before the meeting I looked through the list of participants and studied their personal sites - what does the company do, who is looking for, are there any practices. By the way, practicing, for example, in summer, is a great opportunity to improve your knowledge, resume and confidence in your skills. After a few dozen conversations - the day was completed. In general, after this meeting in the future, I received calls and letters from HR.

During the month went to the interview. Visited several firms.
The downside was that, at the beginning, I did not know how it looked and was not sufficiently prepared.

I was in different types of companies, even in a real garage, yes, concrete walls and this is a former warehouse.
In a large television company. Everything was fine, but as a Junior-a Front-end, they overestimated me and looked for more abruptly.

Well, a few more. I will say that I did not like in this process:
- stupid questions off topic (or was it really very subtle humor)
- empty promises (when they don't care who will work for them - if only it is cheaper, but promises to advise you to the boss and accidentally mentions that there are already 10 of you, purely to call in half an hour and knock down the price)

In general, after all the meetings, having landed slightly, I found an interesting offer with a very curved page of the company, I hope they will not see it and decided to send a CV. After a day or two, I received a letter with an offer to take a remote test. The site with the vacancy had the necessary skills and I decided to refresh my knowledge and prepare well. We agreed on a date and the test should have been sent in an hour, coped a bit faster and I was invited to a conversation. There was another test and conversation. As a result, that day I was their new employee. It was all on the merits. What the Boss said to me is exactly the one we were looking for for this position, well, super what is there .

In general, I want to say that the first step was taken and already forgotten as a nightmare.
If I knew that I would love programming and the atmosphere itself only in the office, I would start the search also from the first year of study, but then I was full time. The fact of the matter is that we like it, but it turned out to be much better in the working environment. The university did not meet cranks who would have enthusiastically offered to write something together.

If you are interested in, which technologies and languages ​​of Web Development are more in demand and paid for in the Polish market (from my observation):

• JavaScript (most likely obvious)
• AngularJS (maybe they don’t know what they want, but he’ll stick around everywhere)
• Nodejs
• ASP.NET
• RubyOnRails (offered several times a job, c the possibility of frontend learning from them for a few months)
• Django (in my company most of the projects on it)
• PHP (mostly demand where the quality of the product didn’t really bother, and specifically “build up a million sites under Joomla and don’t have time to explain”)

Thanks to those who read, I will answer your questions with pleasure.