This article is a translation of the original post by Sika Hoodeib, who recently decided to drastically change his life, changing his profession from teacher to programmer.

From the author: My story is about how I managed to start a career as a frontend developer from scratch without any special education or experience. I studied on my own, at the same time working 8 hours a day. After 10 months I got a job on a new specialty.

Desire to become a developer

It arose gradually, gradually getting stronger: I read articles like this, and I wanted to start a career in IT. True, studying the stories of enthusiasts who have achieved what they wanted, I did not really believe their words. It seemed that all these people were special, and I didn’t, therefore, it’s not worth trying.
')
Since then, I understood how it all works. There are no special people who can become programmers and do it. I do not want to say that the process of turning into a coder is simple, because it is certainly not the case. But anyone can probably become a developer; in any case, almost all of us have the necessary makings. You will have to work hard, constantly learn, be patient. There will be moments of despair, when it seems that nothing will come of it, you need to drop everything and do the same than before. But in the end, if everything is done correctly, you will achieve what you so desire.

I will add that when I started, I did not have not only the knowledge of the specialty that I wanted to get, but there were no special means to complete expensive courses. I am not a student or a schoolboy, I needed to work at my previous job in order to support myself. Despite this, everything worked out right for me, so it seems to me that you can do it too. Why not?

We remind: for all readers of "Habr" - a discount of 10,000 rubles when recording for any Skillbox course on the promotional code "Habr".

Skillbox recommends: Online course "Profession Frontend Developer" .

Start

Until the moment when I wrote the first line of my code, I have never done anything like this and did not really know anything about programming, or about IT in general. At the beginning of my journey, the restaurant business became my choice, I was busy with it from the very beginning. Then I received a musical education, and just before becoming a coder, I worked as a teacher in Spain. I was not very good at computers. But I was always interested in learning about technology. I thought of programmers as heroes of our time. Maybe because coding seemed to me an elite occupation that is available only to people who received the necessary education in top universities. Therefore, I simply considered the programming entry threshold too high for myself.

The moment a hard decision appeared

My girlfriend once raised a topic about a small percentage of the female in technological specialties. She decided to correct the situation at least a little and become a programmer. Partly - because she wanted to become an example for her family, especially its younger members.

After she told me about it, I also thought. We found that there are a large number of resources that can be used for training. Yes, for the sake of justice I will say that my girlfriend, before becoming a programmer, worked HR. And in the end, she received an invitation from a technology company for a new specialty a month before me.


Before we started learning, we saw a children's book about programming in the art museum. The book was about HTML. We came home, opened Notepad and wrote

Hello, world

, then launched the resulting in the browser, replacing the color changed color: red. Everything worked out for us, and we were just very pleased.

As a result, this case led to the fact that we both became programmers.

previous job

At the moment I am talking about, I taught English to eight-year-olds. I, in principle, liked everything; my case is different from the situation when you quit a hated job to start life from scratch. No, I was fine. But sometimes it happens that, even if you like everything, it is time to change something, move on. I decided to start a new stage of my life and leave the comfort zone.

Way to success

In principle, this path is difficult to find, it is unlikely that it exists at all. You can grope the road, but no more. The way to programming we started three of us (yes, me, my girlfriend and another good friend). And we became what we wanted - we are all developers now. At the same time, we used materials and methods that were suitable for each of us, and our paths were different.

Start

At the very first stage, I started reading about programming and watching a video on YouTube in order to understand something. Then he began to study HTML and CSS. Nothing particularly serious, it was almost a game. Next, I decided to look at the tutorials and create what they were learning - these were the basic pages. It helped me get into the jet.

Goal setting

My friends and I helped each other with advice and moral support. It was a very good help.

In addition, I tried to set a goal for myself - to formulate it as clearly as possible, removing all unnecessary. I decided to change my career path not sharply, but gradually, step by step, to go to the new. I did not have a third-party source of income, so I could not quit my job for the duration of my studies, until I received a new one.

I decided that the frontend would be what I am aiming for - it seemed to me that the entry threshold here is not too high. Therefore, I narrowed my search and focused on gaining the experience and knowledge that is needed in this particular area. And I liked and enjoyed working more in the company, rather than following the path of a freelancer.

