Before I Begin: The views represented here are my own and have never been views of my past employer(s). Last Updated: June 2024

Build Something For Yourself

Marketing messaging that go out thru various channels is along the lines of “82% of our graduates get 51% increase in salary”. That messaging attracts the wrong audience.

It’s similar to other “get rich quick” schemes.

As a self-taught software engineer, I’m strongly convinced that learning to code can be one of the best investments in yourself. With that being said, you need to temper your expectations and to determine your ‘Why’ or ‘Whys’.

This could be things like:

1. Providing more for your family
2. Changing careers
3. Learning new skills
4. Etc.

The above reasons are all valid. There are, obviously, a quite a few places to learn to code nowadays. Whether it’s thru a university, an online course, a code school, or somewhere else - I’m strongly convinced that building something is still the best way to learn. Usually it starts with a variation of - wouldn’t it be cool to do XXX or how did they do YYY?

Some of the best students that I had mentored brought these traits -

• curiosity that expanded outside of the presented curriculum
• headstrong to debug different ways on their own
• ability to rapidly apply learning across the curriculum
• prep for the sessions with questions from the material / outside learning

Understanding more about how something works or how to replicate functionality of your favorite site is a massive advantage.

> ♻ Try. Fail. Learn. Repeat. ♻

The above cycle should allow you to build some cool stuff. Think about your hobbies, your interests, what you want to change in the world, etc. outside of just slinging code. Build a project with hardware. Build an art project. Build something that excites you or even scares you a bit. Write notes about what problems you ran into, what you learned, and how you can use that outside of just that project. This will help write a narrative more than just “Code School / College Graduate” - this helps you add a bit more color to your interviews. “Tell me about a time…” becomes a bit more interesting to answer.

The past decade+, I’ve pursued 50+ random side-quests. Software and Non-Software alike. I cannot encourage you to do this as well.

Further Reading

• 10 Projects to do in an Afternoon
• Real World DevOps / Cloud Projects for Learning
• Ludum Date - Game in 72 Hours
• More Projects to Improve Your Coding Skills
• And probably countless google queries