Personal experience: how netechnaryu become a frontend developer

Photo: Flickr / Scott & Elaine van der Chijs / CC

Earlier in our blog we talked about how the study of web technologies and layout can help representatives of non-technical professions to work. Some people who are starting to dive deeper into the world of the web understand that they want to change their occupation.
')
It can be scary - to change the scope of activities and from non-technology to turn into an IT specialist. However, there are more and more examples of such successful transformations around us. Including - the history of several graduates of HTML Academy, who not only gained new knowledge, but were able to find work for their application in practice.

Journalist → Fender

Irina Smirnova, frontend developer at Bookmate

The plot of this story is simply nowhere to be: after graduating from university, I did not know at all what to do with my life. Either remain an average journalist and get a deliberately unloved job, or strangle right away. As a result, of course, I got a job (unloved), but the career question remained open.

Another lazy googling led me to the Academy website. I always did not get on with the equipment and were indifferent to computers, but at that moment there was nothing to lose, and the courses seemed more like entertainment than learning.

Suddenly, “everything started to turn out”: after the courses, three intensives followed, then job searches, first test tasks, several unsuccessful interviews. In February 2016, I, who had already become rather emboldened and stuffed a lot of cones on tricky questions, came to the meeting in “Bookmate”. And stayed.

I couldn’t even think of a better start in this area for myself. Just a week ago, I officially became a front-end developer: it turns out it took less than a year to grow out of an HTML layout maker. Probably, this is exactly what fascinates me in IT: what you achieve is directly proportional to how much you spread yourself, and does not depend on extraneous factors. And the result of your work is always evaluated objectively, it is tangible and concrete.

The Academy gave me more than just the opportunity to change my profession. Something that greatly changed me and spread throughout my life as a whole: it turned me from a “sofa potato” into a proactive person who always teaches, does something, kodit, makes others teach ... By the way, on “Bukmeyte” I have a shelf where I collect the best books on web development and interface design that helped me learn. They will also help you if you decide on this quest “Become-from-anyone-web-developer”.

Call Center Employee → Programmer

Sophia Lapshina, Junior Developer at Performance Lab

I started working a little earlier than 18 years. For a long time, my goal was to simply earn money, which I would have enough for living. I mainly worked in the so-called call centers. Time passed, there was enough money. And at the age of 23, I thought: “What's next?”. The prospect of sitting up to 55 years and answering calls did not deceive me, and I was not interested in executive positions. I wanted to work where there is always something to strive for, where you will constantly develop and you will not get bogged down in the routine and piles of papers.

Once I accidentally saw my friend write code. Along the way, he told me what line of code he was responsible for. It seemed to me that all this is difficult, that it is necessary to study a lot of literature in order to at least just start doing it. The friend turned out to be good and suggested that I try my hand at free online courses on HTML Academy. This is where the fun begins.

Courses on the site, subscription, two intensives. It has been only a year since I clicked the link, and now I have been working in an IT company for a month as a junior developer. But first things first.

Training

How many people, so many opinions about how to study - yourself or on courses, what resources are better and so on.

Having carefully studied the way of becoming a front-end developer, I decided that we should start with the layout, with the study of HTML and CSS. As a person, which has little meaning at the time in development, decided to give herself up in the hands of professionals and went to the intensives from the Academy - “ Basic HTML and CSS ” and “ Advanced HTML and CSS ”. I will not tell you what the intensives are: you can read their description on the Academy website, as well as see the reviews. I can only say that I was not mistaken when I thought that it was necessary to study a lot of literature. But once I started, I decided not to retreat.

At first I learned how to create a blank page. Then some text appeared on the page. And I think: “Cool! And what else can I do? ” Learned to "color" the page. "And yet?" Build a page of blocks. "And yet? And more? And more? And in the end, I can create colorful pages of the site that look great on both PC and phone.

Information and really a lot, but this is the whole charm. Plunging into the world of development, I myself want to study it more and more. Even now, already working as a junior developer, I continue to learn, but this is absolutely not a burden, but even a joy.

Work searches

After finishing the courses, I began to look for a job. By the way, I knew only the layout and heard something about JavaScript. Many say that newcomers find it difficult to find a job. And I will say no, not difficult. Here, as elsewhere, the main thing is that your capabilities coincide with the needs of the employer. Yes, they are eyeing newbies with fear, but it is up to you how you will manifest yourself during the interview.

