Working In Tech

Meet Bob, Bob is an exceptionally average guy who currently works in the taco bell Industry. He's got some programming skills. He learned on youtube but has no connections, no social media following no college degree, and no trending apps on the app store. 

For some reason he wants to work in the tech industry where he can stare at a computer screen for ten hours per day, googling how to get his code to work in this article we will look at ten powerful strategies that can help you and bob land a, six-figure job by the end of 2022. 

I give you my 100%  money-back guarantee. All I ask is that you clapped the article and follow me. Before we get started I want to point out that I've been working independently for about 4 years so to write this article I reached out to a few different hiring managers, both that big mega-corporations and startups to figure out what the decision-makers are actually looking for, especially when hiring a self-taught programmer with no prior experience. 

Tech Jobs Outlook 2022

As of today, the job market is likely stronger than it's ever been before. There are all kinds of stories of people quitting their jobs and the great resignation only to land a much higher paying job because there's a massive shortage of talent that spans across many industries. 

It's really weird and I've never seen anything like this before it's great if you're looking for a new job, but there may be some warning signs on the horizon. Many of the top publicly traded tech companies have seen their stock price has quietly crashed over the last few months. 

Companies like Twilio and cloud flare, are down fifty percent from their highs of last year. A lot of big money is moving out of profitless, tech companies, and generally, that's not a good sign for tech jobs, but that's just a short-term concern. Over the long term, I think tech is one of the safest and best places you could possibly work. 

1. Strong Mindset

The first thing you'll need is the right attitude. Getting a high-paying job in tech is hard. There's a lot of overly optimistic marketing bs out there that might make you think you just go to a boot camp for a few weeks and immediately after you're making a hundred thousand dollars. 

There are some success stories that go like that, but for the most part, it's a very difficult grind. That requires you to be highly motivated and highly persistent to put things in perspective. Lambda school recently changed its name to the bloom institute of technology and I wonder why they did that charges twenty-two thousand dollars in tuition but guarantee a job earning fifty thousand dollars after you graduate that's about what a taco bell manager makes. Now, if you don't get a job after the program, they will refund one hundred and ten percent of the tuition, however, in order to qualify for that, you'll need to spend a year applying to ten jobs per week, reaching out to ten professionals for networking and making at least five GitHub contributions. 

That means you'll need to apply to at least five hundred and twenty jobs and be rejected from every single one. They know it's a grind and you should have the same mindset when going into yourself independently, but on the bright side, it's definitely achievable if you work hard at it and accept the fact that you're probably going to have to face a lot of rejection before you finally do land a job. I'd recommend subscribing to that Dorian develops youtube channel who has a recent video about his story about landing a job as a self-taught programmer. It took him about a year.

2. Location Matters 

Now, let's move on to strategy 2 live in the united states, specifically in New York City, the bay area, or Seattle. In the 2021 stack overflow survey, the median salary for engineers is well below 100k, in the United States though it jumps up to about 130k.

A few weeks ago, a poll conducted by an organization, it has 150k responses, yet only eleven percent are making more than 100k. Sadly, where you live really does make a big difference, so keep your expectations in line with your region. 

Now the key to getting hired is to make yourself valuable, think of it from the eyes of the employer why would they actually want to hire you? What value would you add to the team to the product to the company etc? 

Most tech companies don't actually make any money, but the general idea of employment is that the employer can make a profit off of your labor. The question becomes: how do we make you desirable to these potential employers? 

3. Master the Twitter Game

There are many things you can start doing today. In strategy 3 we will look at Twitter, there's a whole subculture out there called tech Twitter and I've seen tons of people land a job simply by adding value to the tech Twitter community.

There's a pretty simple formula for growing a Twitter account. To get started follow the influential people that you want to be hired by then create a profile, that's totally transparent, that you're on a journey to land your first job in tech then you can start responding to other people's tweets with encouragement and positivity.

People will think hey Bob’s a really nice guy I want to see him succeed. Then I'm going to follow him to watch it happen. then from there, you need to hack the shit out of the Twitter algorithm whenever you learn something new post a thread about it. 

If you have any good code tips, use carbon to create a snippet and post it with a bunch of emojis. You'll also want to create a list with resources for developers like the best youtube channels to learn programming.

If you're serious, you should be tweeting every single day like multiple times per day. More importantly, though, don't screw things up by saying something retarded like if you tweet out man, my code is being retarded right now, somebody with a lot of followers who thinks they're a lot more important than they really are might call you out and then everybody will dog pile on you and at that point, your journey into tech will be over before it started. 

4. Connect on LinkedIn

Now that you know how Twitter works, let's move into the strategy for LinkedIn. There are tons of recruiters on LinkedIn who can help you get a job in tech, but remember bob doesn't have any connections in tech yet so how does he even get started with LinkedIn? 

Well, the first thing you can do is find people you look up to you and send them a message that you're looking to get into tech and that you would like to connect most humans are actually pretty nice and will connect with you. 

No problem feel free to make me your first connection if you'd like also join groups for the different technologies that you're interested in and participate in them. If possible, you can also build your network by posting content. You can actually just reuse the content you've been using for threads on Twitter and posted to LinkedIn.

5. Git going on GitHub

Now that you have your LinkedIn network going, we can talk about the most important social site in GitHub as a self-taught programmer. It's very important that you at least have something going on in your GitHub. In a perfect world, you have commits every single day not only to your own project but to many other open-source projects out there. 

