Best ways to start a career in software development?

Question

New developer here and struggling to get around the old Catch 22 of can't get a job without experience and can't get experience without a job. Does anyone have any recommendations as to how to approach this.

I've tried to ask similar questions on social media only to end up down a number of blind alleys. All Facebook developer groups want to do is post stupid memes and it's hard to find any kind of real serious discussions on this subject. Kind of like those who know don't talk and those who talk don't know, I guess.

Anyways, I've come here to pose these questions. Hopefully someone here can provide good guidance for portfolio building and projects. I hope there's a way to begin real work soon, maybe with a charity or someone else who needs the labor for free. That being said, it seems like all of the starting points are way over my head and I will freely admit I have a lot to learn.

Answer 1

We live in a world that in order to receive something you need something else first. As you said without experience stupid companies miss a lot of good developers.

My criteria is the following while searching for jobs, don't look for big companies 15 employees is the maximun. Why you may ask. Simple I want my job to be recognized as mine but belong to the company, in other words, I get the credit, the company get more revenue so I get more raises. As simple as that.

I did a lot of personal projects maybe 10-15 between games, android apps, template websites, I wrote them in my resume, and started sending, on interviews I made very clear to my interviewers that I dont care for "fake" benefits nor formalities, I wanna work, do my best, and learn from it.

And never stop learning, but take your free time and enjoy them. I work everyday, even weekends but its a choice of mine, when my friends are working or busy and cant find anything to do, I just sit and start developing or testing something. That had give me the advantage too many times. Ex: the other day I tested, fixed and configured somenthing that a multimillion company employee didnt know how to fix, you know how I felt after that? I just said "yeah thats why my 5 employee company take your projects from you". Yesterday I took away a 12 AV rooms project of 150k each from that same company, because I made posible what the client wants for any type of scenario and they can't nor won't do research.

And to end my blah blah, follow your passion and work hard on it, what easy comes, easy go.

Regards.

Answer 2

In one line I can say Follow your Passion / Interest.

Ask yourself before starting a job in software Industry , What is your motivation behind it ? Are you good at problem solving ? Are you intrested in making games ? Do you want to make a AI robot ? Choose a domain and work on it.

When I was at school , I loved to play computer games . One day I came across a book which is about making games with Flash software. I started learning programming to make my own game and I ended up in software industry.

Continious learning and iterating on it is the key. Make some prototypes of whatever interests you. Join Programming Forums / Community . Put your code in github. Try to contribute to other people's code. Highligt these points in your resume. Its a competitive world , Try to stand out from the crowd.

Hopefully you will crack the job.

Cheers.