Struggles

It was about the middle of December of 2019. I had just come back to work after being off for about a month, recovering from a broken leg. Right around this time, I got my first job offer, but ended up turning it down because the terms were not agreeable. By this point, I had applied to hundreds of jobs, gotten a few initial interviews, but obviously nothing had led anywhere. There was a company out of Austin that had given me an initial phone screening interview back in November which I got through. They gave me a take home project to complete, but it took a while before they got back to me. About the time I was headed back to work, I got an email from them letting me know I was one of 3 applicants left, and they would like to set up another interview with me. I was overjoyed, and I thought this was it. I was slightly underqualified for the job, but I thought I could plead my case. I had the interview, and I thought it went extremely well. I thought I was sure to get the offer, but a few days later, I got an email letting me know they had decided to go another way. I was devastated. My fiance and I had both already settled on the idea of Austin and we were excited to be making the move. It just didn't happen.

After this, I felt listless. All of a sudden, I went from wanting to get as much studying as I possibly could done every night, to having to force myself to study every night. It was hard, and I wanted to give up. I'm sure a lot of people going through this process have come up against this same scenario at some point, in some form or another. Learning to code is hard, but it's not impossible. I believe anyone can do it; it's just a matter of sticking with it and putting in the work. Finding that first job, though, seems impossible. I struggled with it for the longest time, and even now, I don't have job offers stacking up. When you first get into coding, part of the allure is that everyone talks about the huge demand for developers. While this may be true, I believe most companies do not want to invest in junior developers; they would prefer to pay a little more and get someone with some more experience who they know will be able to produce results right away. To me, this is a huge problem for the industry. If there is such a high demand for developers, it is the duty of the companies who make up this industry to help produce these developers. Of course, there's a huge risk in doing so, but the industry as a whole would benefit greatly from the investment.

Somehow, I prevailed. There were days where I put in the bare minimum amount of work, meaning an hour. But, I didn't miss a single day, nonetheless. I tried to turn my attention to different topics to get my interest back, but nothing seemed to work. I needed to find a job and I needed to find it fast. Finally, in late February, I was able to land a job as a software developer, not far from my house. My commute was only about 15 minutes and the hours were ideal for our family. What's more, is that my focus at this job has been on React and React Native projects, exactly what I wanted to be working on. When I first started my job, I thought I knew React pretty well. I got into my first project, and I was struggling. All of the things a React developer should be able to do were just so hard for me. On top of that, we decided to go with TypeScript within the first week of me working there, something I'd never worked with before. I had a lot to learn, and I had to learn it fast. Luckily, there's a guy I work with who's always been more than happy to stop and help me out. He's taught me all kinds of things, and I've gone from a novice in React to being pretty proficient. There are things I'm doing today I couldn't have dreamed of doing when I first started. In my next installment, I'll bring you up to where I am today, so this should be the last part in the journey.

Until tomorrow!