Why I want to escape.

Now 2017, I am 33, wife and son 5 years old, I am still the same adineesnik, but already of the level “150t.r. white on hands in Moscow ”. I am in a career-professional deadlock. My current skills, knowledge and abilities will not give me what I want. My ceiling is already close in terms of salary and in order to jump further - the necessary qualitative changes that will require from me qualities that I may not have (leadership, managerial, businessman). Yes, I have a foundation for becoming a project manager, but I am not sure that I will like it and that I can become the best there. I like programming.

However, one understanding that I want to escape is not enough. You need to very clearly understand where and how. That is why the “understanding”, which was born 3-4 years ago, did not give rise to any meaningful actions. Without a goal, with no criteria for advancement, you will not come anywhere. That is why the following goals were set.

After 5 years:

• I have to become a professional in an “international” programming language;
• I have to become a professional who can qualify for 100 tdol. per year in the USA, Canada, Australia, England;
• I have to become a professional who can apply for a job in Google, Facebook, Apple companies;

The stated goals can give an idea that in this context “escape from 1C = escape from Russia”. But I am a patriot. Even if I have to leave the country to work in Cupertino, I will still come every summer to the country to my parents.

How I plan to escape.

After it became a little more understandable with a goal, it was necessary to figure out how to achieve this goal. It seems that without a roadmap, I would not go far too, and that is why I drew up the following plan:

• Try different areas and programming languages ​​to find what you like and what meets the needs of the market (2-3 months);
• Spend a year on self-education in my spare time to reach the junior level, which will allow me to settle in Moscow at 80-90t (the figure is taken as the minimum necessary for survival, but not the fact that I can get);
• Spend a year to become middle with a salary level of 120t;
• Spend two years for a possible adjustment of the direction within the chosen language and becoming a senior with a salary level of 150-170;
• Starting from the 3rd year, start a job search in a foreign company;
• Starting from the 5th job search “otstatisch”;

Jailbreak preparation.

I dug the first meters of the digging into the wild in September 2015, when, with the help of my former colleague, I turned my attention to the rapidly growing market for big data and machine learning. From his own presentation, I discovered Coursera and the “specialization” in bigdate from one of the American universities, which, in my own understanding, should have made me the very junior. For 4 months 4 courses out of 9 were mastered (on average, one course is calculated for 1 month and costs 50 dollars). At that time, I was just winged - the learning process was relatively well constructed, good materials, a free schedule, and an interesting presentation. Everything went like clockwork, especially since R was used as the language, which in fact, after a little acquaintance with the syntax, even after 13 years of coding in 1C was perceived relatively easily. The stumbling block was the 5th course in statistics, when they began to “load” with serious material in a language not in my own language. Taking into account the fact that statistics in my home university got into the 3rd “alcoholic” course and the arithmetic mean, sliding, we began to distinguish weighted only in the context of calculating the cost, being already a 1C programmer, this became a serious obstacle for me. I decided to take a break and study the basics of statistics in English and ... I stopped at that. However, by this time I was already able to write a script that could “grab” one small forum and display a small stat on it (an example of one of my games in the sandbox ).

I do not remember what pushed me to the next couple of meters, but six months ago (in December 2016) I came across an iTunes U app and Swift lectures at Stanford University. I was once again pleasantly surprised by the quality of the material, the manner of presentation, and that it was all in (attention!) For free. In a few days I became acquainted with the MVC model, began to dive into the present OOP with inheritance and other delights and a week later my first calculator was ready. However, even then the lack of free time and, perhaps, motivation did its job and I put everything on hold.

The third wave covered me a month ago (April 2017), which just resulted in the formalization of goals, in the elaboration of plans, in the next specialization with the cursors and in this essay. For 2.5 weeks I almost mastered 2 courses out of 5 in Ruby on Rails, doing after work and all the weekends from morning to evening. I can not say that during this time I got used to the syntax, and the training manual has to drop in regularly. At the moment, I realized that it is difficult for me to learn some points and I need to look at the same blocks in other sources and in a different presentation. Since, directly in the course, announcing the introduction of JavaScript, then most likely the next course, which I will take after I add my own Twitter with blackjack and likes, will be via JavaScript. Then Python, then Java.

Goals set. The plan is registered. It remains to move forward. I will add only nuances that I have understood for myself, and which may be useful to those who “talk about the same article and are ready for a dash”.

1. You need motivation and desire to learn new things. If you understand why it is needed, catch the wave and catch the buzz from what is happening - the process will take place many times easier and faster.

   
   

2. Sources and materials a little less than dofig and they are all of different quality and different availability. On the same course (if I am not mistaken) almost all courses can be taken as a listener for free. On the same Udemy for free you will not get anything (as I understand it). Today I had to pay $ 10 for a course on Ruby on Rails, which I hope will allow me to put in my head the material on which I was stuck in the original course. Also try to search for the necessary materials on iTunes U (at least the course on Swift is worth it).

   
   

3. Be prepared that not all courses are equally useful and equally good. In the bigdate course, one of the teachers was a Korean with some peculiarities of diction, which was really unbearable to listen to. In the course on Rails on Rails, one of the teachers with a clearly weak English and a strong Israeli accent, if the second interfered only with aesthetic perception, the first was a real problem in difficult moments when there was an inability to more widely disclose certain things simply because of the limited thought formulation in a foreign language.

   
   

4. Be patient. Almost in all courses there is practically no normal feedback. The functionality and tools are there, but to get an answer to reasonable lines is simply unrealistic. Therefore, in the event of an error or problem that prevents you from moving forward - Google and the stacker flow will help you. Do not delay or wait for the course organizers to respond. Look for the solution yourself. Do not lose the wave.

   
   
5. Do not overload yourself. By the end of the third week of intensive study, I realized that the brain overload, plus the increasing complexity of the material, plus the teacher’s inability to bring this complicated material to fruition. I began to “not understand what was happening.” In such cases, take a pause of several days and return to school with a fresh head. Also, at such moments it makes sense to look at the same material, but in a different version, which will allow you to look at the problem from a different angle and from a different angle.

Good luck!

PS for now all that languages ​​are about languages, among which we have to choose - R is simple as two kopecks, Python for children, Ruby for drug addicts, JavaScript