Software Engineering: My Whirlwind Journey to Discover a Career I Never Knew I Loved
After college, my parents told me: “Find a job doing what you love.” I was stumped. How in the...
Coming from a non-technical background, my road to software development was pretty bumpy. After finding out that being a software engineer is what truly made me happy, I was on the lookout to find opportunities to connect with the web-dev world. I was always excited to build products that make a real difference in people's lives and change how we interact with the outside world for the better.
TAKING THE FIRST STEP
In the beginning, I set out to build my skills and reach my full potential, but following tutorials and struggling alone with the code was very hard for me. There was nobody to critique my work, nobody to give me encouragement, and I felt that the progress I was making was not matching my abilities. Luckily, I wasn’t alone for long.
Everything changed when I discovered Codesmith. Codesmith is a software development immersive program, offering first and foremost the environment to push yourself and develop your abilities to the fullest. Along with other like-minded people, you will embark on a wonderful journey to becoming the software engineer you aspire to be.
PUSHING THE LIMIT IN THE JUNIOR PORTION
The first half of the program (Junior Portion) is very, very rigorous. It goes into great depth, and examines how different technologies work under the hood, which is perfect if you are trying to grasp computer science concepts while lacking a computer science degree.
There are a lot of opportunities to consolidate this new knowledge through hands-on units and skill building exercises, both in a solo and group setting. This is a great opportunity to develop collaboration and team skills along the way by trying to be considerate of the other team members’ past experiences and learning tempos. There is allocated feedback time after each pair programming session, where weaknesses can be brought to the attention of the other person, and their strong points are emphasized for further refinement.
Towards the end of this portion, there is a two-part assessment that will assess both engineering mentality, as well as in depth-knowledge, and your ability to work with different technologies both in front- and back-end frameworks.
GETTING READY FOR TAKEOFF IN THE SENIOR PORTION
Going into the Senior Portion of the program, you really get to apply that expertise and knowledge and build that T-part of your development career. During this time, you focus on technologies that have a great future and are meaningful for a lot of other developers, and focus on building an Open Source (Open Source Product) developer tool.
The process kicks off with a short ideation period and market research. After this period, all ideas are explored one by one, to isolate the idea that has the most potential to bring value to the developer community.
Once your project topic has been selected, the real developing experience commences. Learning on the job and working around bugs and software updates will become an everyday activity for the next month. Going into it with a growth mentality is essential, as you will be met with unfamiliar concepts that will aggravate any impostor syndrome thoughts you had before. But fear not, the Codesmith family will be your pillar of support, helping you reach your own breakthroughs and offer valuable advice through the whole process.
During this time, you will build your confidence in your most valuable skill: the ability to learn any new material you are presented with, and adapt to any environment that you find yourself in. You will reach such depth of knowledge of these technologies that you will be able to successfully communicate and speak to the tech stack that you have worked with.
REVEALING YOUR HIDDEN POWERS
Last, but not least, one of the most useful parts of Codesmith is its hiring support module, where you receive guidance from experts on how to get yourself out there and take advantage of the opportunities to represent yourself and connect the dots of your career roadmap by landing that first job as a software engineer.
You first focus on refining your resume, and you’ll have a few iterations of resume reviews with detailed feedback on improvements. Then comes the conversations about online representation, in which you’ll learn how to set up online profiles and how to ensure that your profile gets traction.
Overall, I would recommend Codesmith to anyone struggling with self-learning and getting their software engineering career off the ground.
Blog written by Eleni Z, Full-Time Remote Immersive Cohort 5.
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Hear from Jackie, a grad of the Immersive, on going through the hiring portion in this blog post.