From medicine to IT: Epam, JavaRush and programming courses In touch Vladislav, a nineteen-year-old young man who came to programming without a technical background, with a humanitarian mindset and an A2 level of English. A little more about yourself: graduated from medical college with honors; I am an employee of the intensive care and anesthesiology department; I’m making my own way from scratch to the first offer. The key to today's story will be the symbol combination that forms the word "opportunity". I will break the success story into two parts: before receiving the job offer and after. Today we are talking about what path applicants have to go through to... As a second-year medical college student, I decided to discover a widely discussed field of activity - programming, without knowing anything at all: what directions and languages exist; requirements for candidates; "start from scratch" expressions. The immersion began with finding a tutor who could guide and explain the basics of app development. The cost of one hour of classes as of 2018 was already 700 UAH (1900 rubles), including transfer of the mentor in our car along the route: his house - our house - his house (60 km in total). We studied the Delphi language and the business accounting system - 1C. After successfully compiling the first lines of code, with a feeling of enthusiasm and significance, I continued to delve deeper into this industry each subsequent time until I learned about the prospects of the language I was learning. I decided to change the further direction of my studies... Among my friends, the island of Java was always on the lips, it seemed to me, without knowing that we were talking about the Java programming language. Events take place on New Year's Eve. I started surfing the Internet in order to obtain information, and among the advertisements I came across the JavaRush (JR) platform and a tempting offer to purchase an annual subscription at a 50% discount. After looking at the reviews, I decided to invest my accumulated savings. Having successfully mastered the theory and consolidated the acquired knowledge by solving the proposed problems, of which there are over 1000 worth noting; creating more than one game; by taking part in topics discussed among fellow students on the forum; After reading several hundred articles, I can wholeheartedly recommend JR as an online educational platform. An undeniable advantage is the structured presentation of the material, which allows beginners to study truly relevant material step by step. Moving on... During the learning process, I strongly recommend that everyone use at least three resources as a source of information. One topic will be described differently everywhere and you can get a piece of useful information everywhere. Fortunately, there are a huge number of free resources for studying areas of interest. Some of them: Metanit, Vertex Academy, GeekForGeeks, Coursera, Udemy, JetBrains Academy, tutorials on Youtube. The following year, I enrolled in offline programming courses in Java. We had a great teacher, but frankly, I didn’t get the feedback I was hoping for during the recording process. Most likely, this was influenced by my age and lack of recognition of my true desires. Two months of training were not in vain: I made friends with whom I later exchanged information about ongoing conferences, internships, and existing vacancies. This is how I became an active user of the dou.ua forum 😄 If you have the motivation to learn, regardless of the obstacles that arise along the way, I can say that offline programming courses, and especially private tutors, are far from the best option for entering this industry. 1) Travel. High paying job. Flexible schedule. Recreation areas. Social package. Free food. 2) Sedentary lifestyle. Crazy competition. Continuous learning. By going through the above in the second point, you get the opportunity to claim the “cherries on the cake” from the first. I want to tell you that I am a brave guy, because I apply for projects and don’t come close to meeting the requirements, but strangely enough, they take me. And I advise you to repeat after me. First of all, they evaluate your skills to quickly master new technologies and adapt to constantly changing environmental conditions. Develop communication skills, the ability to work in a team and study non-stop, perseverance and perseverance, and imagination. After some time of catching up on topics on my own, I sent an application to participate in the Epam Java Program. I passed the qualifying stages and became a participant in the project, along with the other three hundred applicants interested in receiving an offer. Now is the time to remember the competition. Every week a certain number were eliminated, but most of those who entered reached the writing of the final project, including me. The learning process went as follows: there is a closed platform on which new tasks are published weekly. We wrote full-fledged applications using Java EE, Maven, Spring, databases, covered the code with tests and pushed it to the portal for verification. We received feedback and corrected errors with the main goal - to get the maximum score. The complexity of the tasks grew each time. At the moment, I have the opportunity to begin writing the project and further defense in order to move to the Laboratory of Epam, the last stage before the job offer. "Live and learn":Upon successful completion of an external training course at Epam, I again became a student, this time at the “Ш++” school, which operates on a “peer-to-peer” principle, where there are no teachers and no theory. There are analogues: "School 42", "ucode" (formerly Unit Factory). The qualifying stage involved solving five trivial problems in one of the proposed programming languages (PLs). The founders state that you will study computer science, not a specific language. At the initial stage, I will agree with their position, but in the future you will write code exclusively in Java, and you will have to study the intricacies of this language in the process of solving assigned problems. A warning system will keep you on your toes; by gaining points for late uploading of homework or receiving an unsatisfactory grade for its completion (one/two), you are approaching disqualification from the project. The complexity of the tasks gradually increases. A special feature of the school is the need to call each week with other program participants in order to evaluate completed homework. They won’t deliberately blame you, but the human factor plays a significant role in this situation, since the assessment is probably not given by a specialist in this field, but by a student just like you. It is assumed that you are checking the work of three participants and an equal number of people are checking you. They are all different every time. You need to be prepared to devote between Tuesday and Thursday, not taking into account the time spent on agreeing on the time and platform on which the call will take place, up to 4-5 hours in total for calling and evaluating the work. Upon completion of the training, you receive a certificate with a prescribed number of hours and an average grade based on the results of completed tasks, and very good experience in creating your own algorithms and communicating with colleagues. The more you study, the more you will feel that you know little. Tested many times. I have described only a small part of what you will encounter on the path to becoming a developer. In addition to the above, I participated in internships in international companies such as: SoftServe, Alfa Bank, Sigma, GlobalLogic, Avada Media. With some I reached a happy end, with others I continue to learn. By this I want to say that there are no barriers except those into which your consciousness drives you. Let me remind you that I do not have a specialized education. I'm a medical switcher. I already have a well-written resume in which I proudly highlight my achievements. I entered the profession with poor English, but during this time I managed to improve my communication, writing and reading skills to the Upper-Intermediate level (defined by SoftServe). I was good with the exact sciences, but now I’m knocking algorithms one or two. I have a lot to share with you, but it’s extremely difficult to fit all my experience and knowledge into one article. I’ll ask for feedback, are you interested in knowing what happened next... We can discuss must-have to know technologies and frequently asked questions during interviews. Write what you would be interested in reading about in your spare time. Lastly: take fear as motivation. If we are scared, it means that at a particular second we are changing and becoming a better version of ourselves, and only through practice can we get a satisfactory result. Change equals development, becoming stronger and happier. All the best!
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