How I Played The Long-game To Land My First Programming Job
Self-taught developers don’t always have a straight path towards getting hired.
Many companies haven’t come around to the fact that anyone with an internet connection can teach themselves programming.
The people currently in leadership positions most likely started their careers in a world before the internet where college was the only education path.
Companies like Google and Apple no longer require college degrees for new hires. However, that attitude hasn’t fully trickled down to the rest of corporate America.
A paradigm shift is underway for self-taught developers but there’s still a ways to go.
Self-taught developers will most likely need to be creative when trying to land their first job.
How I bridged the gap
One way to offset whatever you may be lacking when it comes to accepted education credentials is work experience.
Work experience is the one thing universally valued by all employers. It’s proof that you can actually do the job your applying for.
However, there’s a chicken and an egg problem when it comes to getting hired as a newbie developer. Employers want you to have work experience but they don’t want to hire you because you don’t have work experience.
It’s easy to get stuck at the starting gate because no one wants to take a chance on you.
One tactic that worked for me to get around this impasse was playing the long-game.
Essentially, I accepted lower pay in the short-term so I could gain work experience that I could leverage later.
During my last year at university, I started teaching myself programming and found I enjoyed it more than the other classes I was taking.
Coming out of school, I knew I wanted a job as a software developer instead of a job that was related to my degree.
After applying to a few places, it became clear that I wasn’t going to be able to make the switch without some sort of job experience or a Computer Science degree.
The only offer I received was a three-month internship with a local software consulting company.
I accepted the internship and ended up making 50% to 75% less than my classmates who graduated with me a few months earlier.
I knew if I could work hard for a few months as an intern, I’d be able to leverage the internship to land a future job as a junior developer.
That’s exactly what happened.
After my internship, I ended up working full-time for the same company. Even before my internship ended, I was starting to get a few more callbacks on my applications.
If I would’ve pursued as much money as possible in the short term, I don’t believe I would’ve been able to break into the tech industry.
I might’ve been able to transition into a programming job down the road but that becomes increasingly difficult the deeper you get into a certain career path.
Derisk yourself
No matter how you slice it, hiring a self-taught developer to their first job is a risk. Employers can’t rely on traditional education credentials or past experiences.
Hiring managers put themselves at a higher risk because if the self-taught developer doesn’t work out, the blame falls on them.
The person hiring you needs to be able to defend their decision if things don’t work out. It’s hard to defend a hiring decision to a boss when the Education section on the Resume is empty (or says self-taught) and when the Experience section is thin.
Offering a reduced salary or showing a willingness to work as an intern is a way to reduce the perceived risk from the employer’s point of view. It’s also a signal that you are serious about pursuing a career as a software developer.
I’ve come to view this first job as the apprenticeship phase of my self-taught education. I was able to get feedback on my work and understand what was needed from me as a professional.
I was essentially getting paid to learn how to program.
I believe it’s a win-win for both sides. The employer reduces their risk and has first access to someone they can hire full-time. The self-taught developer gets to continue their education and build up their resume.
Even if it takes a year to get to the salary you want, compare that to the cost and time of getting a Computer Science degree at a 4-year university.
Once you have some experience, you can create a snowball effect that will allow you to ask for higher pay or find a job elsewhere.
The hardest step is the first one. Once you break-in with your first development job, all the following steps get progressively easier.
Do what’s right for you
I’m not saying you should accept nothing or allow yourself to be taken advantage of. You have bills to pay and mouths to feed.
What I am saying is that to get somewhere a year from now, giving up something in the short-term might be a good strategy.
Sometimes, to acquire real-world experience, you might need to give something up now to get more later.
All circumstances are different. Playing the long-game fit my situation. It might not fit your life circumstances, that's ok.
There are other tactics you can use to land your first job which I’ll talk about in later articles.
I believe the world is slowly becoming more accepting of self-taught developers.
Until then, playing the long-game is a tactic you can use to land your first job.
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