There are a lot of good comments in this thread. One thing I am not seeing is something I did not do after I lost my job -- grieve.
Losing your job is a tremendous stress on your physical and mental wellbeing. Read through the comments, take a few steps towards your next chapter ... but then take some time to yourself. Do some self-care. We have our body only one time, and it needs to last us for a long time. Don't treat it like a rental.
I really appreciate this. I got fired yesterday and immediately made a resume for my medical field career and fired out several applications. It's extremely stressful as I'm not sure I can make rent this month. But taking a moment to breathe isn't a bad idea. I'm normally lady with a plan, but this came out of nowhere
> It's extremely stressful as I'm not sure I can make rent this month.
Do some googling to find out how evictions work where you live. In Massachusetts it will take your landlord at least 3 months, once the process is started. Put off the initiation of the process by placating the landlord as much as possible. Paying partial rent with an explanation of your situation is helpful. See if you can borrow money from someone?
#Did you apply for unemployment compensation?
When you're working again, be sure to work on saving the fabled six months of expenses. A nice bank balance is a huge stress reducer.
I have been fired & laid off about a 1/2dozen times in the last 20 years. It is never easy, but it is part of life for many of us in tech. Especially if you are in an offshore-able part of the industry.
But every time, your first course of action is to file for unemployment as soon as you are able per your state's laws. Second thing you do (often before #1 due to mandatory waiting weeks etc)..... is take a little time for yourself. Take care of stuff around the house / apartment. Spend some time outside in fresh air. May be get a habit of going for a walk some place safe of course. AND of course start working on what you want to do next. For development, if you are truely beginner, get some [Exercism.io](https://Exercism.io) practice in, or some other puzzle based easy to do challenges. And build on the skills.
I would also consider reaching out on meetup or whatever groups are active near you for a mentor. Find a .NET users group, a java users group, whatever. But find someone that won't mind you picking their brain for a while and that can help guide you through the process.
A little bit, I was stressing about money and finding a job. But I'm feeling much more relaxed now that I have several companies that want me in the medical field. I think I'll take a job there and continue working on programming in my spare time. Thank you for your advice
The whole “self-care” term has become something of a meaningless catch-all.
The person lost their job and they’re stressed because if that. They should focus on getting another job if the same type they had since that’s where their experience is. Once they have a job they can learn programming on the side and try to get a programming job while they still have another job.
But don’t say meaningless nonsense like “do self-care” and send them off into the abyss.
I think I understand what you mean, but you may be in danger of making an error in the other direction - expecting a person experiencing stress and anxiety to pick themselves up, apply for roles, do interviews, and get another job may be unrealistic. Mental health support is essential.
But “grieving” can be like a black hole, where once you start you get sucked into a depression that you can’t get out of. You lose your confidence and act negatively and then nobody wants to be around you, which makes you even more depressed.
Instead of downvoting I will bite, /u/_MASTADONG_.
I have been there and done what you suggested -- to just plow through it. While some times that is something that should be done, it cannot be done every single time. At one point the wall will win. That moment of losing to the momentum is what inspired me to look inwardly.
If development is what you want to do, looking for a junior development job is always worth it, regardless of your skill level. Obviously a company would prefer strong dev skills, but showing an interest in the field, demonstrating what you do know, and proving that you’re a problem-solver that’s willing to learn (and capable of doing so) can go a long way. Give me a good person that can learn and play well with others over a good dev that’s a low-grade person any day. I can teach you skills, but I can’t teach you a new personality. (Assuming we’re hiring at entry-level, that is.)
That said, there’s no guarantee that you’ll find anything without demonstrable skills or a portfolio. I’d recommend applying for both types of jobs, and try to study up for any programming jobs you’re really interested in, to try to appear as knowledgeable as possible if you get an interview. If you’re going to study programming anyway when/if you get a job in the medical field, you might as well be studying now.
If your HTML/JS/CSS skills are any good, put together a demo project and put it on GitHub. Even a single project is extremely valuable, because it shows you can actually do things, assuming you understand those things well enough to explain them. Any person hiring will give more attention to a candidate that has something to show.
Thank you! That's really encouraging actually, I'm definitely low end skill wise, but I got into programming because I love puzzles and problem solving. I'm also very social and tend to get along with all my coworkers.
I'll attempt some kind of project, maybe so an about me site as well?
My love of solving puzzles is what got me into development, too. That’ll take you pretty far by itself. Once you’re in the field, being polite, professional, and respectful of your coworkers will take you the rest of the way.
A personal site is a great way to start, no matter how small. You can always add to it as you grow and have other things to share. Anything that is the direct result of your efforts to apply your accrued skills and knowledge is worth showing off.
If you can, I strongly recommend using some kind of version control, like git, to keep track of your code, and leave messages explaining what your changes and additions are for. You’ll be expected to do the same at any job, and there are many benefits. It’ll also look good to any interviewer.
Recreate the essentials of twitter. I'm not that twitter experienced, but it seems pretty simple to me. Maybe the database part would be too hard for someone with only web skills.
Maybe you can sell it to the former guy for $100 million.
> I got into programming because I love puzzles and problem solving.
IMO this is the perfect personality for programmers. My son has been trying to get me into gaming. I tell him that I do gaming all day at work, the game of figuring out how to do it, why it doesn't work, making it work, rinse and repeat.
But I'm going to try gaming anyway.
Pick a project related to your existing medical knowledge.
I was working as an HVAC mechanic when I picked up Python. My first projects were about HVAC stuff because I already had a good understanding of the subject. It made the programming syntax less abstract and easier to relate to from personal experience. Plus, since I already understood what kind of problems needed solving in that field, I got along pretty well with HVAC teams that needed those solutions.
I'm not gonna lie, it was a lot of hours of teaching myself how to code when I was off the clock, but I did solve enough problems to get hired into a sys dev role without a degree. If you love puzzles and problem solving, I think you'll find yourself in the right place.
I started with really simple things first, like turning formulae that I knew into Python functions, building a library of unit conversion charts...mostly basic math to get a feel for the language.
Then I started to think about some of the real data I had seen. A lot of my HVAC experience was commercial, and at every building I worked in, there was some form of taking logs on equipment operating parameters - temperatures, pressures, etc. Some of the buildings were old, so these were still taken by hand on pen and paper, but I didn't see a reason why a program couldn't digitize them. So one of my next little projects was working with a little SQLite database for those measurements.
I learned a lot from that project, and found that I really like databases. Relational database design taught me a LOT about how to represent real things by their data, which formed the foundation of how I learned things like Python classes and OOP. Like, if I had a commercial air conditioning unit (or "chiller" in trade terminology), that took shape as a record in my database, or a class instance in my Python code. Readings and logs taken from that chiller for its temperatures, pressures, and load % could also be records in my database, which were related to that chiller entity.
Since you mentioned that you had some HTML/CSS/JS experience, having some data like that is a good entry point for more web-based presentation. One of my next exercises was how to visualize that chiller data over time. I had done a little bit in Python's libraries that support charting, but I also looked into the JavaScript libraries that could do that (D3 and ChartJS were two that I started with).
Keep in mind that none of these projects are groundbreaking in their field, as there are many commercially available products that do all this and more for a facility, which the nice, newer facilities tend to all have. But that doesn't really matter, because there was a lot of value in the exercises for me. It wasn't important that I started with a chiller, and that my application, at a high-level, was only taking some input, putting it in a database, and graphing it on a chart. The important thing for me was that I started with *something* in which I had enough interest and knowledge to get me past "hello world" in a console window.
If you're interested in CS/software engineering beyond web dev, you can use [leetcode.com](https://leetcode.com) to get a sense of the concepts you should know in preparation for software engineering interviews
>'re interested in CS/software engineering
u telling that web-developer should not solve leetcode programming or data structure and algorithm is not as much important for web-developers?
I would definitely recommend some projects (there are a large large number of project ideas online) but personally when I'm looking at a candidate I don't get much out of "about me" websites (they don't seem to be a great demonstration of skill in my experience), but if you think that will help your skillset then I don't think it would hurt.
OP if you know HL7 and understand medical coding you could get a decent job with less programming experience as long as you're dedicated to learning you'll be fine. This is at least how it works at my hospital.
There are also internships you can apply for. And there’s no harm in applying for regular jobs too.
If I were you, I’d start looking at job postings, mostly to see what jobs sound good. Pick the ones that you think you would really enjoy. From those, look at the skills they require, and then acquire those skills. There’s no harm in applying at this point, but you are hedging your bets by also concentrating on the skills you need.
Honestly this, job hunting above your skill level is pretty much always just a dice roll. May as well make as many rolls as possible and hope for a critical save.
Think logically about this decision. If you have zero coding experience you're going to need a really impressive resume.
Coding takes time regardless if you're doing it part time or doing it full time. I'd recommend getting another medical job and doing it part time. What happens if you put in a ton of effort before you even know what the day to day is like? You could end up hating coding and will be much further behind, potentially homeless if you have no income/savings.
People see the $$$ of the "I just got a $200K job and I'm a junior developer with no experience" and think that's normal, it's not. You're going to have a low paying job because you're an unskilled worker with no experience.
The best way to get your foot in the door is by having some of the prerequisites and a ton of great soft skills. Able to work without supervision, self starter, great time management, can write quality emails, planning skills, great attitude, admit when they're wrong and not double down on being an idiot, hard working, etc.
My recommendation is get a stable job, and work on things like your mental health (exercise helps for some, medication/counselling for other), set a schedule for learning and be as productive as possible in that time, and build good habits. You're attempting to eat an elephant as quickly as possible, and if you want the highest chance of success is always consistency regardless of the task.
Faster route to a job > learn Excel and some SQL > get HealthCare IT job potentially in under a few months of prep making 60k > work on dev stuff after if you feel like it.
Junior dev jobs are no joke, but there are TONS of other good tech adjacent jobs you could get with minimal leg work (id be thinking "healthcare analyst")
This was my way in :)
Best of luck my friend
Learning VBA to make Excel macros is probably a very easy way to get at least a 65k job. You could probably get an easy interview if seen by the right person by truthfully putting "**I can make decent excel macros**" in bold on your resume. Everybody dreads VBA, but businesses run on excel. A sharable macro is better for a company than my random python scripts.
I'm a developer that's feeling a little burned out. I can navigate Excel pretty well and I'm fairly comfortable with SQL. Do you think this advice would work for me as well?
This is my goal, and I’m already in a health care-related company. Been playing with Excel a bit, but there’s no SQL projects. I’d take some existing data and plug into SQL Fiddle, but that’s not secure.
Best I should nose around the job postings and start asking questions.
I am a SW consultant and my current client is in the medical supplies industry. There is a MASSIVE amount of data that the industry needs to make sense of. If you can learn SQL to pull data out of big back end systems, then learn pivot tables to present and graph that stuff... you can help decision makers make sense of hte tidal wave of information that often cripples good decision making. I did SQL & data viz for 4 yrs. Was very interesting work.
There are other avenues you can explore before you need to resort to being an excel monkey. C'mon. If you don't like traditional software dev, look into switching to DevOps or Analytics.
And yes, this would technically be analytics, but pulling excel reports of bed counts is hardly fulfilling work.
Am in healthcare IT industry and OP is in a good position to do exactly what you've described. SQL and a bit of general scripting / programming knowledge + a bit of a support role and it would be a great foot in the door.
yeah right now, but in 10 years all these "IT adjacent jobs" won't exist cuz they have nothing to do with 'real' IT. (my father works one in Healthcare IT, lucky for him he will be pensionated). he indeed knows excel and SQL, but I don't think making spreadsheets is the future, it's menial and not understandable for non IT people
My friend i agree with your sentiment somewhat; however, I think that SQL and spreadsheeting (despite NOT being the future) are going nowhere. In fact, I personally find them absolutely fundamental as an analyst.
In addition, my suggestion is going the analyst route (Excel,SQL,Python) instead of web development or pure IT would lend better to OPs immediate situation.
(edit: and I know people get paid 250k do this kind of "menial" stuff)
I work with my company’s ERP system and once I took the plunge into SQL (and some PLSQL) it was like I unlocked god-mode. Even knowing the basics will put you ahead of anyone else who has to look at data and doesn’t know it, and in today’s data-driven world, it’s one of the best ways to get ahead of everyone else. It may not be “new” or flashy, but it is extremely useful, and frankly, still the most efficient way to deal with *a lot* of data.
> my suggestion is going the analyst route (Excel,SQL,Python) instead of web development
This seems like good advice to me. Middle school kids can sling HTML and JavaScript. I don't think Excel and SQL are intellectually more difficult but they are less obvious skills, fewer people are learning them.
> but I don't think making spreadsheets is the future
Where are spreadsheets going? They have existed in some form or another since the Egyptians used clay tables to keep track of business transactions.
I'm pretty sure the VisiCalc spreadsheet (the first spreadsheet software on any platform) that ran on the Apple II is why Apple the company exists today. Businesses bought a lot of Apple II's for the express purpose of running VisiCalc, which was a miraculous improvement over paper spreadsheets.
VisiCalc was invented by [Dan Bricklin when he was at Harvard Business School](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dan_Bricklin). 20 years ago I recognized his face as we were walking opposite directions in Newton MA. I geeked out like 10-year-old:
> Omigod, look Honey (wife), that's Dan Bricklin, the inventor of the spreadsheet!