That's not very realistic, but it's important to be consistent and that's exactly why Lamda school or Bloom institute of technology requires that you make five GitHub contributions per week. To an employer, It shows that you're capable of writing code every day, which tends to be a pretty important part of the job if you're just getting started. One of the easiest ways to contribute is to look for typos in the documentation.

As you start, using more open-source, libraries don't be afraid to open issues when you find problems, and if you want to contribute look for issues that are tagged with a good first issue. It is true that you're kind of working for free here. By doing so, it will make your GitHub profile, much stronger and it's just a great experience as a developer. In fact, if you don't have fun doing this kind of stuff maybe a career as a software engineer isn't the best career path.

6. Build One Epic Thing

Now that your GitHub is impressive, it's time to build a personal project, because bob is a developer that nobody knows he needs to show employers that he can actually build something that is nontrivial, ideally something that will blow people's minds that cannot be ignored. 

You are much better off having one really awesome app than ten mediocre apps. Quality is much better than quantity when it comes to your portfolio, the engineering manager, who hires you is likely a much better programmer than you are they'll be able to tell if your portfolio is filled with a bunch of cookie-cutter projects recreated from the tutorials on youtube. 

Give yourself 3 to 6 months, build something that is truly impressive. One example is the portfolio of Bruno Simon he used Three.js to build an interactive 3d landscape to showcase his work. The reaction from other developers should be something like wow that would not be an easy app to pull off. 

7. Build in Public

Building an app is one thing, but the next strategy is to build this happen, in public. What I mean by that that is, you should transparently document the entire process. While you spend the next few months building something awesome, the most common way to do that is by blogging. 

There are many sites out there like dev.to and medium to create your own blog easily, in addition to blogging, you'll also want to be documenting the process on LinkedIn and Twitter, and you may even consider starting your own youtube channel.

Building in public is extremely powerful because it creates a feedback loop you don't otherwise get when you're just working alone in your mom's basement. There's a whole community of start-ups who are building in public you should give them feedback on their products and in return, they'll do the same to make your project better.

In fact, you might even consider monetizing in your project, because if you build something really good, you might end up accidentally creating a job for yourself. One example of a success story is superhuman, an email application that charges thirty dollars per month, and that was built in public. They got tons of great feedback from potential customers while building the product, and you can do the same thing with your personal brand. While looking for a job. 

8. IRL Networking

Now, we can move into strategy the real-life networking where you actually have to look at people's faces and say words to them and stuff as an introvert. This has never come easy for me, but what I can tell you is that some of the best business contacts I have come from real-life interactions. 

Believe it or not, zoom or metaverse doesn't replace the magic of face-to-face human interaction. The pandemic has ruined this and a lot of ways, but traditionally it's the best way to meet people locally is through meet-ups. 

All you have to do is find your local programming meet-up, show up there and eat some free pizza and maybe you'll meet someone important that can help you down the road now. The other thing I'd recommend is attending conferences, it's more expensive, but a lot of hiring managers and employees attend these things and they're often looking for people to hire if you are interested in their tech stack. 

Learning the basic skill of introducing yourself and making small talk can go a really long way when it comes to landing a job. You just have to get in a room with the right people. They say it's not what you know but who you know.

9. Get a Mentor

Speaking of, which is another powerful strategy, is to get a mentor which is much easier to do when you make a real-life connection. it might be a person with twenty years of experience or a person that's just one step ahead of you who just landed their first job. 

It is extremely valuable to have a person in the industry who you can have an honest conversation with you likely making many mistakes that you don't even realize, having a mentor who can validate or criticize the things you're doing is much faster than actually making those mistakes and learning from them one by one. 

Most boot camps will give you a mentor and that's one of the main things you pay them for, but you'd be surprised at how many people out there will mentor you for free, because at one point they were in your shoes and people are more altruistic than you might think.

10. Become a Good Fit

And that brings me to strategy number 10 be a good fit, as you start applying for jobs, you'll mostly hear critics, but if you're lucky you'll get a phone interview and then be rejected the next day, the natural reaction here is to be sad and to feel worthless or you might be angry at the company or think the interviewer treated you unfairly, but the reality is that rejection is just a story you tell yourself the best way to respond to It is accept as part of life and selfishly see what you can gain from it. 

Maybe ask for feedback or guidance to help you do better next time. What you'll notice about successful people is that they're persistent they fail well over and over again without carrying until finally, something works. 

Now the other thing to keep in mind is that a company won't hire you based on your technical skill alone. I mean it definitely helps, but they also want to make sure that you fit into their company culture. 

As a candidate they want you to embrace their core values and make sure that you'll fit into their management and leadership style. Before your interview, you should understand the company's core values and look at their social media profiles to see what kind of message they're putting out there. Make sure you align with their values unless you want to hate your job for the next ten years and then try to mold yourself into the candidate that they're looking for.

And with that, you have ten strategies that can help you land a job. You don't need to use all of these, but each one can get you a little bit closer to winning a six-figure tech job. In addition, you'll also need to learn how to code and how to master the technical interview, but don't worry I have upcoming articles on those topics as well as make sure you're subscribed to my email list. So you don't miss them thanks for reading, and I will see you and the next one.