Waiting vs Reality, or My first experience in an IT-company

Immediately, I note that everything depends on the company, they all taste and color different, so I’ll tell you directly about the one where I work. I am currently working in Performance Lab. The company itself is engaged in various testing sites, applications and IT-systems.

Actually, the company needed a person who knew the layout and who plans to develop in the field of development in the near future. And here not only my capabilities coincided with the needs of the company, but also our desires.

While waiting for the first working day, I thought that I, as a beginner, would be put next to an experienced colleague and I would do some small tasks under his strict guidance. After I adapt a little, they will start giving me some material for my development as a developer, and after that they will have more difficult tasks and so on.

And then he came, my long-awaited first working day. Everything was the way I imagined it, but we immediately went over to the tasks more complicated and did not give me a seat to any colleague. Instead, I have a whole office of experienced and cheerful colleagues who are ready to share their experience at any time.

That's why I love the world of development. Everything is not always smooth, but in general, people here share their experiences and knowledge. This is an interesting area that will not allow you to wallow in the monotony of gray everyday life, which is constantly evolving and which makes it possible to express themselves not only within the company, but also in the World Wide Web.

For those who still doubt. I am a girl who embarked on this path, having only specialized secondary education, my English was far from ideal, and I did not know anything about working out. In just one year, I went from “it is not clear who” to a junior developer. The main thing - desire, and the rest you get.

Economist and businessman → backend developer

Artemy Stepanov, Backend Developer

By education I am an economist, in view of certain circumstances and the strong influence and instructions of my father, I chose this path. He wanted me to follow in his footsteps, and I did it. With the help of my father, I opened my own legal services company. But since I was still drawn from programming to school, I decided that I wanted to be closer to IT - as a result, without thinking twice, I changed the scope of the company’s activities and its name. Now this is a web studio.

Why is that? It's simple. I thought for a long time about what product we should create, and came to the conclusion that web development is a universal thing: products are not limited in the environment, unlike applications, websites and web apps can be used from anywhere, would be the Internet .

However, later I realized that this was not enough for me. By that time, the influence of my father was no longer so serious, I was a completely independent person. Coincidentally, one of our layout makers was unwell, and deadlines were running out. With the help of our other layout designer, I decided to go into the project - now I understand that it was only an anchor that drafted down the time, because explaining the details to a person not in the subject is rather difficult.

I realized that I am still a complete zero, and began to look for courses. Programmer friends advised free HTML Academy courses. And then, as they say, it started. I signed up for a basic course on HTML / CSS - after passing it, I realized that I want to continue doing this. Working with a mentor (his name is Maxim Fariga) was the first impetus to the goal.

After finishing the course, I slowly began to impose in my free time for the projects of my company. At the Academy, it is recommended to go to the basic course of JS at least after six months of work as a coder, but I signed up for it in two months. Here I met one of the best mentors in my life, Boris Vanyushin. He was strict, did not give any indulgences, at times I suffered (in a good way). This attitude helped to learn to think like a programmer. Yet HTML and CSS are markup languages, and here for the first time I came across a real programming language.

Shortly before the end of the course, I closed my company, having decided to find a job as a developer. I spent days at home and continued to improve. I didn’t have any income at that moment - my relatives and friends thought I was insane, having just closed a profitable business for the sake of a dream of a new job. My wife was also in shock.

I stayed out of work for about seven months, all this time I was studying further and at the same time I was looking for work. As a result, I pulled JS to a more or less normal level, mastered ES6, preprocessors for CSS and other newfangled things. In August of this year, they took me for an internship at a firm that develops exclusively services. For about a month, I worked there as a front-end developer (AngularJS, gulp, Sass), at the same time studying Node.js. A month later, I was transferred to a backend development: I wanted it myself, and I get it really better. This is still doing.

On the basis of this whole story, one can say that now I finally do what I really like. I have a great team, foreign customers (from Norway), in the arsenal - HTML, CSS, Stylus, Sass, JavaScript (ES6), AngularJS, Node.js, Express, MongoDB + Mongoose, Ruby (although I’m still completely green).

The whole journey took 11 months. At the moment when I decided to radically change my life, I was 24, now I am 25. Of course, I’m sorry for wasted time, I regret that I got into programming too late. On the other hand, it only encourages the development and improvement of skills.