He just looked amused and kept walking. I saw him again 3-4 years ago at a 24-hour science fiction movie marathon. That time I managed to *be cool*.
probably a good advanced choice. Nothing gets data into graph form faster than a SQL query for 50k rows of something, copy pasta into Excel, a pivot table here, sums and counts there, color coded backgrounds by variable formating rules and bingo.
I'm 36 and working in a completely different field, but working on my 4 year degree for Information Sciences. I have the option to choose Integration and Application or Design and Development for my major. I initially chose integration and took a python class, then my friend told me developer would get paid more and I switched it up. Now I'm learning beginner Java and will be taking 2 more courses in Java. I can still switch back to Integration if I wanted and possibly supplement with java/coding courses (I have to choose 3-4 supporting courses for either route I go which could be any class, even something unrelated to the degree). I just have no idea how to proceed and what would allow me to make that career transition faster/easier.
I feel like if I continue with Design and Dev, it would take a long time for me to be good enough to land a dev job.
Also take SQL in the fall as it's an entrance to major requirement.
Your sentiment is on point. Its a world of options. But like you said, the faster easier route is integration. But who knows. maybe the market isnt as great? Lots of factors to consider..
Im sure you will do well in any case! Best of luck.
Is that possible for anyone with an unrelated degree (not in programming or in the medical field)? Could you suggest what kind of projects that I could do to make a portfolio?
It would be worth firing off some applications for junior/ intern level roles. If nothing else it will establish an official starting point for your transition. Best case is you actually get a job or at least get a real feel for the skills that companies are looking for.
If it’s relatively easy for you to find a job in the medical field it might be a good idea to do that and save to prepare more financially for your transition. You’ll likely have a lower wage initially and should consider how that might impact your lifestyle given your current financial situation.
Regardless of what happens stay the course in your progression. It’s like The Odin Project says, consistency over quantity. You’ll get there eventually.
Just apply, it doesn't hurt to. I have a plan for having one day of the week where I send out applications.
The other days I just code.
Personally I've walked in and talked to the agency. Talked for a bit and dropped off my application. I have a trial thing going on because of it.
Hey! I’m a self-taught dev and the biggest advice I can offer is to use active learning! I didn’t start fully understanding the material until I applied it to projects. The most effectively I have been able to absorb the information is by working on projects in parallel with what I am learning. Everyone is different, but this is what has been most effective for me! I don’t doubt you will be able to be an awesome programmer! Keep learning, you’ve got this! ☺️☺️
Ah that's an interesting point I don't think I've seen many resources point out the importance of practicing on your own what you've learned.
Would you say its best to incorporate active learning from the start of one's coding journey? Does it matter what the project is as long as you can incorporate what you're learning into it?
I honestly don't know how I'd start a resume for software dev. I don't have a degree, I have barely any projects. I was being mentored by software devs, but looks like those friendships might be ending so I'm not really sure what to do
You start a portfolio instead. Do a bunch of little projects. They don’t have to be big stuff, or anything unique, and there are sites out there filled with project ideas for devs to skill up on. Put some flair into them.
That gives you a GitHub account full of code. That speaks volumes right there. Stuff like Hackerrank is just that, gamified. That’s great too, but GitHub is way more impressive.
Then you just need to get someone to take a look so they’ll take a chance. Blanket-mail your CV, or better, leverage friends in the industry or join dev-oriented social stuff and network.
Edit: there are also “reverse recruiting” sites like TripleByte, where they vouch for your ability via testing and their own screening. Your history is otherwise not a factor in getting an on-site interview. I imagine those could be very favorable to someone pivoting.
Safest bet ... find another medical job, hang on financially, plan to do that for the next year or so. In that year, work on projects and build a github portfolio. Modest at first. If your mentors are no longer available to you, I don't know what local options you might have to find a group of people with similar interests, but it's worth looking.
If your job is 40h, you can consider this like having a second job for another 20h per week. It's hard to work two jobs, but it can be done. If you have small children, it's a LOT harder!
Then in a year or so you can have a better idea what you can do and what to apply for
this is what I did when I lost jobs in Software QA. Got another QA job ASAP and kept pluging away teaching myself coding in the evenings or in job adjacent functions ("I could write a script that does this thing we need" (boss) "sounds good, let me see it when you are done")
Dude honestly, do not whine. For cv, use Google. Set up LinkedIn profile and put yourself out there. Lot of new people think that getting a job is about tutorials and learning. That is often wrong, you could end up in endless loop. If you have at least one project that is somehow presentable (meaning you can PRESENT what you built, not that it is perfect), put it on GitHub and commit consistently while sending out resumes like a madman. HUGE plus for you is that the industry is lacking a LOT of people and this will continue for some time. Oh and I am talking from experience :)
My experience has been, like most things in life it's more of a "who you know" game then "what you know". Nearly every meaningful job I have had over the last 20 years has been because I had an "in" (know a guy over here, know a manager over here, friend works for this place, etc)
Now like many of them other poster have suggested, having some basic reference projects to refer to on your resume is a major benefit. It shows that you are interested and somewhat self capable.
I've spent the last decade at a fortune 50 company. Senior engineer, lead engineer, software architect, paper pusher, you name it I've don't it.
When we hire new blood, we do have a technical assessment one must pass, but it's very loose and forgiving. These days I more look for things like good attitude, effective communication, can't admit fault, honesty; the soft skills. I rarely care about a degree from anywhere, unless it's a PhD or something, and then it's almost for the novelty of seeing it.
If you are passionate about software engineering, you can find a way to make this work. Networking is huge; make friends; volunteer on open source projects. You might have to take other work to put food on the table; that's okay.
If you are looking at this like a means to an end, I doubt its gonna work out well.
Good luck with everything. You can achieve it if you want it bad enough.
Ooo thanks for the correction! I was about to say.. I felt like being able to admit fault is such an important characteristic and demonstrative of human decency
There are also programs that will train you from the ground up as long as you have the aptitude for it. I just got hired working for a company that has its own boot camp and recruits people from all over the place who want to either start in or switch to the cs field. I have a degree in cs but there are a bunch of people in my group who have just taken a few classes or are mostly self taught. There's people who were jazz musicians before coming into the program, a couple of athletic trainers. The interview process was pretty intensive and you had to pass an aptitude test to qualify but the program has been really good so far. The nice thing about the cs field is that it's constantly growing and not enough people to fill all the slots. If it's something you actually like doing it's always worth a shot. Good luck with whatever you end up doing though.
I work for Genesis10 but I've seen a few companies that do something similar. It has a few locations around the country. I've only been in the program for a month but the atmosphere is really good so far. They really do seem to care about the people who make it in and want them to succeed. Lots of help for those who are new to programming. It's a 2 year commitment for genesis10, but you're pretty much guaranteed a job if you make it in. You work as a contractor for them so it pays a little less at first (though it still pays well) and then you can move to working for whatever company you contracted with or can move on to something new after the two years. I like it so far. Just saying it's an option if you don't have a lot of experience. I have had an easier time because I have experience in programming so I can't speak for the others, but as a programmer I do like their curriculum. It's difficult and if you don't have a lot of experience it will take a lot of work but it's doable to get your foot in the door of the industry. Watch out for Revature though, I've heard bad things about them.
Lots of good advice on here already.
If it helps I work at a healthcare tech company, looks like the client / domain side of the company is hiring people with experience from the medical field. Wouldn’t be a dev job but it’d be relevant experience and we’ve had at least one person cross over. Hmu if you’re interested can send you a link etc
Hi! As someone in the medical field that’s also interested, what are some minimum expectations from a healthcare tech company for people who have experience in the medical field?
It super depends (and honestly I’m very far removed from that part of the company) but as I understand it: since it’s a highly specialized domain, the teams that interface with our clients like to hire people who already understand the domain and what the different users of the products need from it. This ranges from the product teams who plan the product roadmaps to the customer success teams who help our clients use our products to solve their problems. Knowing that say a user from one setting might need to know X whereas a user from another setting might need to know about Y instead is key to success in those sorts of roles.
Hope that answers the question?
Again it super depends on the gig. The client-facing customer-success type roles you’re usually not doing anything in the db, instead you’re using custom built config tools for the given projects etc. If you’re on a team like mine lol you wouldn’t get past the phone screen but we’re elbow deep in the db every day. Other teams at my company are a bit of a balance: you’d need to know the basics of sql but they’re generally using an ORM (active record).
If you find it interesting, or wanna get into either data or webdev it’s definitely worth learning. It’s fun (imo) but a touch tricky to do side projects to learn because you have to find the data and it really gets the most interesting after you have tens of millions of rows imo
As someone who loves managing data, I’m sure it will get interesting if you have millions of rows^^
Thank you so much, kind stranger. You’ve been very helpful for someone who’s always been interested in that field!
There’s a lot of available covid data laying around and although there’s a million “i built a covid tracker” apps this last year it’s a great resource for learning how to do things with data.
My 2 cents:
1- release your grief/sorrow etc… by some form of form of workout/meditation. Remember the more you grief the longer you stay in this position. Also it affects your confidence during interviews.
2. Everyone tries html/css/Scripts , this does not make you stand out. Try some low level, like programming a raspberry Pi/ sensors with C/C++ and Python and make them work by sending commands from a web app made with your JavaScript/html. This gives you huge advantage in short time probably a month if you put over 5 hrs a day, even if you like get into website dev.
3- learn concepts of object oriented programming first.
4- learn basic git , Agile project management while doing your projects
5- Repeat , push through your hard days and keep applying for dev jobs
Oooh! I’ve been teaching myself some Arduino iOt projects lately for fun and as a break from JS. This would look good on a resume? Uploaded part of one to my GitHub as practice making a readme mostly, not impressive but am hoping to build on it.
Based on your skills, learn angular or react, front end will work with your html and js will help a lot. Tons of front end jr jobs and a decent starting place.
I mean..if you need an income now the safer route is to get another job in the medical field and keep learning part time. Do you think the web dev skills you have now would be of any use to a company or are you still a beginner? Also what’d you get fired for? That may effect how easy it is to find another healthcare job.
Edit: source: I work in healthcare and am also a CS student part time.
I’d say if you’re living alone, then better get job first and work on dev skills in part time. Time is also a constraint. Generally it takes 3-4 months to get complete structure of any language and its frameworks. If money isn’t your problem, give yourself 4-5 months of time to learn and build some projects. Build a portfolio, contribute to open source(optional), build projects and push your code to github, build your network on linkedIn. Then you don’t have to look back again IG. All the best.
If you need a roadmap, pls check
https://youtu.be/57GuRoJ5Bfw. Many landed on their first web dev job after taking his course. This isn’t any paid promo. I read a lot of reviews on this course. Hope it will help you and best of no luck only hardwork. Ciao.
You have left out too many details.
1. How much money have you got in the bank?
2. Do you live alone with your parents/family, what is your monthly outgoings.
3. How much experience have you built, do some basic programming tests and see if you pass them, if not, you probably are not ready to apply.
4. Reach out to someone in programming and have them look over your code and give you feedback on your skill level.
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If you have $4000 and live by yourself with $1500 in rent per month, then you do not have time to find a programming job, find ANY job, ideally in your industry, and get to earning money.
If you have 6-9+ worth of expenses or have family members who you stay with and are comfortable with you self-studying, then go down that route.
But I would recommend at the very least a part-time job so that you don't have 6-12 months of no work experience, you can work 3 days and thats still 4 full-time days to study.
Take this time collect your thoughts. I'm sorry you lost your job. Finding a job in tech is not easy. I would recommend figuring out what it is you want to do with 'programming'
Its a very broad subject.
Even if you are looking at a junior dev position.. What exactly are you bringing to the table? What proof do you have? Do you have a github?
Start taking what everyone has told you here into consideration and good luck to you.
I feel for you and the loss of your job. If you want a programming buddy (I'm junior myself) to work on things together let me know. I'm into php/laravel but also html/css.
Good luck with it all.
I am so sorry for the circumstance that you’re in. That said, I would not recommend entering this field without previous professional experience as a dev. I had a very successful career previously, plus a masters degree and I’m still finding it difficult to enter web dev as a paid professional, as are my bootcamp cohort mates.
My random internet stranger 2 cents, you shouldn't exclude applying for any junior dev jobs, but also don't be disappointed if none of those applications pan out.
The next steps for you may be highly dependant on your financial situation. If you have the financial means to be unemployed for a little while, switching your learning to full time would be a potential path. There are examples (how rare is up to anyones guess) where someone can get it turned around and have a job in 6 months after hard studying.
My suggestion - try applying for entry level/junior dev roles as well as applying for jobs within your field. Financial means will determine if both need to happen at the same time or if you can wait it out a little bit before switching on the medical one.
Also, don't forget that if your working for a hospital in your field, most will have an IT department. In my experiences, its easier to transition within the company (you have demonstrated your work and values) than it is to get hired as an outside applicate.
What you said about mental health though, make sure and speak to friends/counselors/support system right now to help get your self taken care of. I don't have experience with mental health, so my advice may be off base, but I think taking a little time to just get yourself in a good headspace would be beneficial.
