Over 8 years, thousands of graduates have taken the CodeGym course. Today, the project website has more than 1.5 million registered users from 106 countries. Not all graduates had time to talk about their successes: about how they studied, passed interviews and started working as developers. But current students are interested in learning the stories of those who already work in IT. We took matters into our own hands and launched a new special series about developers from different countries and companies who have been trained on CodeGym. Our fifth story is about load testing engineer Dmitry Sokolov ( Dmitry ). Dmitry was educated as a metallurgical engineer, but realized that his specialty was not very promising. By chance, he stumbled upon the CodeGym website on the Internet and remembered that he was a bit fond of programming in school.
“My story is not about super success”
Now I am 28 years old, I am a metallurgical engineer by education. At school, I was a little interested in programming, at a primitive level, I coded in Pascal and BASIC. He worked at the plant for a little less than six months. Initially, I wanted to get an engineering position by specialty, but I was offered a job as a toolmaker. When I got to the production line, I found out that many of the guys have a higher technical education, they were all promised the position of an engineer. I realized that most likely it is unlikely that something will grow together with me there. Then I looked for other vacancies, found an office job - an equipment selection engineer in a branch of an Italian company that manufactures construction equipment for the transport of dry bulk materials. The work was interesting, the salary was higher than at the factory. At work, sometimes there was free time, and first I used it for Duolingo, Lingualeo. Then on the Internet I came across a list of resources for learning programming: Codewars, CodeGym, Sololearn. I looked and realized that this is a great way to keep the brain in good shape, plus maintain knowledge of the English language. My story is not about a super-success like: “I passed CodeGym in 3 months, now the problem is to choose Microsoft or Google”. I studied CodeGym for about 3 years. During the first two years, I was promoted several times at work, new responsibilities appeared, the amount of free time decreased, business trips appeared, and, in principle, I treated programming as entertainment instead of computer games. I studied with long breaks, read literature at the same time, watched lectures on Youtube. At first I studied very disorganized, but in 2019, I really got a schedule, especially when CodeGym started giving out achievements for solving problems. This motivated me and I set a goal: to solve two simple tasks on weekdays and the maximum number of complex tasks on weekends.
“I realized that I blew my current job and “didn’t take out” the training”
Then I decided to look at the prospects of my position in the labor market and was upset. I liked to select equipment in accordance with the technical specifications of the customer (not a trivial task, since out of a hundred possible configurations the customer needed one hundred and one), communicate with technically competent employees (chief engineers, mechanics at enterprises), but further growth was more with an emphasis on sales — it didn't interest me. Then I realized that I would either stay in my current position without any special prospects, or I would have to go into sales. At that time, I roughly understood the level of salaries and requirements for a Java developer. If we talk about a developer with three years of experience, then the differences with my salary then were almost two times, and juniors were paid somewhere a little more, somewhere a little less than me. I looked at the requirements on HeadHunter, began to pull up the shortcomings. Employers did not invite me to a Java developer, I also decided to submit a resume for a tester. This all happened at the end of 2019, I had a lot of vacation days. I decided to use them for interviews. I was invited to the position of a tester. As a result, they took me to one company that had free training in the evenings. During the day I worked, in the evening I went to school. At a time when most of the training had passed, my current job was heavily loaded. My student debt started to pile up. I realized that I can't handle it. At the same time, I wrote a letter of resignation at work, because I definitely decided to leave for IT. Then I realized that I blew my current job and “didn’t take out” the training. This all happened at the end of 2019, I had a lot of vacation days. I decided to use them for interviews. I was invited to the position of a tester. As a result, they took me to one company that had free training in the evenings. During the day I worked, in the evening I went to school. At a time when most of the training had passed, my current job was heavily loaded. My student debt started to pile up. I realized that I can't handle it. At the same time, I wrote a letter of resignation at work, because I definitely decided to leave for IT. Then I realized that I blew my current job and “didn’t take out” the training. This all happened at the end of 2019, I had a lot of vacation days. I decided to use them for interviews. I was invited to the position of a tester. As a result, they took me to one company that had free training in the evenings. During the day I worked, in the evening I went to school. At a time when most of the training had passed, my current job was heavily loaded. My student debt started to pile up. I realized that I can't handle it. At the same time, I wrote a letter of resignation at work, because I definitely decided to leave for IT. Then I realized that I blew my current job and “didn’t take out” the training. At a time when most of the training had passed, my current job was heavily loaded. My student debt started to pile up. I realized that I can't handle it. At the same time, I wrote a letter of resignation at work, because I definitely decided to leave for IT. Then I realized that I blew my current job and “didn’t take out” the training. At a time when most of the training had passed, my current job was heavily loaded. My student debt started to pile up. I realized that I can't handle it. At the same time, I wrote a letter of resignation at work, because I definitely decided to leave for IT. Then I realized that I blew my current job and “didn’t take out” the training.