Musician → coder

Artyom Ivanets, Junior Front-End Developer at eWave

Here is my story. For 15 years I studied music professionally, having passed the whole set way: music school, secondary educational institution, university. However, later I ran into health problems: my hands were injured - I had to suspend musical activities. It was necessary to think of what to do.

I was interested in programming. Once I accidentally stumbled upon an article by the creator of HTML Academy Alexander Pershin, in which he said that the layout designer is a great start in IT. Then he began to study literature, but it was difficult to understand it on his own. And then I stumbled upon the Academy courses themselves. I tried interactive courses and decided to sign up for intensive: the content of the classes was very good. As a result, I was disaccustomed at two intensives.

After that, I was able to get a job in a large company that develops projects in the field of e-commerce for customers from the Australian region. I didn’t get there right away: first I got about 30 failures - even without an invitation for an interview. In the interview itself, I did not show myself in the best way, I threw in the JS part, but there were no problems with the layout.

As it turned out, studying at the Academy gives everything you need to get a job and start a profession, and even more. I was convinced of this when I ran into the juniors who studied on their own. I am satisfied: I like the work, and no one forbids me to simultaneously engage in art.

Tour organizer → chat bots developer

Evgeny Ladyzhensky, junior frontend developer, creator of chat bots

The decision to change jobs was very hard for me. Until the spring of 2015, for seven years I was quite successfully engaged in organizing tours. However, I was constantly haunted by the feeling that I was not doing my own business and was gradually degrading. It was scary to leave the comfort zone: it seemed that at the age of 36 it was too late to change the profession.

As a child I dreamed of being a programmer, but at one time I took the path of least resistance and entered the university where I had enough points - just not to go into the army. Having dared to cardinal changes, I remembered the youthful dream and finally decided to connect myself with programming.

At first I tried to learn from books, but this process required a lot of effort and considerable time. So when I came across the recommendation of HTML Academy, I decided to take a basic course in HTML and CSS. After that, he immediately managed to find a job as a maker-up, and after completing the basic course on JS, he took a position as a junior front-end developer, after some time became interested in developing chat bots and opened his own business in this direction.

If you soberly assess your capabilities and do not ask for a lot of money on the move, then it’s easy to find a job. The main thing is to remember that in any profession there has always been and will be a shortage of adequate people.

As for the difficulties, of course, they were: first of all, the majority of friends and relatives expressed doubts about the wisdom of a cardinal change of profession. Hence the moral: do not tell anyone about your decision until the changes become irreversible. Otherwise, you can doubt yourself about success.

In fact, there is nothing impossible here, the main thing is to very much want to learn new things.

TV producer → freelance developer

Alexander Polovnikov, frontend developer, freelancer, HTML Academy tutor

For seven years I worked in a production company that was engaged in the production of television programs, films and TV shows.

For the first time I encountered HTML at school: in the classroom we made simple pages that were easily given to me. At one time, I even made a couple of "commercial" sites to friends. But later I chose a university that was not related to technology, and the layout was just a hobby that I eventually abandoned.

Everything changed when I accidentally stumbled upon an academy course. I decided to try it and got so carried away that I went through them all in a few evenings without a break and signed up for the intensity. I liked him too: knowledge was assimilated very quickly and easily. It was necessary to move on - and I still didn’t understand very well the difference between frontend and backend development. I was advised to take a starting course on Ruby on Rails, which I did. It turned out that knowing at least one server language is very useful for a front-end vendor.

Then it is time to learn javascript. He was not in the academy yet, so he had to find other courses, and only then return to the intensive one for JS. The whole learning process took about 9 months - quite a lot, but during this time I was able to get a good base. However, I needed more practice, which I decided to look for at freelance sites.

But the great thing happened when I came to visit the office of the academy. The conversation turned to work, someone mentioned the new Rubrain freelance platform - it recently opened, everyone heard about it, but no one has yet tried it. I sent the administration my resume with descriptions of skills, a story about myself and a request to add me to the database. A couple of days later I received a letter of approval of my application, and a little later one of the founders of the site called me and offered to work on them: it was necessary to help with the site.

It was my first serious and responsible project in my freelance career. Everything turned out well, after which colleagues from Rubrain began to recommend me to my friends - the number of orders grew, I was offered more complex and interesting orders. It's time to decide something with my main job in a production company.

It was scary to go away with "the ends", so I made an attempt to agree on part-time work, but the authorities did not appreciate the idea. In the end, I still quit. The support was helped by the support of friends and relatives, although there were skeptics who discouraged them from leaving their stable jobs. But the majority still supported me.