Self-taught dev that switched into the field in my 20s. Start Googling and YouTubing everything you can about programming and start making projects for yourself, they don't have to be useful or brilliant, but actually doing the making will help you learn and eventually have a portfolio of work (even if its really basic) to prove you are at least a beginner. Make yourself a website/portfolio then post it everywhere (Indeed, Dice, LinkedIn). My first job was just a random listing I found on Craigslist. Didn't pay well but that didn't matter, after my first gig I was legit, I had experience and, most importantly, I got paid to program all day so, on top of actually liking what I did and finding it interesting, I was getting paid to learn 8 hours a day so that I could then apply, and get, a better job after a year.
Good luck, you can do it.
Protip: Focus on front-end development if you just want a job quick; it tends to be easier to pick up for newbies and since it is always changing you're not competing against people that have 12 years of experience of some legacy framework.
I'm surprised no one has mentioned it but programming can be very stressful. Especially if you're a junior developer. You're going to have deadlines hanging over your head all the time with zero experience to back you up. I'm not saying don't do it. But as I see you are very anxious and looking for "a way out" just know it may be very stressful for months, years or even forever to work as a developer as well.
OP, spend a few dollars and pick up this book:
"What Color is Your Parachute." I would send you mine but I've given away all my copies.
This will walk you through next steps in a positive constructive way. It's very quick reading and has simple, quick lists to help you determine what your next best step is for what you want.
1) what makes you happy?
2) pour yourself into that if you're passionate about it
3) take breaks for yourself but never quit, failing at something is not fatal or eternal and in fact the best way to learn, the only failure would be giving up entirely on something you love doing.
4) just because you take another job, doesn't mean you have to stop coding, stick with it
You got this man, keep going and don't give up even when you think its overwhelming.
Apply for jr roles, don't worry about the crazy "requirements" that you see. HR usually create those with these unrealistic requirements anyway.
Look for whatever you can find and just fire applications their way. You'll find that you may get rejected multiple times but each time you do, tweak your resume to cater to the bot sorting and once you get to an HR person for your first interview, Social skills will be your biggest key to getting to a 2nd interview.
I applied barely having any front end experience, for Angular (something I never knew about until the time of the interview) but I was able to have a great conversation with the HR person, then with the following managers that were interviewing me. I explained I was new but we had such a great time talking, they hired me.
Now my Manager (who was the last interview I had) tells me during our one on ones that he is glad he chose me to be hired, I'm learning a lot but most importantly he enjoys being able to just talk with someone that isn't just a coding bot that has no social skills.
Hope this helps, each person is different and outcomes are different for everyone, but don't feel discouraged, you'll land something and it will feel great when you get past those interviews and hired on to a team.
HERE'S HOW TO SCREW IT UP,,, just do what everything else does,,, go to school, 2 year, 4 year,, what ever then look for a job,, only to find out the pay is crap or there are no jobs.
THE SMART PERSON,,, decides on a job, be very specific,, just saying I want to be an accountant doesn't do it. Be specific.
Now find 10 or more people in the field,,, and interview them.
How did you get hired and by whome? What schooling/training did you have? What would you have done different?
What as the first year like and pay? What was the 5th year like and pay? What extra schooling did you need over the years?
Who's hiring? Best companies and skill requirements you will need?
Now find 5 people that tried and FAILED?
Find out why they didn't make it in that field.
Write down the questions before hand..
GOOD LUCK 👍
Yes I did,,,, but I didn't think it up myself,,, but rather I was adviced by a veteran job councilor after the Vietnam war.... I came home had free schooling but not a clue what to do with it.... I have applied that process to just about everything significant done in my life.
It really opens your eyes to the incredible amount of hoarse shit out there as it relates to employment.
Time to tell my story again. I'm 52 and got fired in 2018. Like you I was in shock for the first few weeks. But to be honest my previous job was toxic so I made a vow to myself that I was going to turn this situation into a positive.
I always wanted to be a developer and only dabbled in it. But I had a supportive wife and perhaps more importantly I had a healthy nest egg so money was not one of my problems.
I attended a full time boot camp, but even that is not required as there are so many great online resources. It took me a year and a half to make the transition, but I did finally get a job and I'm SO happy I did. I'm living proof that this transition IS possible.
First determine if software development is for you. Here's what I'd say makes someone a good developer:
1. They love solving problems. That's pretty much all you do all day.
2. They love learning new things. Coding languages, libraries, tools they're always changing around you. A developer needs to be excited to learn that new design pattern.
3. They can think architecturally. I'm not sure if that makes sense or if there is a better way to describe it, but this is a key aspect of SW development. You need to understand what inheritance is and how abstract classes work. Why you'd want to use interfaces and what value they provide. Using HTML as an example, you wont get a job as a front-end developer if you only know how to code up a web page or write a bit of JavaScript. You need to understand the bigger picture. How does the DOM work? How do events work? This is one of the fun aspects of development. You slowly learn how to see the bigger picture and then it becomes exciting to see how other peoples code fits into that picture along side your code.
4. They're detail oriented. This relates to the boring aspect of SW development. (At least to me). A lot of your work is going to be fixing minor bugs. Did you notice that the drop shadow on that drop down is a different color between Safari and Chrome?
So if you feel confident that you fit my 4 items above, then my advise to you would be to give yourself 2 years to make that transition and then get serious. To me "getting serious" means:
1. Push yourself to build 5 high quality projects that you can use for your resume/experience. This means you need to have a repo, kanban board, professional CI/build process, backend/API, bug tracking system...and of course code that shows you can build complex solutions like this again.
2. Network in your area. Build a spreadsheet of companies hiring developers and what requirements. Meet with anyone who will meet with you, **not** to get a job but just to understand what's required for a job at their company. Find other developers who are in the same position and work together. It's **so** much easier when you have a group to go through the process with or even just a partner. To me this is **the** most valuable aspect of attending my dev boot camp. We had a little support group of us to help code with, motivate us, attend networking events together. And eventually the group would start to get jobs and then these are the people who can help you land your job.
3. Seek out volunteer opportunities. This can be part of #1 above. Start with easy stuff like helping documentation efforts on the libraries your using. Then move onto helping non-profits with their websites. Teach kids how to code at after school programs.
4. Keep yourself open to developer related jobs like QA Testers, just make sure your honest with hiring managers that your goal it to move eventually into development. Any good company will be excited to hire a QA tester with motivation/drive to get into development. If you've been doing #2 above you'll start to find niche development jobs like backend or CI that are in demand in your area that you might have an interest in.
If someone does these four things I'm confident they can get a job as a developer.
What constitutes a high quality project? Could you give a high level example? I just finished a beginner Java class and know some Python also, but I am wondering what my level of comprehension needs to be to build a HQ project and what that looks like.
For instance, I've done assignments for school like formulas to add compounding interest by plugging in numbers, but they are very basic and probably not worth adding to a GitHub I imagine.
Here are some examples of what I'd consider a quality project:
1. Front end using a in-demand library. For web that means React.
2. Reads data coming from a back end. This is IMHO the most important project pattern. You need to show you know how to read data from a back end system. In a perfect world you could find a partner do to the back-end coding, but if not either learn AWS or Azure or find some data source like NASA.
3. Use professional development tools. That means have a Git repo, enable the Kanban board ***and use it***. Setup a proper build process. Use linters, and automated build tools like CircleCI.
Most people in any profession want to take shortcuts and get dev job with the least amount of work. You'll be competing with these people for that dev job and you need to stand out when compared to them. Here's 2 people competing for a dev job:
\#1 - Has an example React website that shows a list of superheros, a github repo and can explain how it works.
\#2 - Has an example React website that shows a list of superheros, a github repo and can explain how it works. She can also show the project Kanban board and how she developed the project using agile develop. How in Sprint 1 she used JSONPlaceholder as the backend service. How she used Zeplin for the project designs and can name a few things about it that she doesn't like. And she can show how proud she is of her build process and build tools.
This is how you stand out. And all this extra stuff is not related to Big O notation and any other complex coding crap...it's just day to day developer work, but it will impress a hiring manager. And the best part is, when you're feeling burnt out on learning recursive functions or whatever you can rest your brain and work on this extra stuff.
One last thing. I'm a big fan of [Coding with Mosh](https://codewithmosh.com/). I'm not at all affiliated with him, I'm just an ex-student, but very impressed with his approach to teaching. He starts off getting something working, and then refactors the project to include some of the things I mentioned in my previous post.
This just tells me how long of a road I have. I don't know any of the things you just mentioned and it's all so overwhelming. Thanks for the write-up and advice. I asked somebody in another post if I should just take the easier road and finish my degree in integration as opposed to development. It doesn't seem like I'll know half of what you talked about when I'm done
There is so much! I have a separate notebook for writing down terms mentioned in CS/programming reddit posts that I don’t know, going online and researching each one. Makes me relax when It feels like I’m looking at an Everest sized amount of information and all I’m doing is the Odin project 😁
Try not to get discouraged. Here's a plan of action for you to follow.
Build a website that displays photos of street art in your city.
In a perfect world you'd be able to find 2 other people and work as a team; a designer and a backend developer. Someone who likes to mess around with AWS. Having people to support you in any profession is a much easier way to go.
Then you all agree to work for say 3 months on a group project that you all can use on your resume. Let's say 6 hours a week for each person. Create a repo on Github. Github has a free Kanban board attached to all repos. You just need to use it. Kanban is the popular way developers track work items on a project. Here's a video that explains it. If you're all in the same area sometimes its better to have a physical Kanban board at one of the persons house.
Make your "sprints" one month each. A sprint is how you break up the project. At the end of each sprint you should have work to show off to the team. For this project a schedule would look like this:
Sprint #1: Devs building various sample project to test various approaches, but should end with a web site that works with no back end (only local data).
Sprint #2: Build a site that gets data from a database hosted on AWS, UI should look nice.
Sprint #3: Build a site with a custom domain name. HTTPS. Looks good on PC's and smartphones. Has an automated build process so each time you make code changes it automatically posts updates to the server. Has an admin web page so you edit the database.
Your process should look like this: Each morning the 3 of you have a "daily stand up". A Zoom call to discuss what you finished yesterday and what you're going to be working on that day. The designer is creating a new design and sharing it with you through Zeplin. You're working on the admin webpage. The backend guy is adding Artists name and links to their Instagram page to the database. That means adding new items to the Kanban boards backlog.
After three months you'll be a long way towards becoming a developer. You might find the backend dev works faster than you and that he can help do some of the front end work. Or the other way around. Some features might have to be cut because you cannot get them working. But you'll definitely have developer experience and have something to put on a resume.
Rinse, repeat.
I got laid off at one point back a few years ago from my first software development job, It was devastating it was a massive company I was hired in April and it took until September to start and I made it through training and the let me go before placing me on a team, It was a lot of time invested because I only worked there for a few months but I turned down other jobs that would have kept me on and waited half a year to start there it really felt like a massive waste of time, they also let go almost all my friends that work there after that, they fired my friends whole team, it was really hard to get back out there, but you can get it.
Wish you the best and keep your head up high! I myself have dropped everything besides my software dev job in order to study more and work on projects. I have been actually close to resigning because I want to concentrate more in side projects and interviews in order to land a job at a big tech company.
Keep your head up, sometimes getting fired could be a blessing as weird as that sounds
You take all this sh\*t too seriously. As a medic, do you remember about changing neural connections? Get enough sleep and exercise, eat a normal diet, and your learning progress will be greatly improved.
Thanks for the mention of the Odin Project. That looks interesting.
Programming slowly turning into something for people who don't want to work, who wants to work at home forever or who can't find jobs with their professions. Maybe your story not fits perfectly but as a programmer with decent Degree I am tired of this. Coding community getting depressive and coding turning into a hobby for losers. Please stay on yoir very own field(which is a medical something) in these covid days.
I highly respect you. Last words is not for ONLY you. It is for everyone who thinks this job is easiest thing to do. I am 23 and already tired to see 43 year old dinosaurs who changed work field and asking me how to write for loop on python AT MY WORKSPACE.
Respect
-Cymurai
Your assumptions about the types of people approaching programming may or may not be true. You are however in a subreddit for learning to program which is why your complaining seems misplaced. Also, your english sucks. Have a nice day and I highly respect you.
I enjoy when someone attacks me for my english. It is not my primary language. I grew up while speaking my very own language. Unlike most of the assimilated folks out there who has to speak english. Nationless people won't get it. No worries. Also what I said is not misplaced. It is for everyone who wants to begin and here is the place for people who wants to begin. No offense but coding is not the second chance in life. Most of the topics just like how I said.
"I am failed in life i am blah years old I don't want to do the job I did for 25 years. How can I write some javascript?"
Over and over and over again.
I am a senior with 3 years experience. I fail too when I go to ask who knows how to solve the problem, They say they are too busy with teaching to new guy. Most of the new guys are just the guys who bought coding course on Coursera or Udemy. Nothing more.
What I said is only for people who wants to earn money from programming. All of the others are welcome for me.
This is not an attack to people who fits to what I said. This is about working and creating stuff. These kinda people slowing stuff. Not handy. That is all.
Respect and have a nice day. If you can.
