Hi all! At one time, I was very motivated by such articles, so I decided to contribute and talk a little about my path, as well as give some advice ;) I am 23 years old, graduated from university in 2019, majoring in management. Disappointed with the results in this direction (in fact, I believe that management is a cool thing if you live in Moscow or St. Petersburg; in the regions there are few management personnel), after working for a year in sales and in entry-level positions, I decided to change my occupation. Choosing between marketing and programming, I decided to go with the latter, since I seemed to be doing well at school, and I once took courses in web development. The most difficult thing for me was choosing a language and how to study it. I started with C++ (I thought that was the basis), jumped into Python, watched videos on YouTube and read articles, until at one point I came across Javarush and realized that I would like to learn in this format. Without thinking twice, I paid for a subscription and started learning (at that time I knew nothing at all about Java). As a result, completing the course to level 34 took me 2 months, I studied 8-10 hours a day, and at the same time read literature on obscure topics. Of the books, I liked Horstmann and Bates/Sierra (although it is very simple, it helped me understand the main topics well). I haven’t read a single book in its entirety, by the way. In general, in my opinion, the most effective way to find a job is to complete the course up to level 20, smoothly flowing into Spring and various frameworks, as well as creating your own projects. All other levels will develop you brilliantly, but most likely you will need little of them, and what you don’t work with is quickly forgotten :) As a result, when the 2 months of subscription had expired, I began to actively look for vacancies. However, there were none in my city - only one internship for a nominal fee, which I eventually went for. During the interview they asked about Java Core, Spring, Hibernate and REST API. If there are no vacancies, then I can recommend 2 ways: 1. Take on everything that is available. Free internships, collective projects - something that, it would seem, can be disdained, and which I would never agree to in any other scenario, will help you acquire a bunch of competencies and upgrade your skills. Plus, even such experience is incredibly valuable among employers. 2. Write to HR emails yourself or call. There are a lot of them in the public domain, often there are vacancies for interns/juniors that are not urgent or are not advertised and you may be lucky (that’s how I found mine). Even if nothing happens, get to know each other for the future. As a result, after working for 4 months, I realized that I would have to wait quite a long time for further growth and began to look for vacancies again. And then I already felt like a sought-after (ha-ha) specialist who was asked about salary expectations and sent offers. As a result, somehow I was hired as a middle worker in one of our banks, I’ve been working for six months now, it seems to be good, although it’s difficult) My advice: 1. Soft skills are assessed quite seriously. Don’t be tense during the interview (they all take place in a lamp environment, as a rule), be yourself, and most importantly, think out loud. It’s impossible to know everything, the main thing is to be able to think in the right direction) Both middles and seniors Google exactly the same way as you did during your studies. By the way, they also say that the main difference between a middle and a junior is that the junior will ask, and the middle will google it :) 2. Study new technologies. Even theoretical knowledge of conventional Kafka/Hadup/Reactive programming will give you a plus in karma. In any case, I would like to conclude my short article with gratitude to this resource for a large amount of practice and an interesting training format. Programming, by the way, is very cool, at least because programmers are loved and all career paths are open to them) All the best!
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