Become the junior developer that companies want to hire.

Preface 🔰

Who am I, and why listen to me?

As a self-taught web developer, I struggled to overcome the barriers of entry into the workforce. I had always done well in academia, which resulted in professor affirmation, offers for advanced classes, and offers for scholarships. I naively believed the workforce to behave similarly: that all I had to do was be good at what I did and the jobs would come to me. If I could pass an interview the way I could pass a test, my encyclopedic knowledge of programming would make finding a job easy.

That was not the case. Not only did job offers not come flooding into my mailbox, but I could rarely get a response to an application when I reached out to companies directly. What was wrong? I was a good developer. I could solve real world problems. I had created applications and met customer demands. Somehow, I was wholly unprepared for an enterprise setting.

I doubted my abilities. My ego was crushed. I thought I was intelligent; I thought my projects pushed the envelope; but employers seemed to disagree. They often did not see me as even worth interviewing. The most common feedback I received was that they required a degree. The fact that I had invented applications that generated revenue did not matter. I gave up…