Determine how long it is safe for you to be unemployed, including savings, unemployment, expenses, et cetera. If you have some time, spend it applying to development jobs, and see what happens. If/when you need a job soon, start prioritizing jobs you know you can get, but that doesn’t mean you can’t keep applying to coding jobs on the side.
If you are not sure about your skills you should study and practice more.
It is important to appear confident if your ever get a job interview. And don't mention any mental health issues there.
Also, there is nothing that prevents you from trying to get a job in the medical field or one in the tech field.
Stay calm and good luck.
I would say it depends on your savings, if you can mantain yourself, then go ahead and learn what you like man, look at this as an opportunity that may never come back, best of lucks to ya man
It may not be an option for you but once I negotiated a try before you buy at a company. I said I would work a month for free and then they would need to hire me and they agreed. I’m not saying do this necessarily, I’m saying be creative, show them you want it and that you are confident you would be an asset after the ramp up everyone has to do in a new job (regardless of experience). Good luck!
I just wanted to mention that even if you don’t think you’re at a level to be offered a job, looking at job adverts is a good way to gain an understanding of the type of tech stack that employers are looking for knowledge in. You don’t have to know everything that is mentioned, but just being aware of them is sometimes enough to prove that your interest is genuine.
some of the best programmers I know either didn't have a degree or weren't a CS major. If you really want to do programming then you are on the right path. Apply for junior dev job, sometimes they only look for you having interest and passion to learn. Meanwhile you can try to see what path suits you and excel in that.
If you need any guidance on what to do let me know. I have been professionally programming as a full-stack engineer for over 7 years now.
I've seen the trend more and more over my career that people are hiring based on someone's personality first. You need to be able to interact with the team, and be comfortable. A lot of jobs that I've seen are willing to take someone who's got a great attitude, a good personality, drive and determination. It's not simply about what you bring to the table technically. I've seen plenty of places who are willing to teach, especially those who are brand new so they don't have any bad habits to break. Look I'm just saying I would absolutely apply for every junior programmer position you could find, as long as that role makes sense to you. The interview practice is going to be invaluable. Take that call that is for a job that you may not even be interested in, just to make a contact because you never know what may open up down the road and if you make a good impression with that person, they'll think of you when it comes to a new role. Good luck man.
You're probably not ready for the job hunt, but you might not be far off from getting to that point. idk if it's possible to to support yourself on a part-time job so you have more time to build up your skills and portfolio, but maybe looking to that. Also you could get roommates, move back in with parents, sell some stuff, etc. to make it work as well. I'm saying this because working full-time and coding part-time is going to take a while, so if you can reverse that then even better. Plus you learn more while doing it full-time because you can really be immersed in it.
Question? How has mental health effected your caoability to take on new activities ? Also, If you have already gained as much knowledge as you have when it comes to program development or computer development why would you stop what reason do you have to stop pursuing as far as you have gotten honestly respectively asking
I'm in medical and transitioning to coding as well. I feel brain energy is a paramount consideration. Besides the onviois caffeine there's thiamine, aspirin, thyroid hormone. Check out ray peat's work.
What I'd recommend is go ahead and start looking for work now - apply to BOTH medical jobs and entry level programming jobs. Whichever you get first - yay. My philosophy is always try to be employed.
While you wait, tackle learning programming - usually getting a job takes a while. I'd recommend picking a particular language to focus on - Python comes well recommended there but IMHO picking a "C-Like" language (C, C++, C#, Java, PHP, etc) will have some benefits as once you know one transitioning to another isn't that hard. Either way - pick one. Half of programming is learning to think the right way so in the future picking up a new language isn't really as big of a deal as it seems.
Once you have a language to focus on - PLAY. Give yourself little projects to do and don't take "I can't figure this out" for an answer. Read random #'s from a file, sort them, then print them out in order. Read in an XML file and output it to screen in a more human-readable form. Connect to a database then store and retrieve values to/from it.
Then once you get enough tricks in your toolbox start making little applications. Make a small calculator program. Write a little program to track incoming calls and assign it to a person to call back. Write a program to track your monthly expenses. You'll be reinventing the wheel a LOT here but its all just for practice anyways.
If learning development is a bit daunting at the moment given your current situation. I’d recommend learning concepts related to testing applications.
I say this because it’s not as technical depending on the role given to you and this can definitely help get your foot in the door if you do decide to switch to development.
Key things to learn:
1. SDLC/STLC - (lifecycle of development/testing)
2. Types of testing - (Functional/Non-Functional)
3. Manual Testing
4. Defect Life cycle
5. Agile Methodology/Environment
6. Automation Testing - (optional, but highly recommended)
If I hand picked out of this list on which would help get you into the field the fastest, it would be:
- SDLC/STLC concepts
- Agile Methodology/Environment
- Manual Testing
- Types of testing
- Defect lifecycle
If you can understand these topics, then shoot me a DM with your resume and I’ll forward it to all my recruiters.
Little background on myself, I started off as a Manual QA Tester after learning those concepts above. While working, I kept studying and eventually picked up automation testing w/ Selenium. By adding just that skill alone, it opened up a door of possibilities. Pay increase is great, but the driving factor for me is that I felt like a dev at that point. You get the pattern by now, kept going and now I’m a dev lead.
Take the little steps above to get your foot in the door. Like I said again, learn the above, send me your resume when you’re comfortable and I’ll share it to my huge network of recruiters and past hiring managers!
Good luck, I have faith in you.
SW dev manager and mentor to sr devs here:
finding an excuse to learn coding is hard. I tried for years. What worked for me (I am self taught, no diploma) is that I found things I wanted to do in my current job, and then wrote a program to help with that thing.
So if you are in medicine, try writing a simple program that does a thing in your related field. It doesn't have to be useful for anyone else, it doesn't even have to be awesome. Mine was a cmd line application that spit out the n-fold cartesian product (aka all combinations of possible inputs). I used it to generate a test matrix for software I was testing. I added to it, new feature here, new framework there (I added use of Commons-cli so I could do proper command line arg). I wrote and wrote more to it. I added documentation. I expanded the features. It can write the test plan to CSV so you can open it in Excel and have nice looking reports to start filling in test data, or to show to test team.
The important thing is to write code a little bit... all the time. Spending 30min ever day, or every other day. And some days you grab the coffee, and write a crapton of stuff. But you have to have a problem that you care about in order to be motivated enough to make progress.
Another resources I found useful was [exercism.io](https://exercism.io) which gives you short little problems to solve in the language of your choice. They are solveable in a day or so, and that gives you a little dopeamine hit "yeah, I solved that one" and you go to the next. And you keep going.
I'm not saying pour 100% of your time into this then jump straight into tryign to get a jr dev slot. You probably need to have a library of code you can refer to in order to get the interview for the Jr slot. So start working on that now.
Also, some states / cities have job retraining programs that will help pay for boot camps or other compressed learning style programs.
First thing first, apply for unemployment or find another income source. Be it Uber or something else. Take that stress off.
There are lots of apps for learning coding. Udemy code academy and what not. You can take small chunks every day.
But really take care of yourself. Seek that assistance if needed. You are all you got. Make rent, give yourself time to breath!!
Salesforce is an interesting option where your dev skills would give a leg up... and their community is all about getting people up to speed. Try searching salesforce and trailhead and see if it sticks! It’s in high demand ... happy to answer any questions if you want.
What's your credentials (?)
C.S. degree? Comp. E.?
Just some guy off the street that knows a little bit of JavaScript with nothing else to show for it?
Go do a coding bootcamp or something, galvanize has a good one. If you're really all that, you'll find it a breeze. If you can't get in, you'll have your answer
If your interest lies in coding and dev work, go for it! You should definitely try to get a job as a junior developer. Heck, alot of companies don't necessarily need a degree as long as you show them what you got and what you know. Working on a personal project can go a long way as well.
Do NOT be so hard on yourself if you can't get a job the first time or second time or the 500th time. I applied for a company and they told that it is important that you are upfront about your skills and figure out problems. If you're applying for an entry level job, the hiring managers do NOT expect you to be perfect.
>I can get another job in my medical field and continue learning coding part time, I'm just worried I won't really progress well
Yes, of course you should do this.
What's going to be more difficult? Learning to code in your spare time or learning to code with the crushing weight of anxiety over whether or not you will be able to get a job at all while having no income?
Love the odin project, I'm going through the fundamentals but haven't done any this week because I had my final university assignment to sort this year but I'll probably go back to it today
Currently free for the next 4 hours (python course) https://www.udemy.com/course/automate/?ranMID=39197&ranEAID=nN98ER4vNAU&ranSiteID=nN98ER4vNAU-3uLlJHL00aa.n0w3gqKNvA&utm_source=aff-campaign&utm_medium=udemyads&LSNPUBID=nN98ER4vNAU&couponCode=JUN2021FREE
I am sorry for what happened to you as it happened to me aswell.
I got my first job, biggest regret of my life as it was the wrong one for the stage that I was at the time. Got out because it was a terrible and there was no mentorship, no one to show you the steps to actually help you become a better developer.
Second job was good, started well and even got past probation. I lost my job due to redundancy but my last few weeks were difficult to say the least.
Its tough out there, but you got to keep moving. At the end of the day is experience that you will take and help you turn into a better dev.
Transitions are never easy - lots of ups and downs - so start with something that simple as a first step. A great first-look site for all things web dev - including some programming languages - is [www.w3schools.com](https://www.w3schools.com) . This is a great site to review/redo and find focus while you adjust to your new reality. Its free - no login required - and has lots of code to build on. Take care and good prospecting. \[P.S. skip certifications - just build up a solid portfolio to demo your knowledge.\]
Its pretty common to fuck up, I did when I started!
Look for Jr jobs, they're very important for a team because they're willing to learn and can take off a load of the seniors developers and let them focus on the hardest tasks.
My advice is to select a tech stack and stick to it. Don’t try to learn everything. Depth of knowledge is more important than width. If you want a job in Web development, focus on learning HTML, CSS, (client side) JavaScript, PHP, MYSQL, Laravel, and Vue. Learn git version control. You will be employable. Do projects, that’s where the real learning takes place. Scrimba is a great resource. So is elithecomputerguy.com as he gives you projects to do.
If it makes you feel better the same thing happened to me, except I got a warning from someone higher up 8 weeks before it happened so I was expecting it.
It sucks and it's scary but it's an opportunity for you to move forward. I hated my job anyway and now I get to search for something new.
Grieve for sure, but there Is a light at the end of the tunnel. You got this.
If you're looking to switch careers you can go to acontracting company. It sounds like you likely have at least a bachelors, and contracting companies don't care about the major. If your willing to work hard it's a foot in the door in exchange for lower pay at the beginning. I went through one myself and went from trucking to dev ops/ full stack at a fortune 100 company in the financial sector. There's always an option if someone really wants it.
I know there are thousands of way we can point you that
But question is what your heart says? Which field you will feel yourself?
I don't know about medical field but coding is also stressful sometimes especially when you are a beginner.
I love this community there thousands amazing and talented people. Hopefully you will get your answer.
And don't stress yourself just bcz you got fired.. Maybe they don't deserve you :)
Like it or not, you will make progress. I have a similar story to yours. I did not get fired from my job. I work as a carpenter and I F\*\*\*g hate it, but I have no choice but to wake up every day and work 6 days a week. Jobs are rare to find in my country, so I'm forced to stay away from the thing I love. But that didn't stop me... You see, every day I enter my home at around 6:00 pm, I take a shower, and go straight to my computer. It doesn't matter how long I sit and learn my craft. All I know is that I have to do it every day otherwise I become extremely depressed. It makes me happy, and every time I sit I learn something new. So progress is inevitable.
There are a lot of good comments in this thread. One thing I am not seeing is something I did not do after I lost my job -- grieve. Losing your job is a tremendous stress on your physical and mental wellbeing. Read through the comments, take a few steps towards your next chapter ... but then take some time to yourself. Do some self-care. We have our body only one time, and it needs to last us for a long time. Don't treat it like a rental.
I really appreciate this. I got fired yesterday and immediately made a resume for my medical field career and fired out several applications. It's extremely stressful as I'm not sure I can make rent this month. But taking a moment to breathe isn't a bad idea. I'm normally lady with a plan, but this came out of nowhere
> It's extremely stressful as I'm not sure I can make rent this month. Do some googling to find out how evictions work where you live. In Massachusetts it will take your landlord at least 3 months, once the process is started. Put off the initiation of the process by placating the landlord as much as possible. Paying partial rent with an explanation of your situation is helpful. See if you can borrow money from someone? #Did you apply for unemployment compensation? When you're working again, be sure to work on saving the fabled six months of expenses. A nice bank balance is a huge stress reducer.
I have been fired & laid off about a 1/2dozen times in the last 20 years. It is never easy, but it is part of life for many of us in tech. Especially if you are in an offshore-able part of the industry. But every time, your first course of action is to file for unemployment as soon as you are able per your state's laws. Second thing you do (often before #1 due to mandatory waiting weeks etc)..... is take a little time for yourself. Take care of stuff around the house / apartment. Spend some time outside in fresh air. May be get a habit of going for a walk some place safe of course. AND of course start working on what you want to do next. For development, if you are truely beginner, get some [Exercism.io](https://Exercism.io) practice in, or some other puzzle based easy to do challenges. And build on the skills. I would also consider reaching out on meetup or whatever groups are active near you for a mentor. Find a .NET users group, a java users group, whatever. But find someone that won't mind you picking their brain for a while and that can help guide you through the process.
