Finally, there is an opportunity to add your success story! It is not as fleeting as for some who already find a job within six months, but it is just as real. Everyone’s opportunities are different, so if you haven’t been able to find a job for two years and you think you’re deprived of some mythical gift, don’t despair, you’re not alone :)
Greetings to all fellow students and colleagues! When I first visited JavaRush back in 2015 and read success stories, I thought that I couldn’t wait to share mine. And yet, I still do it, which means everything is achievable. I want to tell you so much that it’s time to write a book, but I’ll try to be as brief as possible. I sincerely hope that no one will die of boredom, wading through so many letters... At the end of January back in 2015, I decided that continuing to work in my current place, waiting for the boss to suddenly become generous and for me to live well was a futile endeavor. When I was young, I was involved in programming, but when I joined the army, I gave it up. It just so happened that there was no need for it. Then life got twisted and turned, I couldn’t get a job as a programmer anywhere and didn’t try (I thought there were only smart mathematicians there). In the places where I worked, “programming” meant laying out a one-page website, turning on a printer, or setting up the Internet. I lived in Smolensk at the time, earned an average of 10-12 thousand a month, didn’t worry too much, thought that this was how it should be, everyone lives like that. In 2012, he moved to St. Petersburg and found a job with a salary three times more than he had previously. And until the beginning of 2015, believing that now I was definitely successful, I again stopped thinking about the prospects. The realization began to come after some time, and only shortly before my 29th birthday I realized that at this rate, nothing good was in store for me in life - only daily trips to a boring job, handouts from my boss in the form of a salary increase of 2 thousand a year, life from paycheck to paycheck until old age (and it was scary to even think about). The field in which I gained experience was so narrow that if I were suddenly fired, I would be unemployed for a long time. And so, in January 2015, I decided that I needed to get into programming. I used to start something like this too, but gave up after a few days. This time everything was serious, I thought and realized that programming for me was the only chance for a normal life. I didn’t worry about choosing a language for a long time. Considering the popularity, object-oriented nature and demand in the market, the choice fell on Java. The first step towards achieving the goal was purchasing the book “Java. The Complete Guide by Herbert Schildt. I started reading it avidly in the evenings, on the subway while traveling to and from work, and working through examples at home and at work. Mastering the syntax didn't take long, maybe a week, since I was already familiar with the basics of programming and understood all sorts of language constructs. But when acquaintance with the OOP paradigm began, difficulties began. Around this time, I began to realize that studying from a book was quite boring and, out of curiosity, I scoured the Internet in search of some sane courses. And how lucky it was that it was then that I came across JavaRush! The course captivated me so much that the first 10 levels were completed, God willing, in three weeks. And then another piece of luck - discounts in April in honor of Cosmonautics Day, as a result of which I managed to snag an unlimited subscription for only 5,000 rubles. From that moment on, I simply did not get out of studying: I solved problems in the evening at home, in the morning I read in more detail about what I had studied in the subway (all from the same Schildt, and then from Eckel). At work, in my free time, I solved problems again, and in the evening I read again on the subway. And so on day after day. By the end of the year, I planned to take a course, then an online internship, and start looking for a job at the beginning of 2016. But, as it turned out, it is not always possible to follow the plan. A sufficient amount of material to register for an internship was completed only by April 2016, i.e. exactly one year after purchasing the course. I paid for the required subscription, downloaded the test task and... went nuts, to put it mildly. Git, Maven, Spring MVC, Hibernate, some front-end frameworks, MySQL... Everything that I heard about during the learning process, but thought that it was still very far away. And now I need to figure all this out in just a couple of weeks. The authors of the course claim that you can figure this out in a few days. But I didn't succeed. One might think that I am a fool and that I should not be a programmer. But I decided to turn it around differently, and settled on the opinion that I was simply going too deep to understand how this or that framework works. And I really couldn’t do otherwise. While trying to complete a test task using various tutorials from the Internet, I was faced with the fact that I understood practically nothing. Mechanical rewriting of code is unlikely to contribute to development, and if any error occurred when launching the application, I was completely lost where to look, completely confused, looked for another tutorial and started all over again. Naturally, I didn’t have time to create a finished application by the time the internship began. But I started reading books and manuals on Maven and Spring, understood in general terms how everything works in them, mastered Git and, oh gods, finally created an account on GitHub. But still, this failure with the internship demotivated me, until December 2016 I continued to study, and only before the new year I took the test task seriously again. Then I came across an excellent book “Spring MVC Beginner's Guide” by Packt Publishing, reading which I wrote the application step by step. And it contained