“I decided that I would rather be a good tester than a mediocre developer”
But one fine day I received a call from I-Teco, a Skolkovo resident, and offered to try out as a load testing engineer. At that time I didn’t understand what such engineers were doing. The company conducted training on the development environment in which its employees work - this is Loadrunner. Working in this development environment, you can upgrade both Java and web technologies. I was hired, I went through online training, I was assisted by a colleague who explained in detail all the details of the work. After training, I had an interview within the company, and later - an interview with the customer, as the company offered employees for outsourcing. I also presented an educational project. In the first days of work, I, to put it mildly, went nuts from the abundance of new information. This can be compared with mathematics: if in training they told me that 2 + 2 = 4,At the new place, not even technical skills were important, but the ability to communicate with people. There are people who are immersed in the execution of tasks, and I need to find an approach to them, because the execution of my tasks depends on the developers. Since then, I have been working on a project that deals with banking software. I need to test the response time: the customer has certain requirements regarding it. For example, it is generally accepted that an interface operation should last no longer than 2 seconds, otherwise there is a possibility that the user will refuse the services of this bank. To test the system, you can create virtual users in the development environment: you need to check how long the operation will take if, for example, 100 users simultaneously perform it. I have the prospect of becoming a developer, but it depends only on me. I decided to upgrade my main activity first: I thought that I would rather become a good tester than a mediocre developer. Many people have an erroneous opinion that this is some kind of boring job where you need to repeat a lot of actions monotonously. This is not entirely true. There are also administration elements, the code also needs to be written.
Tips for a novice developer:
Don't get too carried away and don't get too hung up on one thing. If something does not work out, then procrastination begins, and as a result, you lose precious time. If something is not clear, it is better to google - 90% of the information is already on the Internet.
Learn English.
To warm up, solve a few simple tasks to get a dose of dopamine from their performance. Move on to difficult tasks later.
Before the interview, study up and down the information on the company in which you want to get a job.
At the interview, do not fall into a stupor and say: “I don’t know.” Even if you don’t know something, but start to think, your ability to think will be appreciated at the interview.
At the new place, not even technical skills were important, but the ability to communicate with people. There are people who are immersed in the execution of tasks, and I need to find an approach to them, because the execution of my tasks depends on the developers. Since then, I have been working on a project that deals with banking software. I need to test the response time: the customer has certain requirements regarding it. For example, it is generally accepted that an interface operation should last no longer than 2 seconds, otherwise there is a possibility that the user will refuse the services of this bank. To test the system, you can create virtual users in the development environment: you need to check how long the operation will take if, for example, 100 users simultaneously perform it. I have the prospect of becoming a developer, but it depends only on me. I decided to upgrade my main activity first: I thought that I would rather become a good tester than a mediocre developer. Many people have an erroneous opinion that this is some kind of boring job where you need to repeat a lot of actions monotonously. This is not entirely true. There are also administration elements, the code also needs to be written.
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