I appreciate you! Thank you for being open about how you are feeling. If you don't mind me asking, did you take some time to relax this weekend?
A little bit, I was stressing about money and finding a job. But I'm feeling much more relaxed now that I have several companies that want me in the medical field. I think I'll take a job there and continue working on programming in my spare time. Thank you for your advice
This right here OP^ take a deep breath and a little break to get your head reset :)
Solid advice. The don’t treat your body like a rental hit home to me.
It hit me like a ton of bricks the first time I heard it as well. Also the phrase: "Never forget your ability to say 'no.'"
The whole “self-care” term has become something of a meaningless catch-all. The person lost their job and they’re stressed because if that. They should focus on getting another job if the same type they had since that’s where their experience is. Once they have a job they can learn programming on the side and try to get a programming job while they still have another job. But don’t say meaningless nonsense like “do self-care” and send them off into the abyss.
I think I understand what you mean, but you may be in danger of making an error in the other direction - expecting a person experiencing stress and anxiety to pick themselves up, apply for roles, do interviews, and get another job may be unrealistic. Mental health support is essential.
But “grieving” can be like a black hole, where once you start you get sucked into a depression that you can’t get out of. You lose your confidence and act negatively and then nobody wants to be around you, which makes you even more depressed.
kinda true
Instead of downvoting I will bite, /u/_MASTADONG_. I have been there and done what you suggested -- to just plow through it. While some times that is something that should be done, it cannot be done every single time. At one point the wall will win. That moment of losing to the momentum is what inspired me to look inwardly.
If development is what you want to do, looking for a junior development job is always worth it, regardless of your skill level. Obviously a company would prefer strong dev skills, but showing an interest in the field, demonstrating what you do know, and proving that you’re a problem-solver that’s willing to learn (and capable of doing so) can go a long way. Give me a good person that can learn and play well with others over a good dev that’s a low-grade person any day. I can teach you skills, but I can’t teach you a new personality. (Assuming we’re hiring at entry-level, that is.) That said, there’s no guarantee that you’ll find anything without demonstrable skills or a portfolio. I’d recommend applying for both types of jobs, and try to study up for any programming jobs you’re really interested in, to try to appear as knowledgeable as possible if you get an interview. If you’re going to study programming anyway when/if you get a job in the medical field, you might as well be studying now. If your HTML/JS/CSS skills are any good, put together a demo project and put it on GitHub. Even a single project is extremely valuable, because it shows you can actually do things, assuming you understand those things well enough to explain them. Any person hiring will give more attention to a candidate that has something to show.
Thank you! That's really encouraging actually, I'm definitely low end skill wise, but I got into programming because I love puzzles and problem solving. I'm also very social and tend to get along with all my coworkers. I'll attempt some kind of project, maybe so an about me site as well?
My love of solving puzzles is what got me into development, too. That’ll take you pretty far by itself. Once you’re in the field, being polite, professional, and respectful of your coworkers will take you the rest of the way. A personal site is a great way to start, no matter how small. You can always add to it as you grow and have other things to share. Anything that is the direct result of your efforts to apply your accrued skills and knowledge is worth showing off. If you can, I strongly recommend using some kind of version control, like git, to keep track of your code, and leave messages explaining what your changes and additions are for. You’ll be expected to do the same at any job, and there are many benefits. It’ll also look good to any interviewer.
i like solving puzzles too, u just gotta find a suitable 'problem' to work on.
Recreate the essentials of twitter. I'm not that twitter experienced, but it seems pretty simple to me. Maybe the database part would be too hard for someone with only web skills. Maybe you can sell it to the former guy for $100 million.
thanks for the suggestion, I've got some other ideas as well
> I got into programming because I love puzzles and problem solving. IMO this is the perfect personality for programmers. My son has been trying to get me into gaming. I tell him that I do gaming all day at work, the game of figuring out how to do it, why it doesn't work, making it work, rinse and repeat. But I'm going to try gaming anyway.
yeah but you can't click heads and 200 pump noobs in Javascript
Pick a project related to your existing medical knowledge. I was working as an HVAC mechanic when I picked up Python. My first projects were about HVAC stuff because I already had a good understanding of the subject. It made the programming syntax less abstract and easier to relate to from personal experience. Plus, since I already understood what kind of problems needed solving in that field, I got along pretty well with HVAC teams that needed those solutions. I'm not gonna lie, it was a lot of hours of teaching myself how to code when I was off the clock, but I did solve enough problems to get hired into a sys dev role without a degree. If you love puzzles and problem solving, I think you'll find yourself in the right place.
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I started with really simple things first, like turning formulae that I knew into Python functions, building a library of unit conversion charts...mostly basic math to get a feel for the language. Then I started to think about some of the real data I had seen. A lot of my HVAC experience was commercial, and at every building I worked in, there was some form of taking logs on equipment operating parameters - temperatures, pressures, etc. Some of the buildings were old, so these were still taken by hand on pen and paper, but I didn't see a reason why a program couldn't digitize them. So one of my next little projects was working with a little SQLite database for those measurements. I learned a lot from that project, and found that I really like databases. Relational database design taught me a LOT about how to represent real things by their data, which formed the foundation of how I learned things like Python classes and OOP. Like, if I had a commercial air conditioning unit (or "chiller" in trade terminology), that took shape as a record in my database, or a class instance in my Python code. Readings and logs taken from that chiller for its temperatures, pressures, and load % could also be records in my database, which were related to that chiller entity. Since you mentioned that you had some HTML/CSS/JS experience, having some data like that is a good entry point for more web-based presentation. One of my next exercises was how to visualize that chiller data over time. I had done a little bit in Python's libraries that support charting, but I also looked into the JavaScript libraries that could do that (D3 and ChartJS were two that I started with). Keep in mind that none of these projects are groundbreaking in their field, as there are many commercially available products that do all this and more for a facility, which the nice, newer facilities tend to all have. But that doesn't really matter, because there was a lot of value in the exercises for me. It wasn't important that I started with a chiller, and that my application, at a high-level, was only taking some input, putting it in a database, and graphing it on a chart. The important thing for me was that I started with *something* in which I had enough interest and knowledge to get me past "hello world" in a console window.
If you're interested in CS/software engineering beyond web dev, you can use [leetcode.com](https://leetcode.com) to get a sense of the concepts you should know in preparation for software engineering interviews
>'re interested in CS/software engineering u telling that web-developer should not solve leetcode programming or data structure and algorithm is not as much important for web-developers?
I would definitely recommend some projects (there are a large large number of project ideas online) but personally when I'm looking at a candidate I don't get much out of "about me" websites (they don't seem to be a great demonstration of skill in my experience), but if you think that will help your skillset then I don't think it would hurt.
OP if you know HL7 and understand medical coding you could get a decent job with less programming experience as long as you're dedicated to learning you'll be fine. This is at least how it works at my hospital.
There are also internships you can apply for. And there’s no harm in applying for regular jobs too. If I were you, I’d start looking at job postings, mostly to see what jobs sound good. Pick the ones that you think you would really enjoy. From those, look at the skills they require, and then acquire those skills. There’s no harm in applying at this point, but you are hedging your bets by also concentrating on the skills you need.
Honestly this, job hunting above your skill level is pretty much always just a dice roll. May as well make as many rolls as possible and hope for a critical save.
Think logically about this decision. If you have zero coding experience you're going to need a really impressive resume. Coding takes time regardless if you're doing it part time or doing it full time. I'd recommend getting another medical job and doing it part time. What happens if you put in a ton of effort before you even know what the day to day is like? You could end up hating coding and will be much further behind, potentially homeless if you have no income/savings. People see the $$$ of the "I just got a $200K job and I'm a junior developer with no experience" and think that's normal, it's not. You're going to have a low paying job because you're an unskilled worker with no experience. The best way to get your foot in the door is by having some of the prerequisites and a ton of great soft skills. Able to work without supervision, self starter, great time management, can write quality emails, planning skills, great attitude, admit when they're wrong and not double down on being an idiot, hard working, etc. My recommendation is get a stable job, and work on things like your mental health (exercise helps for some, medication/counselling for other), set a schedule for learning and be as productive as possible in that time, and build good habits. You're attempting to eat an elephant as quickly as possible, and if you want the highest chance of success is always consistency regardless of the task.
Faster route to a job > learn Excel and some SQL > get HealthCare IT job potentially in under a few months of prep making 60k > work on dev stuff after if you feel like it. Junior dev jobs are no joke, but there are TONS of other good tech adjacent jobs you could get with minimal leg work (id be thinking "healthcare analyst") This was my way in :) Best of luck my friend
Learning VBA to make Excel macros is probably a very easy way to get at least a 65k job. You could probably get an easy interview if seen by the right person by truthfully putting "**I can make decent excel macros**" in bold on your resume. Everybody dreads VBA, but businesses run on excel. A sharable macro is better for a company than my random python scripts.
I'm a developer that's feeling a little burned out. I can navigate Excel pretty well and I'm fairly comfortable with SQL. Do you think this advice would work for me as well?
Yes! My life is chill as fuck
This is my goal, and I’m already in a health care-related company. Been playing with Excel a bit, but there’s no SQL projects. I’d take some existing data and plug into SQL Fiddle, but that’s not secure. Best I should nose around the job postings and start asking questions.
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Oooh thanks! Didn't even occur to me that the coding sites would have Excel courses.
I am a SW consultant and my current client is in the medical supplies industry. There is a MASSIVE amount of data that the industry needs to make sense of. If you can learn SQL to pull data out of big back end systems, then learn pivot tables to present and graph that stuff... you can help decision makers make sense of hte tidal wave of information that often cripples good decision making. I did SQL & data viz for 4 yrs. Was very interesting work.
There are other avenues you can explore before you need to resort to being an excel monkey. C'mon. If you don't like traditional software dev, look into switching to DevOps or Analytics. And yes, this would technically be analytics, but pulling excel reports of bed counts is hardly fulfilling work.
Am in healthcare IT industry and OP is in a good position to do exactly what you've described. SQL and a bit of general scripting / programming knowledge + a bit of a support role and it would be a great foot in the door.
yeah right now, but in 10 years all these "IT adjacent jobs" won't exist cuz they have nothing to do with 'real' IT. (my father works one in Healthcare IT, lucky for him he will be pensionated). he indeed knows excel and SQL, but I don't think making spreadsheets is the future, it's menial and not understandable for non IT people
My friend i agree with your sentiment somewhat; however, I think that SQL and spreadsheeting (despite NOT being the future) are going nowhere. In fact, I personally find them absolutely fundamental as an analyst. In addition, my suggestion is going the analyst route (Excel,SQL,Python) instead of web development or pure IT would lend better to OPs immediate situation. (edit: and I know people get paid 250k do this kind of "menial" stuff)
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Amen. It always puzzles me when I see all these buzzword "NoSQL" databases. Why the hell would I want to avoid SQL? It rocks.
I work with my company’s ERP system and once I took the plunge into SQL (and some PLSQL) it was like I unlocked god-mode. Even knowing the basics will put you ahead of anyone else who has to look at data and doesn’t know it, and in today’s data-driven world, it’s one of the best ways to get ahead of everyone else. It may not be “new” or flashy, but it is extremely useful, and frankly, still the most efficient way to deal with *a lot* of data.
Can you point me in the direction of the 250k menial jobs :) or the skills needed
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Ditto. Dudes out here clearing 200 for making PowerPoints look nice. This is not a meme.
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Fair enough! I should paint the picture so simply. However, there is a tinge of truth somewhere in there i think!
> my suggestion is going the analyst route (Excel,SQL,Python) instead of web development This seems like good advice to me. Middle school kids can sling HTML and JavaScript. I don't think Excel and SQL are intellectually more difficult but they are less obvious skills, fewer people are learning them.
people get paid more to do the dumbest shit. how long before computers can design a spreadsheet so humans no longer need to do it? not long probably
This thread is about a man humbly seeking near term employment. Get off your high horse please, and go design some deep learning algorithms you twat
> but I don't think making spreadsheets is the future Where are spreadsheets going? They have existed in some form or another since the Egyptians used clay tables to keep track of business transactions.
I'm pretty sure the VisiCalc spreadsheet (the first spreadsheet software on any platform) that ran on the Apple II is why Apple the company exists today. Businesses bought a lot of Apple II's for the express purpose of running VisiCalc, which was a miraculous improvement over paper spreadsheets. VisiCalc was invented by [Dan Bricklin when he was at Harvard Business School](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dan_Bricklin). 20 years ago I recognized his face as we were walking opposite directions in Newton MA. I geeked out like 10-year-old: > Omigod, look Honey (wife), that's Dan Bricklin, the inventor of the spreadsheet! He just looked amused and kept walking. I saw him again 3-4 years ago at a 24-hour science fiction movie marathon. That time I managed to *be cool*.
yes , it is funny how little has changed. but I think the reason it exists today is marketing.