Then I worked on freelancing, made new acquaintances, got projects, studied and developed, already realizing that I want to do exactly the front end. A year has passed, and at some point I realized that I would like to share my accumulated experience and knowledge - I was interviewed for the position of a mentor in the HTML Academy for basic intensiveness, and six months later - for advanced. As a result, I’m doing something that really “hurts” me, I don’t leave a desire to constantly learn and develop. Work is my hobby.

Having passed this way, I made several conclusions for myself. First, to learn better in practice: working on real freelancing projects helped not to forget the theory and quickly gain new skills. In addition, a good way to learn is to work on an open source project. So you can deal with the tool and begin to apply it in practice, while the work on open source does not imply strict deadlines and requirements. This is a good way to learn something new, and if the project starts off, get a plus in the portfolio.

Speaking of portfolio: to start receiving orders, it should be. And where can I get it to the beginning frontendru? The best option is to find free or low-cost stock layouts on the Internet and make them up. Five of these high-quality works - and you get a decent portfolio.

Copywriter editor → frontend developer of international startup

Nikolay, frontend developer

I’m not the first time to change my profession: by 2014, I managed to work as an editor in the media and on television, a copywriter in large advertising agencies, a technical support employee (this was not very interesting) and an Internet project manager.

Almost always my work was somehow connected with the Internet, so one day I wanted to be among those who make all these wonderful services and sites. It all started in 2014 - then I was 32 years old. The usual thing: it took to do something for the company's website, there was no money for freelancers - I climbed up the site, came across the academy's website, went through all the courses available at that time and ... got involved.

In April of the same year, I successfully graduated from the third stream of basic intensive layout, and thought about changing my profession, because I liked the layout.

Finding a job was not easy, at first nothing worked. I responded to vacancies, received failures, unsuccessfully performed a test task for the CSSSR, I could not find orders for freelancing either. But I didn’t give up, I continued to search, independently studying what I wasn’t telling at the base intensive (and there were no others then).

And once I was invited for an interview as an intern layout designer. I passed it and got my first job in a web development team. I can say I was lucky: in the company I was given a mentor who taught me a lot, the projects themselves were also interesting. We created websites for large companies - telecom operators, each of them had requirements for the quality and style of the code, the technologies used. It was then that I figured out BEM, learned how to use preprocessors, delved into working with PHP template engines, adaptive layout, Git and many others.

Well, then I got a job in another company, then another one - a large one, with several development departments and high salaries. In just one year, I managed to grow from a trainee into a specialist, increase my income fourfold and understand that there is still a very long way ahead of me, but you shouldn’t limit yourself to makeup only.

Now I’m working as a front-end developer in a small international startup - it’s as if I’ve come back two years ago: you need to know so many things, make so many bumps, invent so many bicycles, and wait for the results of your work here and now. It's hard, scary: suddenly I can’t grow at the right pace, let my colleagues down, let me down ... after all, I’m not even 32 anymore. But all this is pretty damn interesting, so I’m looking at my “frontend-future” with optimism.

I can advise those who are facing the front-end of the frontend development and afraid to overstep boldly to go forward, but only if you are ready to work hard, learn a lot and if you really are interested.

What else? I will note only one thing (others will say about the rest) - I myself also want to pull up this moment: go to conferences and meetings, communicate more, speak, make new acquaintances. This will broaden your horizons, motivates you to increase your own knowledge, besides, there will be someone to ask with a question, and someone from your acquaintances may very well invite you to work one day.

Conclusion

The experience of our students in changing their profession suggests that nothing is impossible. However, this process can be optimized. Here's what you need to know to non-technicians who want to retrain as an IT professional:

• Change of profession can take up to a year . The change of profession is a slow process, the study of new technologies and the subsequent passage of interviews will take time.
• Courses help accelerate progress . Learning only yourself is not the most effective way to get new knowledge. Courses and intensives can give a new impetus to development - especially if classes involve solving problems close to real life, under the guidance of mentors.
• First you need to learn layout . It is the study of HTML and CSS should be the first step to the development of a new profession. This will allow you to gradually figure out how the web works, and understand what specialization you want to choose.
• Real projects help accelerate progress . Theory and learning tasks are good, but there is no better way of professional growth than working on real projects. Practice allows you to not forget the theory and develop skills.