everything, absolutely everything you needed to know to successfully complete the specifications, except for working with the database and Hibernate. I had to figure this out myself, but I again felt the strength, and quickly enough attached a database to the running application. Thus, the year 2017 began and I successfully passed the test task to participate in the internship, which began in March. But it just so happened that at my current place of work I could not work on the project, because... The ports of Git, Maven and others like them were blocked, so all that remained was to work on weekends and evenings. The stated 4-5 hours a week to master the material was clearly not enough. Here again my tendency to go into details came into play, but I believed that writing code that seems to work, but is not clear how, will yield little results. So I started falling behind. During the internship, HR started calling because... the resume goes into the applicant database. At the beginning of April I went to one interview, it demotivated me somewhat, because in my opinion it turned out to be a failure. Although I was given a test task, and I began to work on it out of interest, I no longer counted on this place. Then summer started and I started writing less code every day. I was afraid to go to interviews, I constantly thought “I’m not ready yet,” “I still need to learn more.” I was already thinking about purchasing another course on GeekBrains and even, God forgive me, enrolling in the Mail.ru online university. But in mid-August, having returned from vacation, I went to work and realized that I was already so fed up with everything there that I simply physically couldn’t take it anymore - soon I’ll just openly send everyone away with three cheerful letters. In order not to lead to sin, I began to respond to all interesting vacancies from the hh mailing list. No hassles, no cover letters, just hit “Respond” and whatever happens. If they call, good, but if not, then there is no need to be upset. If I fail, it’s okay, it’s an hour of shame and continue to persist. But I managed to get a job on the first try. One day I got a call back from the company T-Systems, for whose vacancy I had applied not long ago. This was a three-month, full-time internship with no experience required. The interview went with a bang, and I left very inspired. Literally the same week they called me back, and a few days later they sent me an offer. And on September 20th I started my first day of work as a junior software engineer. On December 11, he was notified that the probationary period had passed. It’s very cool to realize that you have achieved your goal; after this you can even inadvertently relax. But you shouldn't do this. Just develop, just grow. Much more could be said, but the opus has already turned out to be quite voluminous. Therefore, I have to put an end to it here. If you forgot to tell me about something important, just remind me about it in the comments, and I will definitely tell you. Good luck to everyone in their studies and work! that I’m already so fed up with everything there that I simply physically can’t take it anymore - soon I’ll just openly send everyone away with three cheerful letters. In order not to lead to sin, I began to respond to all interesting vacancies from the hh mailing list. No hassles, no cover letters, just hit “Respond” and whatever happens. If they call, good, but if not, then there is no need to be upset. If I fail, it’s okay, it’s an hour of shame and continue to persist. But I managed to get a job on the first try. One day I got a call back from the company T-Systems, for whose vacancy I had applied not long ago. This was a three-month, full-time internship with no experience required. The interview went with a bang, and I left very inspired. Literally the same week they called me back, and a few days later they sent me an offer. And on September 20th I started my first day of work as a junior software engineer. On December 11, he was notified that the probationary period had passed. It’s very cool to realize that you have achieved your goal; after this you can even inadvertently relax. But you shouldn't do this. Just develop, just grow. Much more could be said, but the opus has already turned out to be quite voluminous. Therefore, I have to put an end to it here. If you forgot to tell me about something important, just remind me about it in the comments, and I will definitely tell you. Good luck to everyone in their studies and work! that I’m already so fed up with everything there that I simply physically can’t take it anymore - soon I’ll just openly send everyone away with three cheerful letters. In order not to lead to sin, I began to respond to all interesting vacancies from the hh mailing list. No hassles, no cover letters, just hit “Respond” and whatever happens. If they call, good, but if not, then there is no need to be upset. If I fail, it’s okay, it’s an hour of shame and continue to persist. But I managed to get a job on the first try. One day I got a call back from the company T-Systems, for whose vacancy I had applied not long ago. This was a three-month, full-time internship with no experience required. The interview went with a bang, and I left very inspired. Literally the same week they called me back, and a few days later they sent me an offer. And on September 20th I started my first day of work as a junior software engineer. On December 11, he was notified that the probationary period had passed. It’s very cool to realize that you have achieved your goal; after this you can even inadvertently relax. But you shouldn't do this. Just develop, just grow. Much more could be said, but the opus has already turned out to be quite voluminous. Therefore, I have to put an end to it here. If you forgot to tell me about something important, just remind me about it in the comments, and I will definitely tell you. Good luck to everyone in their studies and work!
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