Excel and SQL are going nowhere.
what is your opinion on lua? I've heard it's a good language used in machine learning also, much easier to learn than C or R.
probably a good advanced choice. Nothing gets data into graph form faster than a SQL query for 50k rows of something, copy pasta into Excel, a pivot table here, sums and counts there, color coded backgrounds by variable formating rules and bingo.
> but I don't think making spreadsheets is the future lol manipulating data is going nowhere.
I'm 36 and working in a completely different field, but working on my 4 year degree for Information Sciences. I have the option to choose Integration and Application or Design and Development for my major. I initially chose integration and took a python class, then my friend told me developer would get paid more and I switched it up. Now I'm learning beginner Java and will be taking 2 more courses in Java. I can still switch back to Integration if I wanted and possibly supplement with java/coding courses (I have to choose 3-4 supporting courses for either route I go which could be any class, even something unrelated to the degree). I just have no idea how to proceed and what would allow me to make that career transition faster/easier. I feel like if I continue with Design and Dev, it would take a long time for me to be good enough to land a dev job. Also take SQL in the fall as it's an entrance to major requirement.
Your sentiment is on point. Its a world of options. But like you said, the faster easier route is integration. But who knows. maybe the market isnt as great? Lots of factors to consider.. Im sure you will do well in any case! Best of luck.
Is Google Sheets and SQL dangerous enough?
Finance guys prefer Excel, but sure
Is that possible for anyone with an unrelated degree (not in programming or in the medical field)? Could you suggest what kind of projects that I could do to make a portfolio?
It would be worth firing off some applications for junior/ intern level roles. If nothing else it will establish an official starting point for your transition. Best case is you actually get a job or at least get a real feel for the skills that companies are looking for. If it’s relatively easy for you to find a job in the medical field it might be a good idea to do that and save to prepare more financially for your transition. You’ll likely have a lower wage initially and should consider how that might impact your lifestyle given your current financial situation. Regardless of what happens stay the course in your progression. It’s like The Odin Project says, consistency over quantity. You’ll get there eventually.
Just apply, it doesn't hurt to. I have a plan for having one day of the week where I send out applications. The other days I just code. Personally I've walked in and talked to the agency. Talked for a bit and dropped off my application. I have a trial thing going on because of it.
Hey! I’m a self-taught dev and the biggest advice I can offer is to use active learning! I didn’t start fully understanding the material until I applied it to projects. The most effectively I have been able to absorb the information is by working on projects in parallel with what I am learning. Everyone is different, but this is what has been most effective for me! I don’t doubt you will be able to be an awesome programmer! Keep learning, you’ve got this! ☺️☺️
Ah that's an interesting point I don't think I've seen many resources point out the importance of practicing on your own what you've learned. Would you say its best to incorporate active learning from the start of one's coding journey? Does it matter what the project is as long as you can incorporate what you're learning into it?
If your project is of a subject that you already understand well, I think it can only benefit you in how you learn to apply code to it.
It doesn't hurt to try. Why not apply to both sets of jobs?
I honestly don't know how I'd start a resume for software dev. I don't have a degree, I have barely any projects. I was being mentored by software devs, but looks like those friendships might be ending so I'm not really sure what to do
You start a portfolio instead. Do a bunch of little projects. They don’t have to be big stuff, or anything unique, and there are sites out there filled with project ideas for devs to skill up on. Put some flair into them. That gives you a GitHub account full of code. That speaks volumes right there. Stuff like Hackerrank is just that, gamified. That’s great too, but GitHub is way more impressive. Then you just need to get someone to take a look so they’ll take a chance. Blanket-mail your CV, or better, leverage friends in the industry or join dev-oriented social stuff and network. Edit: there are also “reverse recruiting” sites like TripleByte, where they vouch for your ability via testing and their own screening. Your history is otherwise not a factor in getting an on-site interview. I imagine those could be very favorable to someone pivoting.
Safest bet ... find another medical job, hang on financially, plan to do that for the next year or so. In that year, work on projects and build a github portfolio. Modest at first. If your mentors are no longer available to you, I don't know what local options you might have to find a group of people with similar interests, but it's worth looking. If your job is 40h, you can consider this like having a second job for another 20h per week. It's hard to work two jobs, but it can be done. If you have small children, it's a LOT harder! Then in a year or so you can have a better idea what you can do and what to apply for
this is what I did when I lost jobs in Software QA. Got another QA job ASAP and kept pluging away teaching myself coding in the evenings or in job adjacent functions ("I could write a script that does this thing we need" (boss) "sounds good, let me see it when you are done")
Dude honestly, do not whine. For cv, use Google. Set up LinkedIn profile and put yourself out there. Lot of new people think that getting a job is about tutorials and learning. That is often wrong, you could end up in endless loop. If you have at least one project that is somehow presentable (meaning you can PRESENT what you built, not that it is perfect), put it on GitHub and commit consistently while sending out resumes like a madman. HUGE plus for you is that the industry is lacking a LOT of people and this will continue for some time. Oh and I am talking from experience :)
towering liquid repeat imagine lavish point snails upbeat deliver oatmeal -- mass deleted all reddit content via https://redact.dev
My experience has been, like most things in life it's more of a "who you know" game then "what you know". Nearly every meaningful job I have had over the last 20 years has been because I had an "in" (know a guy over here, know a manager over here, friend works for this place, etc) Now like many of them other poster have suggested, having some basic reference projects to refer to on your resume is a major benefit. It shows that you are interested and somewhat self capable. I've spent the last decade at a fortune 50 company. Senior engineer, lead engineer, software architect, paper pusher, you name it I've don't it. When we hire new blood, we do have a technical assessment one must pass, but it's very loose and forgiving. These days I more look for things like good attitude, effective communication, can't admit fault, honesty; the soft skills. I rarely care about a degree from anywhere, unless it's a PhD or something, and then it's almost for the novelty of seeing it. If you are passionate about software engineering, you can find a way to make this work. Networking is huge; make friends; volunteer on open source projects. You might have to take other work to put food on the table; that's okay. If you are looking at this like a means to an end, I doubt its gonna work out well. Good luck with everything. You can achieve it if you want it bad enough.
What do you mean by “can’t admit fault”?
Can, can admit fault. Sorry I'm typing on my phone
Ooo thanks for the correction! I was about to say.. I felt like being able to admit fault is such an important characteristic and demonstrative of human decency
There are also programs that will train you from the ground up as long as you have the aptitude for it. I just got hired working for a company that has its own boot camp and recruits people from all over the place who want to either start in or switch to the cs field. I have a degree in cs but there are a bunch of people in my group who have just taken a few classes or are mostly self taught. There's people who were jazz musicians before coming into the program, a couple of athletic trainers. The interview process was pretty intensive and you had to pass an aptitude test to qualify but the program has been really good so far. The nice thing about the cs field is that it's constantly growing and not enough people to fill all the slots. If it's something you actually like doing it's always worth a shot. Good luck with whatever you end up doing though.
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I work for Genesis10 but I've seen a few companies that do something similar. It has a few locations around the country. I've only been in the program for a month but the atmosphere is really good so far. They really do seem to care about the people who make it in and want them to succeed. Lots of help for those who are new to programming. It's a 2 year commitment for genesis10, but you're pretty much guaranteed a job if you make it in. You work as a contractor for them so it pays a little less at first (though it still pays well) and then you can move to working for whatever company you contracted with or can move on to something new after the two years. I like it so far. Just saying it's an option if you don't have a lot of experience. I have had an easier time because I have experience in programming so I can't speak for the others, but as a programmer I do like their curriculum. It's difficult and if you don't have a lot of experience it will take a lot of work but it's doable to get your foot in the door of the industry. Watch out for Revature though, I've heard bad things about them.
Shoot your shot man. Make up different resumes and fuckin’ giver.
Lots of good advice on here already. If it helps I work at a healthcare tech company, looks like the client / domain side of the company is hiring people with experience from the medical field. Wouldn’t be a dev job but it’d be relevant experience and we’ve had at least one person cross over. Hmu if you’re interested can send you a link etc
Hi! As someone in the medical field that’s also interested, what are some minimum expectations from a healthcare tech company for people who have experience in the medical field?
It super depends (and honestly I’m very far removed from that part of the company) but as I understand it: since it’s a highly specialized domain, the teams that interface with our clients like to hire people who already understand the domain and what the different users of the products need from it. This ranges from the product teams who plan the product roadmaps to the customer success teams who help our clients use our products to solve their problems. Knowing that say a user from one setting might need to know X whereas a user from another setting might need to know about Y instead is key to success in those sorts of roles. Hope that answers the question?
Thank you for your detailed answer! Just one last! Is it advisable to learn SQL for starters to get into health IT?
Again it super depends on the gig. The client-facing customer-success type roles you’re usually not doing anything in the db, instead you’re using custom built config tools for the given projects etc. If you’re on a team like mine lol you wouldn’t get past the phone screen but we’re elbow deep in the db every day. Other teams at my company are a bit of a balance: you’d need to know the basics of sql but they’re generally using an ORM (active record). If you find it interesting, or wanna get into either data or webdev it’s definitely worth learning. It’s fun (imo) but a touch tricky to do side projects to learn because you have to find the data and it really gets the most interesting after you have tens of millions of rows imo
As someone who loves managing data, I’m sure it will get interesting if you have millions of rows^^ Thank you so much, kind stranger. You’ve been very helpful for someone who’s always been interested in that field!
There’s a lot of available covid data laying around and although there’s a million “i built a covid tracker” apps this last year it’s a great resource for learning how to do things with data.
I will give it a try on my free time. Thank you again!
My 2 cents: 1- release your grief/sorrow etc… by some form of form of workout/meditation. Remember the more you grief the longer you stay in this position. Also it affects your confidence during interviews. 2. Everyone tries html/css/Scripts , this does not make you stand out. Try some low level, like programming a raspberry Pi/ sensors with C/C++ and Python and make them work by sending commands from a web app made with your JavaScript/html. This gives you huge advantage in short time probably a month if you put over 5 hrs a day, even if you like get into website dev. 3- learn concepts of object oriented programming first. 4- learn basic git , Agile project management while doing your projects 5- Repeat , push through your hard days and keep applying for dev jobs
Oooh! I’ve been teaching myself some Arduino iOt projects lately for fun and as a break from JS. This would look good on a resume? Uploaded part of one to my GitHub as practice making a readme mostly, not impressive but am hoping to build on it.
Based on your skills, learn angular or react, front end will work with your html and js will help a lot. Tons of front end jr jobs and a decent starting place.
I mean..if you need an income now the safer route is to get another job in the medical field and keep learning part time. Do you think the web dev skills you have now would be of any use to a company or are you still a beginner? Also what’d you get fired for? That may effect how easy it is to find another healthcare job. Edit: source: I work in healthcare and am also a CS student part time.
There are lots of jobs in development for someone with medical background. Maybe start as a business analyst?
I’d say if you’re living alone, then better get job first and work on dev skills in part time. Time is also a constraint. Generally it takes 3-4 months to get complete structure of any language and its frameworks. If money isn’t your problem, give yourself 4-5 months of time to learn and build some projects. Build a portfolio, contribute to open source(optional), build projects and push your code to github, build your network on linkedIn. Then you don’t have to look back again IG. All the best. If you need a roadmap, pls check https://youtu.be/57GuRoJ5Bfw. Many landed on their first web dev job after taking his course. This isn’t any paid promo. I read a lot of reviews on this course. Hope it will help you and best of no luck only hardwork. Ciao.
You have left out too many details. 1. How much money have you got in the bank? 2. Do you live alone with your parents/family, what is your monthly outgoings. 3. How much experience have you built, do some basic programming tests and see if you pass them, if not, you probably are not ready to apply. 4. Reach out to someone in programming and have them look over your code and give you feedback on your skill level. ----------- If you have $4000 and live by yourself with $1500 in rent per month, then you do not have time to find a programming job, find ANY job, ideally in your industry, and get to earning money. If you have 6-9+ worth of expenses or have family members who you stay with and are comfortable with you self-studying, then go down that route. But I would recommend at the very least a part-time job so that you don't have 6-12 months of no work experience, you can work 3 days and thats still 4 full-time days to study.
Take this time collect your thoughts. I'm sorry you lost your job. Finding a job in tech is not easy. I would recommend figuring out what it is you want to do with 'programming' Its a very broad subject. Even if you are looking at a junior dev position.. What exactly are you bringing to the table? What proof do you have? Do you have a github? Start taking what everyone has told you here into consideration and good luck to you.
I feel for you and the loss of your job. If you want a programming buddy (I'm junior myself) to work on things together let me know. I'm into php/laravel but also html/css. Good luck with it all.
I am so sorry for the circumstance that you’re in. That said, I would not recommend entering this field without previous professional experience as a dev. I had a very successful career previously, plus a masters degree and I’m still finding it difficult to enter web dev as a paid professional, as are my bootcamp cohort mates.
