Back to the future – is 2024 a good year for junior programmers?

This text was written in February 2024. As I'm doing some tidying up on my blog, I'm bringing it back to your attention. I'll soon be publishing another summary, which will show how the topic looks from my perspective in 2025.

My journey to IT wasn't too bumpy, unlike the struggle to stay in the industry. These experiences allow me today to advise junior programmers on what can accelerate their entry into the IT industry.

Recently, my presence in IT has reached a whole new level. I've started getting questions from people who want to start their adventure with programming or are already in junior positions about what to do to break through in the industry. Due to the demand for answers, I decided to summarize my approximately 3 years of experience in this post and share tips that can bring success.

This is a kind of return to the future for me. My experiences show equally strange space-time distortions, as in the aforementioned film, which I'm trying to fix in some way. When I started working in IT, I had no problem finding a job. Now, with incomparably more experience, I have – surprisingly! – greater difficulties. This makes it easier for me to empathize with the situation of people who are just starting out. Thanks to this, I can also suggest something for this „crisis” time.

Learning, learning and learning again

Today I failed a recruitment test – a relatively simple quiz on JavaScript, React and TypeScript. Result: 8 good answers out of 12 questions. Better than before, but still not the peak of my dreams.

To start your career as a programmer, you need to spend many hours coding. You can write websites or applications for your portfolio, do projects for relatives and friends, or take free and paid courses. However, it's important to have a perspective of two forms of learning – for recruitment process and for work.

Learning „for recruitment process” includes all kinds of question and answer collections on the most frequently asked questions that may be asked in recruitment for a given position. This way of testing knowledge gives me the creeps, but it's one of the most widespread. Tests of „book” knowledge in the form of a quiz or technical interview are not only for juniors – also for more advanced programming positions, hard knowledge, not always used in practice, is needed. For example: to get into Facebook or Google, you need to know algorithms well. Do programmers working there always use this knowledge? Probably not, but it gives them the right mindset.

This knowledge allows you to weed out some candidates who haven't mastered certain concepts fluently, at least in theory. And indeed, I see that my theoretical knowledge at this point may be insufficient to move on. Which is in opposition to practical knowledge, acquired by recognition and struggle, i.e. coding.

Knowledge „for work” is practical knowledge, acquired in subsequent projects. Here my JS and React and TS are definitely better – because I know how to write something that works. And if I don't know, I know where to find this knowledge. For example, I may not know all the functionalities of Vue, but when during learning my application suddenly started crashing, in half an hour I was able to find a solution: the Vue version from the course is no longer supported and a new import and a slightly different Vue code structure was needed.

For now, I'm focusing on gaining practical knowledge, which is necessary for me as a freelancer. At the same time, I'm aware that if I want to find a full-time job, this „for recruitment” knowledge sooner or later I will have to absorb better.

Bootcamp is not always helpful

More and more offers of magically life-changing bootcamps – intensive programming courses – are springing up on the market like mushrooms after rain. I will soon write a longer text about bootcamps, but the question of participating in them comes down to the question – what is such a bootcamp supposed to give you?

If you believe that after the bootcamp you will magically find a job, I can guarantee you that it won't be easy – there are already hundreds of people like you on the market. Perhaps programs with a job guarantee (e.g. „you get a job within a year or we give you your money back”) may give you a better chance, but I'm not able to say anything specific about it – I didn't participate in training with such a package. However, I know that in some offers this „job guarantee” can be quite easily lost.

The bootcamp itself can accelerate your development, but it won't replace writing your own projects. In the bootcamp, the presence of mentors, with whom I could talk about code, the specifics of working in IT or possible development paths, helped me a lot. This gave me confidence in further self-study. However, not everyone needs it – all the bootcamp knowledge is somewhere on the web, often in free sources. So if you feel you don't need a bootcamp (i.e. you don't have a problem with planning your self-study with your head and you don't need a mentor to gain confidence) then it's better to spend money buying and working through some really good courses from time to time, e.g. on Udemy.

The atmosphere of inevitable success accompanying this type of course seems to me to be generated by single, imaginative success stories. The fact that someone found a job immediately after completing the bootcamp doesn't mean that your path will be similar. Having such awareness, you can better consider possible investments in learning.

Especially since, when competing in recruitments with young programmers after technical studies, our bootcamp entered in the CV doesn't look as impressive as it's painted. In the case of changing industries, our previous experience doesn't always play in our favor – which can also significantly delay breaking into the industry.

The comfort zone of learning

Here comes the moment when I should start talking about tidying up on LinkedIn and Github, about writing to recruiters, commenting on entries and broadly understood networking. However, it will be about something else.

If you want to enter IT, you need to have learning comfort. The times when people with little programming knowledge came to IT are slowly becoming a thing of the past. This is followed by the need to master a large piece of technology. Learning comfort, in turn, is given by employment. If you don't have enough support or a financial cushion to study full-time and survive until you find employment – sometimes it's better to stay in your industry and study after hours.

A year ago, when as a result of the crisis in IT I lost my job, my junior experience was still not enough to find a new job, and the financial cushion was not too big. However, it was enough to start working as a freelancer, and when there are fewer orders – to learn. This learning was not comfortable at first. The feeling of panic associated with the question „how will I manage” hindered my development. Now, when I have more orders, I also have more learning comfort.

Comfortable learning is learning from which you get more, which gives you more satisfaction and which you don't have to force yourself to every day. The lack of such comfort can lead to a deterioration of mental health – especially when you suddenly put everything on one card and this decision doesn't bring the expected results.

Create your own space

Having 700 sent CVs behind me without the effect of a permanent job, I started to figure out how I could increase the chances of any success: for a job that would at least allow me to pay obligatory Social Security. I decided that learning combined with orders would give better results than further compulsive sending of CVs.

In this way, I began to create my own professional space and my own opportunities. I started going to meetups, sending applications for lectures, then it was time to rewrite my company website, greater activity on LinkedIn and creating an English-language blog. In the meantime, the contacts made began to bear fruit with interesting short-term projects.

Is this the place where I always want to be? I don't know. I dream of stability, more coding and fewer business contacts with people (classic programmer 😉 ). At the same time, observing the situation of many friends who are trying to break through, I see that I am in a privileged position. I have orders. So I have some stream of money flowing towards me. I have space to learn.

Did anything give me a guarantee that this idea would work? No! However, I had space, so that instead of fitting into the scheme, I could start building on what I like: writing and sharing knowledge. I tested a number of ideas and finally something clicked, worked, gave an effect. If you feel strong enough to find yourself in this way in the life jungle – breaking through and creating your path day after day – this may also be your way to IT.

Don't give up

All these tips can only help you break through. Unfortunately, I myself have painfully experienced that even a bootcamp, own projects, a large dose of other courses, participating on LinkedIn and other activities don't always bring the effects we would like to see – getting the dream job.

Sometimes you need: more intensive networking, looking for offers on company websites or advertising yourself in social media. Sometimes you need to meet the right person. And sometimes all you need is luck. However, if you feel that IT is your place, then you will probably find the strength to persevere on this path and wait for your chance.

I've already bounced around different industries – journalism, psychology, fencing. At a certain stage of the struggle to settle down, I lacked the strength for further action. Now that I'm in IT, I'm surprised by my own perseverance. It stems from the fact that I feel I've found my place and that I want to be in it despite various obstacles. This is the best fuel for me for all kinds of crises, both internal and external.

So if this is truly your place, then I believe you will find yourself here.