Landing Another Job

I officially turned down the job offer I was given on Friday today, due to the pay not being very adequate, and I'm starting to feel like I made the wrong decision. Maybe I would have felt the same way if I had taken the job. This was a big decision to make, and I'm basically banking on being able to land another job that pays better and has the same upside this one had, which might be a tall order. I don't think I'll be as lucky when it comes to location, but there are plenty of jobs out there, just not quite as plenty for those of us just starting out. Nonetheless, at this point, I've proven I can get an interview, and I've had enough interviews where I feel pretty comfortable with them. I will admit, the first few interviews I did were abysmal in retrospect. I second-guessed myself and sold myself short constantly. Anybody could have seen my lack of confidence in my skills a mile away, but I've moved past that into a much more confident state when I come into an interview. I have a great story to tell about how I got into software development, and I tell it well, now. I've proven I can make it all the way through to the end, so now it's just a matter of doing it again.

Today marks the start of something new and the end of a journey, all in one. I'm starting Codesmith's CSPrep course, which should be awesome. In about 25 minutes, I'll hop on Zoom for the first session in a two-week course that will surely hone my JavaScript skills. During the week, the sessions run from 8 to 11PM and on Saturdays they are from 12 to 6PM, so in all I'll be getting about 42 hours of coursework in a short period of time. If the instructors are anything like Will Sentance, I'm sure to learn quite a lot. He teaches in a Socratic method style, calling on students to answer questions to keep everyone in the classroom engaged. I know this is the style of teaching he expects his fellow instructors to follow as well, so I should be in for a treat. He also believes strongly in pair-programming, and it is expected for students to work after class ends every night well past the ending time. For me, this may be difficult to do every day, since I often have to work quite early in the morning, but on a night like this when I don't have to work tomorrow, I should be able to take advantage of this. I would also be able to do this on Thursdays and Fridays, so we'll see how it turns out. My goal is to make an impression, so hopefully I can pull that off.

100 days ago, I decided to publicly commit to the Twittersphere that I would be coding each and every day for at least 100 days straight, at least an hour every day. For me, this was nothing new. I haven't missed a day of coding for at least 3 or 4 hours since May 26th, but I thought it would be a great opportunity to get my blog entries out into the world and expand my network. What I didn't realize is that I stumbled upon a very welcoming and encouraging community and made some lasting friendships in the meantime. I've gotten some invaluable insights from people like Matt Bear that I otherwise never would have if I didn't put myself out there. I'm up to just shy of 1000 followers on Twitter, and who knows, maybe one of those connections will advance my career in some way in the future. Regardless, I'm really happy I did it, and there's no doubt in my mind I'll be continuing on for round 2 of this endeavor. Things like #100DaysOfCode and writing this blog every day help to hold myself accountable and keep me going through the harder days, to make sure I'm at least putting in a little time every day to work towards my goal of creating a better future for my family. I'm getting closer to this goal every day, and it will be well deserved when it's achieved.

Until tomorrow!