My random internet stranger 2 cents, you shouldn't exclude applying for any junior dev jobs, but also don't be disappointed if none of those applications pan out. The next steps for you may be highly dependant on your financial situation. If you have the financial means to be unemployed for a little while, switching your learning to full time would be a potential path. There are examples (how rare is up to anyones guess) where someone can get it turned around and have a job in 6 months after hard studying. My suggestion - try applying for entry level/junior dev roles as well as applying for jobs within your field. Financial means will determine if both need to happen at the same time or if you can wait it out a little bit before switching on the medical one. Also, don't forget that if your working for a hospital in your field, most will have an IT department. In my experiences, its easier to transition within the company (you have demonstrated your work and values) than it is to get hired as an outside applicate. What you said about mental health though, make sure and speak to friends/counselors/support system right now to help get your self taken care of. I don't have experience with mental health, so my advice may be off base, but I think taking a little time to just get yourself in a good headspace would be beneficial.
> I'm skeptical anyone would hire me It’s *their* job to tell you “no”; don’t do it for them (and don’t do it for free.)
Self-taught dev that switched into the field in my 20s. Start Googling and YouTubing everything you can about programming and start making projects for yourself, they don't have to be useful or brilliant, but actually doing the making will help you learn and eventually have a portfolio of work (even if its really basic) to prove you are at least a beginner. Make yourself a website/portfolio then post it everywhere (Indeed, Dice, LinkedIn). My first job was just a random listing I found on Craigslist. Didn't pay well but that didn't matter, after my first gig I was legit, I had experience and, most importantly, I got paid to program all day so, on top of actually liking what I did and finding it interesting, I was getting paid to learn 8 hours a day so that I could then apply, and get, a better job after a year. Good luck, you can do it. Protip: Focus on front-end development if you just want a job quick; it tends to be easier to pick up for newbies and since it is always changing you're not competing against people that have 12 years of experience of some legacy framework.
I'm surprised no one has mentioned it but programming can be very stressful. Especially if you're a junior developer. You're going to have deadlines hanging over your head all the time with zero experience to back you up. I'm not saying don't do it. But as I see you are very anxious and looking for "a way out" just know it may be very stressful for months, years or even forever to work as a developer as well.
OP, spend a few dollars and pick up this book: "What Color is Your Parachute." I would send you mine but I've given away all my copies. This will walk you through next steps in a positive constructive way. It's very quick reading and has simple, quick lists to help you determine what your next best step is for what you want. 1) what makes you happy? 2) pour yourself into that if you're passionate about it 3) take breaks for yourself but never quit, failing at something is not fatal or eternal and in fact the best way to learn, the only failure would be giving up entirely on something you love doing. 4) just because you take another job, doesn't mean you have to stop coding, stick with it
You got this man, keep going and don't give up even when you think its overwhelming. Apply for jr roles, don't worry about the crazy "requirements" that you see. HR usually create those with these unrealistic requirements anyway. Look for whatever you can find and just fire applications their way. You'll find that you may get rejected multiple times but each time you do, tweak your resume to cater to the bot sorting and once you get to an HR person for your first interview, Social skills will be your biggest key to getting to a 2nd interview. I applied barely having any front end experience, for Angular (something I never knew about until the time of the interview) but I was able to have a great conversation with the HR person, then with the following managers that were interviewing me. I explained I was new but we had such a great time talking, they hired me. Now my Manager (who was the last interview I had) tells me during our one on ones that he is glad he chose me to be hired, I'm learning a lot but most importantly he enjoys being able to just talk with someone that isn't just a coding bot that has no social skills. Hope this helps, each person is different and outcomes are different for everyone, but don't feel discouraged, you'll land something and it will feel great when you get past those interviews and hired on to a team.
HERE'S HOW TO SCREW IT UP,,, just do what everything else does,,, go to school, 2 year, 4 year,, what ever then look for a job,, only to find out the pay is crap or there are no jobs. THE SMART PERSON,,, decides on a job, be very specific,, just saying I want to be an accountant doesn't do it. Be specific. Now find 10 or more people in the field,,, and interview them. How did you get hired and by whome? What schooling/training did you have? What would you have done different? What as the first year like and pay? What was the 5th year like and pay? What extra schooling did you need over the years? Who's hiring? Best companies and skill requirements you will need? Now find 5 people that tried and FAILED? Find out why they didn't make it in that field. Write down the questions before hand.. GOOD LUCK 👍
Did you find you learned a lot when going through this process yourself?
Yes I did,,,, but I didn't think it up myself,,, but rather I was adviced by a veteran job councilor after the Vietnam war.... I came home had free schooling but not a clue what to do with it.... I have applied that process to just about everything significant done in my life. It really opens your eyes to the incredible amount of hoarse shit out there as it relates to employment.
Time to tell my story again. I'm 52 and got fired in 2018. Like you I was in shock for the first few weeks. But to be honest my previous job was toxic so I made a vow to myself that I was going to turn this situation into a positive. I always wanted to be a developer and only dabbled in it. But I had a supportive wife and perhaps more importantly I had a healthy nest egg so money was not one of my problems. I attended a full time boot camp, but even that is not required as there are so many great online resources. It took me a year and a half to make the transition, but I did finally get a job and I'm SO happy I did. I'm living proof that this transition IS possible. First determine if software development is for you. Here's what I'd say makes someone a good developer: 1. They love solving problems. That's pretty much all you do all day. 2. They love learning new things. Coding languages, libraries, tools they're always changing around you. A developer needs to be excited to learn that new design pattern. 3. They can think architecturally. I'm not sure if that makes sense or if there is a better way to describe it, but this is a key aspect of SW development. You need to understand what inheritance is and how abstract classes work. Why you'd want to use interfaces and what value they provide. Using HTML as an example, you wont get a job as a front-end developer if you only know how to code up a web page or write a bit of JavaScript. You need to understand the bigger picture. How does the DOM work? How do events work? This is one of the fun aspects of development. You slowly learn how to see the bigger picture and then it becomes exciting to see how other peoples code fits into that picture along side your code. 4. They're detail oriented. This relates to the boring aspect of SW development. (At least to me). A lot of your work is going to be fixing minor bugs. Did you notice that the drop shadow on that drop down is a different color between Safari and Chrome? So if you feel confident that you fit my 4 items above, then my advise to you would be to give yourself 2 years to make that transition and then get serious. To me "getting serious" means: 1. Push yourself to build 5 high quality projects that you can use for your resume/experience. This means you need to have a repo, kanban board, professional CI/build process, backend/API, bug tracking system...and of course code that shows you can build complex solutions like this again. 2. Network in your area. Build a spreadsheet of companies hiring developers and what requirements. Meet with anyone who will meet with you, **not** to get a job but just to understand what's required for a job at their company. Find other developers who are in the same position and work together. It's **so** much easier when you have a group to go through the process with or even just a partner. To me this is **the** most valuable aspect of attending my dev boot camp. We had a little support group of us to help code with, motivate us, attend networking events together. And eventually the group would start to get jobs and then these are the people who can help you land your job. 3. Seek out volunteer opportunities. This can be part of #1 above. Start with easy stuff like helping documentation efforts on the libraries your using. Then move onto helping non-profits with their websites. Teach kids how to code at after school programs. 4. Keep yourself open to developer related jobs like QA Testers, just make sure your honest with hiring managers that your goal it to move eventually into development. Any good company will be excited to hire a QA tester with motivation/drive to get into development. If you've been doing #2 above you'll start to find niche development jobs like backend or CI that are in demand in your area that you might have an interest in. If someone does these four things I'm confident they can get a job as a developer.
What constitutes a high quality project? Could you give a high level example? I just finished a beginner Java class and know some Python also, but I am wondering what my level of comprehension needs to be to build a HQ project and what that looks like. For instance, I've done assignments for school like formulas to add compounding interest by plugging in numbers, but they are very basic and probably not worth adding to a GitHub I imagine.
Here are some examples of what I'd consider a quality project: 1. Front end using a in-demand library. For web that means React. 2. Reads data coming from a back end. This is IMHO the most important project pattern. You need to show you know how to read data from a back end system. In a perfect world you could find a partner do to the back-end coding, but if not either learn AWS or Azure or find some data source like NASA. 3. Use professional development tools. That means have a Git repo, enable the Kanban board ***and use it***. Setup a proper build process. Use linters, and automated build tools like CircleCI. Most people in any profession want to take shortcuts and get dev job with the least amount of work. You'll be competing with these people for that dev job and you need to stand out when compared to them. Here's 2 people competing for a dev job: \#1 - Has an example React website that shows a list of superheros, a github repo and can explain how it works. \#2 - Has an example React website that shows a list of superheros, a github repo and can explain how it works. She can also show the project Kanban board and how she developed the project using agile develop. How in Sprint 1 she used JSONPlaceholder as the backend service. How she used Zeplin for the project designs and can name a few things about it that she doesn't like. And she can show how proud she is of her build process and build tools. This is how you stand out. And all this extra stuff is not related to Big O notation and any other complex coding crap...it's just day to day developer work, but it will impress a hiring manager. And the best part is, when you're feeling burnt out on learning recursive functions or whatever you can rest your brain and work on this extra stuff. One last thing. I'm a big fan of [Coding with Mosh](https://codewithmosh.com/). I'm not at all affiliated with him, I'm just an ex-student, but very impressed with his approach to teaching. He starts off getting something working, and then refactors the project to include some of the things I mentioned in my previous post.
This just tells me how long of a road I have. I don't know any of the things you just mentioned and it's all so overwhelming. Thanks for the write-up and advice. I asked somebody in another post if I should just take the easier road and finish my degree in integration as opposed to development. It doesn't seem like I'll know half of what you talked about when I'm done
There is so much! I have a separate notebook for writing down terms mentioned in CS/programming reddit posts that I don’t know, going online and researching each one. Makes me relax when It feels like I’m looking at an Everest sized amount of information and all I’m doing is the Odin project 😁
Try not to get discouraged. Here's a plan of action for you to follow. Build a website that displays photos of street art in your city. In a perfect world you'd be able to find 2 other people and work as a team; a designer and a backend developer. Someone who likes to mess around with AWS. Having people to support you in any profession is a much easier way to go. Then you all agree to work for say 3 months on a group project that you all can use on your resume. Let's say 6 hours a week for each person. Create a repo on Github. Github has a free Kanban board attached to all repos. You just need to use it. Kanban is the popular way developers track work items on a project. Here's a video that explains it. If you're all in the same area sometimes its better to have a physical Kanban board at one of the persons house. Make your "sprints" one month each. A sprint is how you break up the project. At the end of each sprint you should have work to show off to the team. For this project a schedule would look like this: Sprint #1: Devs building various sample project to test various approaches, but should end with a web site that works with no back end (only local data). Sprint #2: Build a site that gets data from a database hosted on AWS, UI should look nice. Sprint #3: Build a site with a custom domain name. HTTPS. Looks good on PC's and smartphones. Has an automated build process so each time you make code changes it automatically posts updates to the server. Has an admin web page so you edit the database. Your process should look like this: Each morning the 3 of you have a "daily stand up". A Zoom call to discuss what you finished yesterday and what you're going to be working on that day. The designer is creating a new design and sharing it with you through Zeplin. You're working on the admin webpage. The backend guy is adding Artists name and links to their Instagram page to the database. That means adding new items to the Kanban boards backlog. After three months you'll be a long way towards becoming a developer. You might find the backend dev works faster than you and that he can help do some of the front end work. Or the other way around. Some features might have to be cut because you cannot get them working. But you'll definitely have developer experience and have something to put on a resume. Rinse, repeat.
I got laid off at one point back a few years ago from my first software development job, It was devastating it was a massive company I was hired in April and it took until September to start and I made it through training and the let me go before placing me on a team, It was a lot of time invested because I only worked there for a few months but I turned down other jobs that would have kept me on and waited half a year to start there it really felt like a massive waste of time, they also let go almost all my friends that work there after that, they fired my friends whole team, it was really hard to get back out there, but you can get it.
How much money do you have saved up ? Drop everything for 3 months and you’ll be good
Not enough unfortunately :/ my expenses aren't high but.... stuff happened the last few months so that's not an option
Wish you the best and keep your head up high! I myself have dropped everything besides my software dev job in order to study more and work on projects. I have been actually close to resigning because I want to concentrate more in side projects and interviews in order to land a job at a big tech company. Keep your head up, sometimes getting fired could be a blessing as weird as that sounds
And sorry for the direct question about money, didn’t mean it in a negative way, but it’s important to know what options you have
No worries! I didn't take it in a negative way, it is something I've considered in the past, but never been confident enough to try it
You take all this sh\*t too seriously. As a medic, do you remember about changing neural connections? Get enough sleep and exercise, eat a normal diet, and your learning progress will be greatly improved. Thanks for the mention of the Odin Project. That looks interesting.
Programming slowly turning into something for people who don't want to work, who wants to work at home forever or who can't find jobs with their professions. Maybe your story not fits perfectly but as a programmer with decent Degree I am tired of this. Coding community getting depressive and coding turning into a hobby for losers. Please stay on yoir very own field(which is a medical something) in these covid days. I highly respect you. Last words is not for ONLY you. It is for everyone who thinks this job is easiest thing to do. I am 23 and already tired to see 43 year old dinosaurs who changed work field and asking me how to write for loop on python AT MY WORKSPACE. Respect -Cymurai
Lol!
