Part 2 Finally

While I contemplate one of the bigger decisions of my life, the grind continues. There's still way too much to learn ahead of me to slow down for a single day, especially if I do decide to take this job. As I've stated, I'm in the throes of Colt Steele and Stephen Grider's The New Modern JavaScript Bootcamp, a 52-hour epic that seems to have no end in sight. Literally, every time I look at this course, they're adding content to it and making it longer. The first half of this course is taught entirely by Colt Steele, while the second half is taught by Stephen Grider. The first half is all conceptual, with very little actual code being written. I just wrapped up this half, and thank goodness I did. I've fallen asleep countless times during this section, not because it's boring, but without actually doing some coding, this style of teaching just gets to be a bit dry. I definitely learned quite a bit and feel better for the time I spent taking this half of the course. It was also a really good time to take this course, right before I start Codesmith's 2-week CSPrep course, a course entirely devoted to these very same JavaScript concepts. Now it's on to the second half.

My expectations for the second half of this course is for it to be strictly project-based, which I'm really looking forward to. I expect to be much more engaged in the process of this half, and will likely be staying up later grinding it out on this course, due to the fact I'm not falling asleep. I guess it was nice to catch up on some rest, but I'm ready to get to work. I don't entirely know what to expect of Stephen Grider, as I haven't taken any of his courses yet. I believe he has 24 or so courses on Udemy, which seems like a lot of content. That could either mean he works incredibly hard, or he pumps them out without having quality in mind. The only guidance I have so far on his teaching is from my buddy Matt Bear, who spoke pretty highly of his courses. I really trust Matt's opinion on this type of thing, since he was the one who initially recommended Will Sentance's courses.

I still have no idea what to do about this job. If you didn't read my blog yesterday, I received my first offer for a software developer position. There are some great positives to this offer, but one huge drawback: the pay. I expected the pay to be less than I may think my worth is, but I didn't think it would be as low as it was. However, the job is 12 minutes away from my house and 5 minutes from daycare. The team seems to be really good, and the lead developer seems to be looking for someone to take under his wing and teach me everything he knows. I would have the opportunity to develop skills in JavaScript, Vue, Python, mySQL, Sass, Bootstrap, and much more. They are looking to do some things with machine learning and AI in the future, as well. Someone commented on my Twitter post yesterday saying that there would be nothing wrong in taking the job and then continuing the job search, looking for something with better pay while getting the experience I need. At this point, it feels like I'm leaning towards taking the job, but I still have a day and a half to figure it out, and a lot could change in the time frame. I'm still waiting to hear back from a couple companies I'm in the midst of interviewing with, as well, and actually have a 2nd interview on Monday, which I'm going to follow through with, if nothing more than for the interview experience. I have a feeling next week will be just as interesting as the last.

Until tomorrow!