So, the goal is, now you need to set the deadline. I did not want to write down my goal and forget about it, so I had to make it as realistic as possible. I started in 2017, so I decided that in a year, in 2018, I should find a job in a new specialty.

It would be naive to pretend that at this stage I completely controlled everything and was overconfident in my abilities. Not at all. I was a little scared, because the changes in my career were too serious. I had all the doubts that can only appear in a similar situation. But the key was the confidence that I needed to finish the job. I made a decision and went to the end.



Training

It was clear that the only right way for me was learning. Since I worked all day, I didn't have too many hours to do this. The search for time led me to structure my days using such a valuable resource as the weekend. During this period, my typical Saturday and Sunday looked like this:

8:00 - rise, breakfast
8:30 - learning and coding
12:30 - gym
13:30 - lunch, rest
15: 00/16: 00 - learning and coding
20: 00/21: 00 - end of the day

I also had a vacation, which I did not fail to take advantage of - at that time I was studying every day. Yes, summer flew past me, but it was worth it.

September came and I went to work again. I decided to cut my work day a little, realizing that my income would be reduced. But it should have given me a little more time to study. It was a very serious step that influenced my whole future, and I do not regret my decision.

It is difficult to describe in words how difficult it was for me to break away from my code. All I wanted was to just go back to the computer and keep working. Unfortunately, I had less and less training time, because teaching required maximum participation. Even considering my high level of motivation, I could not help it.


My activity on github in October

However, you can see from the image above that I tried to find free time and brain resources. Sometimes it worked, sometimes not. In some cases, I even lost my motivation, which, however, did not last long. It was difficult, but still I continued to fulfill my plans. I maintained the necessary rhythm until I had to go to Madrid - it was several months before the deadline.

Tools and Resources

During all 10 months I was searching for resources relevant to my task. So, I asked questions on Twitter, asked friends, searched for information on the network. The result was this .

Part of the list on the link here:

• freecodecamp.org;
• Cassidy Williams and Colt Steele's Udemy;
• Wes Bos' JavaScript 30 and other courses;
• YouTube: Traversy Media, LevelUpTuts;
• Christina Truong's Lynda.com;
• Udacity Front-End Nanodegree.

Courses are good, but by themselves they cannot make you a specialist, other tools are needed. Here are mine:

• Twitter - they helped me a lot in the # 100DaysOfCode community.
• GitHub - actually, there is nothing special to describe here. Everything is clear.
• Developer Portfolio - I looked through them, studying what I needed to dive into a new profession.

Job

Surprisingly, but finding a new job turned out to be much easier than I thought. I did not send thousands of resumes and did not search for vacancies for hours. I tried to hit right on target - to choose exactly what is interesting and relevant.

In the end, I had five interviews. One thing I didn’t go through, I was refused, on the second I threw in the execution of the final task. Successfully passed three and received three offers at once. One of them was extremely unappealing. The other two were good, it remained only to choose.

I described the receipt of the work briefly, but believe me, her search was a busy time. However, I still do not fully understand whether my knowledge and experience are competitive or not. In general, it was difficult, but at the same time interesting. When I received two invitations, I didn’t even believe it. Until now, the successful completion of this quest is surprising to me.

By the way, about the interview: the two companies were very different. In one case, it was a series of video calls to various employees of the company. She is small, but she has a great team. They gave me one of two good offers.


The second company was a startup that is somewhere in the middle of its path to success. After a telephone interview, they gave an assignment, which I successfully completed within a few days. I needed to create a component with the inclusion of API calls and finally display the correct data. Then a video chat took place, and I talked about what was done, how and why. After I was invited to a personal interview, and I joined the team as a junior frontend.

On my first working day in Madrid, I drank my morning coffee, went to a new office and introduced myself. So began my new journey, my new career.

Skillbox recommends:

• Practical course "Profession web developer" .
• Practical course "Mobile Developer PRO" .
• Practical annual course "PHP-developer from scratch to PRO" .