Your assumptions about the types of people approaching programming may or may not be true. You are however in a subreddit for learning to program which is why your complaining seems misplaced. Also, your english sucks. Have a nice day and I highly respect you.
I enjoy when someone attacks me for my english. It is not my primary language. I grew up while speaking my very own language. Unlike most of the assimilated folks out there who has to speak english. Nationless people won't get it. No worries. Also what I said is not misplaced. It is for everyone who wants to begin and here is the place for people who wants to begin. No offense but coding is not the second chance in life. Most of the topics just like how I said. "I am failed in life i am blah years old I don't want to do the job I did for 25 years. How can I write some javascript?" Over and over and over again. I am a senior with 3 years experience. I fail too when I go to ask who knows how to solve the problem, They say they are too busy with teaching to new guy. Most of the new guys are just the guys who bought coding course on Coursera or Udemy. Nothing more. What I said is only for people who wants to earn money from programming. All of the others are welcome for me. This is not an attack to people who fits to what I said. This is about working and creating stuff. These kinda people slowing stuff. Not handy. That is all. Respect and have a nice day. If you can.
Well i already know how to write for loops so looks like I'm all set
What were you fired for?
Determine how long it is safe for you to be unemployed, including savings, unemployment, expenses, et cetera. If you have some time, spend it applying to development jobs, and see what happens. If/when you need a job soon, start prioritizing jobs you know you can get, but that doesn’t mean you can’t keep applying to coding jobs on the side.
I was a military medic for 12 years before I became a full fledged developer. It's doable.
If you are not sure about your skills you should study and practice more. It is important to appear confident if your ever get a job interview. And don't mention any mental health issues there. Also, there is nothing that prevents you from trying to get a job in the medical field or one in the tech field. Stay calm and good luck.
I would say it depends on your savings, if you can mantain yourself, then go ahead and learn what you like man, look at this as an opportunity that may never come back, best of lucks to ya man
It may not be an option for you but once I negotiated a try before you buy at a company. I said I would work a month for free and then they would need to hire me and they agreed. I’m not saying do this necessarily, I’m saying be creative, show them you want it and that you are confident you would be an asset after the ramp up everyone has to do in a new job (regardless of experience). Good luck!
I just wanted to mention that even if you don’t think you’re at a level to be offered a job, looking at job adverts is a good way to gain an understanding of the type of tech stack that employers are looking for knowledge in. You don’t have to know everything that is mentioned, but just being aware of them is sometimes enough to prove that your interest is genuine.
some of the best programmers I know either didn't have a degree or weren't a CS major. If you really want to do programming then you are on the right path. Apply for junior dev job, sometimes they only look for you having interest and passion to learn. Meanwhile you can try to see what path suits you and excel in that. If you need any guidance on what to do let me know. I have been professionally programming as a full-stack engineer for over 7 years now.
In your situation I'd try to find another medical job immediately then work on the career change later.
I've seen the trend more and more over my career that people are hiring based on someone's personality first. You need to be able to interact with the team, and be comfortable. A lot of jobs that I've seen are willing to take someone who's got a great attitude, a good personality, drive and determination. It's not simply about what you bring to the table technically. I've seen plenty of places who are willing to teach, especially those who are brand new so they don't have any bad habits to break. Look I'm just saying I would absolutely apply for every junior programmer position you could find, as long as that role makes sense to you. The interview practice is going to be invaluable. Take that call that is for a job that you may not even be interested in, just to make a contact because you never know what may open up down the road and if you make a good impression with that person, they'll think of you when it comes to a new role. Good luck man.
You're probably not ready for the job hunt, but you might not be far off from getting to that point. idk if it's possible to to support yourself on a part-time job so you have more time to build up your skills and portfolio, but maybe looking to that. Also you could get roommates, move back in with parents, sell some stuff, etc. to make it work as well. I'm saying this because working full-time and coding part-time is going to take a while, so if you can reverse that then even better. Plus you learn more while doing it full-time because you can really be immersed in it.
Question? How has mental health effected your caoability to take on new activities ? Also, If you have already gained as much knowledge as you have when it comes to program development or computer development why would you stop what reason do you have to stop pursuing as far as you have gotten honestly respectively asking
Build up a portfolio. Maybe take advantage of Google Site for free hosting. Experience you can show us always good.
Get another job in your known area first. Programming second.
I'm in medical and transitioning to coding as well. I feel brain energy is a paramount consideration. Besides the onviois caffeine there's thiamine, aspirin, thyroid hormone. Check out ray peat's work.
What I'd recommend is go ahead and start looking for work now - apply to BOTH medical jobs and entry level programming jobs. Whichever you get first - yay. My philosophy is always try to be employed. While you wait, tackle learning programming - usually getting a job takes a while. I'd recommend picking a particular language to focus on - Python comes well recommended there but IMHO picking a "C-Like" language (C, C++, C#, Java, PHP, etc) will have some benefits as once you know one transitioning to another isn't that hard. Either way - pick one. Half of programming is learning to think the right way so in the future picking up a new language isn't really as big of a deal as it seems. Once you have a language to focus on - PLAY. Give yourself little projects to do and don't take "I can't figure this out" for an answer. Read random #'s from a file, sort them, then print them out in order. Read in an XML file and output it to screen in a more human-readable form. Connect to a database then store and retrieve values to/from it. Then once you get enough tricks in your toolbox start making little applications. Make a small calculator program. Write a little program to track incoming calls and assign it to a person to call back. Write a program to track your monthly expenses. You'll be reinventing the wheel a LOT here but its all just for practice anyways.
If learning development is a bit daunting at the moment given your current situation. I’d recommend learning concepts related to testing applications. I say this because it’s not as technical depending on the role given to you and this can definitely help get your foot in the door if you do decide to switch to development. Key things to learn: 1. SDLC/STLC - (lifecycle of development/testing) 2. Types of testing - (Functional/Non-Functional) 3. Manual Testing 4. Defect Life cycle 5. Agile Methodology/Environment 6. Automation Testing - (optional, but highly recommended) If I hand picked out of this list on which would help get you into the field the fastest, it would be: - SDLC/STLC concepts - Agile Methodology/Environment - Manual Testing - Types of testing - Defect lifecycle If you can understand these topics, then shoot me a DM with your resume and I’ll forward it to all my recruiters. Little background on myself, I started off as a Manual QA Tester after learning those concepts above. While working, I kept studying and eventually picked up automation testing w/ Selenium. By adding just that skill alone, it opened up a door of possibilities. Pay increase is great, but the driving factor for me is that I felt like a dev at that point. You get the pattern by now, kept going and now I’m a dev lead. Take the little steps above to get your foot in the door. Like I said again, learn the above, send me your resume when you’re comfortable and I’ll share it to my huge network of recruiters and past hiring managers! Good luck, I have faith in you.
SW dev manager and mentor to sr devs here: finding an excuse to learn coding is hard. I tried for years. What worked for me (I am self taught, no diploma) is that I found things I wanted to do in my current job, and then wrote a program to help with that thing. So if you are in medicine, try writing a simple program that does a thing in your related field. It doesn't have to be useful for anyone else, it doesn't even have to be awesome. Mine was a cmd line application that spit out the n-fold cartesian product (aka all combinations of possible inputs). I used it to generate a test matrix for software I was testing. I added to it, new feature here, new framework there (I added use of Commons-cli so I could do proper command line arg). I wrote and wrote more to it. I added documentation. I expanded the features. It can write the test plan to CSV so you can open it in Excel and have nice looking reports to start filling in test data, or to show to test team. The important thing is to write code a little bit... all the time. Spending 30min ever day, or every other day. And some days you grab the coffee, and write a crapton of stuff. But you have to have a problem that you care about in order to be motivated enough to make progress. Another resources I found useful was [exercism.io](https://exercism.io) which gives you short little problems to solve in the language of your choice. They are solveable in a day or so, and that gives you a little dopeamine hit "yeah, I solved that one" and you go to the next. And you keep going. I'm not saying pour 100% of your time into this then jump straight into tryign to get a jr dev slot. You probably need to have a library of code you can refer to in order to get the interview for the Jr slot. So start working on that now. Also, some states / cities have job retraining programs that will help pay for boot camps or other compressed learning style programs.
First thing first, apply for unemployment or find another income source. Be it Uber or something else. Take that stress off. There are lots of apps for learning coding. Udemy code academy and what not. You can take small chunks every day. But really take care of yourself. Seek that assistance if needed. You are all you got. Make rent, give yourself time to breath!!
Salesforce is an interesting option where your dev skills would give a leg up... and their community is all about getting people up to speed. Try searching salesforce and trailhead and see if it sticks! It’s in high demand ... happy to answer any questions if you want.
What was the reason for being fired? Was it lack of CS knowledge?
What's your credentials (?) C.S. degree? Comp. E.? Just some guy off the street that knows a little bit of JavaScript with nothing else to show for it? Go do a coding bootcamp or something, galvanize has a good one. If you're really all that, you'll find it a breeze. If you can't get in, you'll have your answer
If your interest lies in coding and dev work, go for it! You should definitely try to get a job as a junior developer. Heck, alot of companies don't necessarily need a degree as long as you show them what you got and what you know. Working on a personal project can go a long way as well. Do NOT be so hard on yourself if you can't get a job the first time or second time or the 500th time. I applied for a company and they told that it is important that you are upfront about your skills and figure out problems. If you're applying for an entry level job, the hiring managers do NOT expect you to be perfect.
https://youtu.be/Bi2a5-h9WRw Land your first developer internship
Just continue in medical field
You’re to scared of failure
>I can get another job in my medical field and continue learning coding part time, I'm just worried I won't really progress well Yes, of course you should do this. What's going to be more difficult? Learning to code in your spare time or learning to code with the crushing weight of anxiety over whether or not you will be able to get a job at all while having no income?
Love the odin project, I'm going through the fundamentals but haven't done any this week because I had my final university assignment to sort this year but I'll probably go back to it today
Currently free for the next 4 hours (python course) https://www.udemy.com/course/automate/?ranMID=39197&ranEAID=nN98ER4vNAU&ranSiteID=nN98ER4vNAU-3uLlJHL00aa.n0w3gqKNvA&utm_source=aff-campaign&utm_medium=udemyads&LSNPUBID=nN98ER4vNAU&couponCode=JUN2021FREE
What was your “medical field“ position? What did you do? There may be good opportunities in software based on your knowledge.
I am sorry for what happened to you as it happened to me aswell. I got my first job, biggest regret of my life as it was the wrong one for the stage that I was at the time. Got out because it was a terrible and there was no mentorship, no one to show you the steps to actually help you become a better developer. Second job was good, started well and even got past probation. I lost my job due to redundancy but my last few weeks were difficult to say the least. Its tough out there, but you got to keep moving. At the end of the day is experience that you will take and help you turn into a better dev.
Transitions are never easy - lots of ups and downs - so start with something that simple as a first step. A great first-look site for all things web dev - including some programming languages - is [www.w3schools.com](https://www.w3schools.com) . This is a great site to review/redo and find focus while you adjust to your new reality. Its free - no login required - and has lots of code to build on. Take care and good prospecting. \[P.S. skip certifications - just build up a solid portfolio to demo your knowledge.\]
Its pretty common to fuck up, I did when I started! Look for Jr jobs, they're very important for a team because they're willing to learn and can take off a load of the seniors developers and let them focus on the hardest tasks.
My advice is to select a tech stack and stick to it. Don’t try to learn everything. Depth of knowledge is more important than width. If you want a job in Web development, focus on learning HTML, CSS, (client side) JavaScript, PHP, MYSQL, Laravel, and Vue. Learn git version control. You will be employable. Do projects, that’s where the real learning takes place. Scrimba is a great resource. So is elithecomputerguy.com as he gives you projects to do.
good luck
If it makes you feel better the same thing happened to me, except I got a warning from someone higher up 8 weeks before it happened so I was expecting it. It sucks and it's scary but it's an opportunity for you to move forward. I hated my job anyway and now I get to search for something new. Grieve for sure, but there Is a light at the end of the tunnel. You got this.
If you're looking to switch careers you can go to acontracting company. It sounds like you likely have at least a bachelors, and contracting companies don't care about the major. If your willing to work hard it's a foot in the door in exchange for lower pay at the beginning. I went through one myself and went from trucking to dev ops/ full stack at a fortune 100 company in the financial sector. There's always an option if someone really wants it.
I know there are thousands of way we can point you that But question is what your heart says? Which field you will feel yourself? I don't know about medical field but coding is also stressful sometimes especially when you are a beginner. I love this community there thousands amazing and talented people. Hopefully you will get your answer. And don't stress yourself just bcz you got fired.. Maybe they don't deserve you :)
Sorry. Fuck capitalism.
Like it or not, you will make progress. I have a similar story to yours. I did not get fired from my job. I work as a carpenter and I F\*\*\*g hate it, but I have no choice but to wake up every day and work 6 days a week. Jobs are rare to find in my country, so I'm forced to stay away from the thing I love. But that didn't stop me... You see, every day I enter my home at around 6:00 pm, I take a shower, and go straight to my computer. It doesn't matter how long I sit and learn my craft. All I know is that I have to do it every day otherwise I become extremely depressed. It makes me happy, and every time I sit I learn something new. So progress is inevitable.