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How I quit journalism and became a programmer

Hi, I'm Alex. He became a programmer at the age of 29. Today I have 4 years of experience, I work remotely for an English company, my salary is tied to the pound and about 10 times the average salary in the country. For the first time I came across programming ... at the age of 29, when I started learning to code.

Background


I graduated from the university with a degree in television journalism. In the last year I went to work on TV and spent 6 years there. In recent years, he worked for the Iranian television channel IRINN. He independently organized the work process, mainly worked from home - edited video, wrote text, when necessary - went to the shooting. Even then, I was seduced by the freelance format. The main advantages for me were the lack of a strict schedule, priority on the task, and not the amount of time spent in the office, lack of bosses, level of salary.

In 2014, my contract with IRINN ended. There was no desire to return to Ukrainian TV channels. Repelled and salary and the need to work in the office. I decided to look for a new niche for myself. In active searches, I spent the next 2 years. I tried to organize my production studio. He later sold goods on eBay, buying them on Aliexpress. Today it is called dropshipping, then I did not know about it. However, my shop was quickly shut down when a Desigual spokesperson contacted eBay complaining about the sale of fakes. Then I was supplying brioli in barbershops. All this time for me one of the main priorities was the ability to work remotely.

I first thought about programming when my close friend retrained in the iOS developer. Being a humanist, like me, he greatly surprised me with this. All the stereotypes about programmers in my head did not allow me to understand this event. “How can I BECOME a programmer,” I wondered. They are born, well, or in extreme cases, they turn into a university. And here Sasha, a spokesman yesterday, told me that he had become a programmer ...
However, he very quickly seduced me with this profession, which was incomprehensible to me at that time. High salaries, the ability to work remotely from anywhere in the world and a strong passion for work. It sounded magical.

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Training


I decided to become an iOS developer too. In training, I went along the path trodden by Sasha. This is a freely available video of Stanford University lecture notes.
Started with the CS106a Programming Methodology course . This is an introductory course in programming; no training or special knowledge is required. Training takes place in the Java language. It was there that I became acquainted with the basics, the main patterns and concepts. The course, of course, is old - 2008, but it is taught by a very colorful teacher Mehran Sahami. He greatly influenced the first impressions of learning and programming in principle. Lectures are watched in one breath. Teaching and materials in English. When I finished the course, it became decently faster to read and perceive English-language information.

Next was the courseCS106b Programming Abstractions (in C ++). It turned out to be much more complicated. In CS106a, training was fun, we programmed a robot or created a social network with an interface. CS106b learned complex things like recursion, search and sort algorithms, and no interface. It was much less interesting to me and I stopped at half the program.

After that, I went to offline courses "iOS from scratch." I needed to communicate with a real mentor. Being already prepared to some extent, it was easy for me to learn. In the future, the teacher (a guy 5 years younger than me) became my partner in the company and we still communicate and even work for one employer.

Hence the advice to beginners -make dating at the very beginning - it will help you a lot. Go to courses, meetings, wherever you can get to know the developers of your profile.

Then there was another offline course "iOS for advanced." In parallel, I took a course at Stanford Developing iOS 9 Apps with Swift . This is perhaps the best that can be found on the Internet for the study of iOS and Swift. True, the course is not designed for beginners and is already outdated. I was lucky, at that time the course was not yet over. Lectures poured into the network as they were shot in a Stanford audience. In fact, I studied with students. I did my homework and checked the results in special forums.

Today, unfortunately, the latest lectures concern iOS 11, which is also outdated.
I was still in the process of training an incomplete course on Udemy (about $ 10), he did not make a significant impression on me.

Thus, I got the main knowledge for free.

First job


I got my first job (albeit an intern) for the 6th month from the start of training. I attended a meeting of Cocoa Heads for developers for Apple. These meetings take place around the world through the efforts of local developer communities. There I met people and asked for advice on employment. I was recommended to contact one of the speakers. It turned out that the company in which he worked was looking for June iOS for the role of the intern. I was offered to work for experience on a real project and mentoring. I agreed. And I did not lose, within 4 months I got a huge experience. The team turned out to be very strong and I have grown decently. In the last month of work there, I began to post a resume and passed the very first interview that I was invited to. I was offered $ 700 per month for full time at the office.I worked for 2 weeks at a new job and my teacher called me to start-up from offline courses at $ 1000 per month. And all this 10 months after the start of training.


After working in a startup, the teacher and I decided to start our own business - outsourcing development. We had experience searching for developers, orders came from time to time. This seemed to be the next logical step. In addition, I had ambitions and did not want to be just a hired programmer. I was 30 and I thought that I no longer have time to swing - I need to take the bull by the horns. We came up with the name of the company, made a website, gathered several developers who are ready to connect when the order comes in. And gradually began to develop. Orders came from Ivan's past customers, partially searched on Upwork. But these were small tasks and I actively tried to promote us on LinkedIn. We aimed to receive orders in Europe and, if possible, in the States. To this end, I opened a company in Estonia through e-residence, so that it would be easier for clients to do business with us. However,In the couple of years that the company lasted, not a single transaction through the Estonian company has passed.

All our customers were from the CIS. Of all our projects, there were only two major ones. And then, one lasted more than a year with constant delays in payments. As a result, he stalled. I didn’t manage to establish sales. Due to incorrect cost estimates, low profits were constantly generated. In general, during the course of the year it became clear that I too accelerated the development of events. I did not have the necessary experience. And although the company looked like the next logical step, I was mistaken. Despite the fact that I quickly grew up as a developer, this was not enough to manage the company. As a result, I again went to work as a programmer at stake. At the same time, I closed the company in Estonia, managed the improvements and tails that we had left.

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Eventually


Since the end of 2018, I have been working for an English company. And I got there under surprising circumstances. After the closure of my company, I began to actively distribute my resume exclusively to American and European job sites remotely. However, there were almost no responses and interviews. In the end, I went to work in the office. Six months later, they contacted me from an American company. They were looking for a remote developer, they said that I sent them a resume. I went through an interview. I was offered almost 3 times more than what I was receiving at that time.

A year later, this American company received investments for the project on which I worked. For this startup, they separately registered a company in London, where the whole management moved.

Today the product is in the final stages of development, a release is planned for the coming months.

The main conclusions that I made going this way:

  • At the very beginning it is important to make acquaintances. With mentors, teachers, students. In the future, it is these people who can help you with your career.
  • At the very beginning, it is worth focusing not on the RFP, but on the team with which you can quickly grow.
  • Appreciate yourself highly. It doesn’t matter that you have little experience. It doesn’t matter that a lot of competition. I always ignored vacancies with a small salary, I always wanted large sums. And a decent job found me myself. There can only be a compromise with a strong team.
  • Learn. Constantly. Here, in addition to being Captain Evidence, there is nothing to add.
  • English is a must have. These are opportunities and this is the level of the developer. This is access to information, etc. etc.

I really like programming and am very passionate about my new profession. It’s even hard for me to call it work. But even so, it seems to me that you should not focus only on it. To distract myself, I began to conduct a vlog about my experience and observations , about what helps me in my work. Here the experience of the previous work came in handy :)

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