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How I Learned to Code in 4 Months and Landed a Tech Job With No Degree or Bootcamp
I dropped out of the police force, I had debts, and I worked 60 hours a week in a sales job that I hated. I was a complete failure. My life before I came to the tech industry is like this. This is my story of how I didn’t get a computer science degree or any expensive coding boot game. I was a security guard myself and got a reel. In this video, I will tell you exactly step by step what I learned, how I transformed my day, which project made the biggest difference for me and how I got a job opening with the help of Scale. No unnecessary talk, just that practical path. Okay, it worked perfectly for me.
Why I Left Sales for Coding
After dropping out of community college, the only option left to pay the bills was sales, but the difficulty was the dead-end role, constant change, and zero term growth. I wanted something better than that. Career growth and the power to build things from scratch. I barely knew what the coding was.
I had just seen that the fact industry offers a lot of opportunities for solid salaries. I got an idea to react to something from zero to one. It seemed like a superpower. Sam taught me essential and valuable skills, but for the long term, it was not something I had. I wanted a change.
Day One: Starting From Zero with FreeCodeCamp
I typed how to code on Google and got free code can. This was my starting mode for web development. I started from the very fundamentals. HTML and CSS. Job script for structure and design. As my first Rails programming language, I chose script because I wanted to create web apps. Big companies like Umar and Airbnb rely on it and its demand is very high in the market. Through Record Can, I learned variables, loops, objects, and functions. See, God willing, I understood a bitter truth in my pants. Finishing Python did not mean that I could actually fit anything.
I used to sleep on Logic Cousins, but I still could not make a simple website. I had learned everything about writing code, but I had not learned to program. The real meaning of programming is to fill out something using the court. Still, I started to love its problem-solving site. I started to see clearly that I could do this job. I can do long term.
Going All-In: Quitting My Job and Moving to Korea
I quit my job and moved to Korea to have kids so I could learn full-time. Learning with such intensity was much harder than I expected. I had never studied something so complex in my life. I would just sit in front of a screen, and nothing would happen in the name of lerning. That’s when I searched for how to learn on the internet and found a free house called Learning How to Run. It changed everything. What I learned from this course is great. All my studies have been completed. Use the Como Doro technique and study in focus segments. Create a dedicated learning environment for studying. I joined a co working space so that I could focus without any distractions. When a better system was created, my progress finally started.
Building Real Projects Instead of Just Doing Tutorials
The next section of Free Code Camp focuses on a full front-end project. Here you have to use HTML, CSS, and JavaScript to build world-class things. This jump was huge for me because I had never built anything from scratch before. I was quite stumped. Until I found a YouTuber named Stephen, a designer. He used to build the same project line by line on a live stream. I copied his work and created it myself. Modernizing it with this section helped me understand the entire process. I also used Watch and Board.com for such pool-long routes. Within just a month, I got my Free Code Camp Front-end Developer Certificate. I was making a lot of progress, but I was still failing like an imported one because I had not yet built a full-stack application, an app that included a front-end, a database, and a back end server.
How I Landed Job Offers as a Self-Taught Developer
I was pretty clear about what I wanted: a remote job at a small or mid-sized company. I don’t like big corporate environments at all. I searched websites like We Work Remotely and Remote OK. But instead of just submitting generic applications, I found the contact information for the hiring managers and developers at these companies and messaged them directly. I explained what I had learned, what I was looking for, and shared my GitHub link so they could see my projects. I also made an offer that many people can’t refuse: I offered to work for free at the beginning. I know not everyone can do that. I had planned for a total of four months and I still had about a month left. My goal was just to somehow get into the industry, learn on the job, and prove myself.
I targeted about 22 jobs that met my criteria.
Results:
6 responses 4 interviews 3 job offers Even though I offered to work for free, the technical interviews showed employers that I already had enough skills to be hired full-time. I chose the company that gave me the best opportunity to continue learning—and their salary package was also the best. My starting salary was $50,000 per year. After a probationary period, it increased to $65,000, along with health and dental benefits. The biggest win for me was that the job was completely remote (I just had to follow US time zones).
What Actually Matters When Learning to Code
No, I am not claiming that this exact path will make you an expert developer. Most of my work is done on crores of rupees. This approach has only enabled me to find a way. I have been working in tech interest for more than 10 years. And the truth is, no matter what degree you have, no one cares. If you want to learn coding, you have to focus on only two things. Number one, learn to solve the problem. Number two, stay focused until you get the answer. Focused effort always beats luck. If you are stuck and failing in a job that is not right for you, then learning coding on your own is the most high-leverage skill that you can build up. Start with absolutely free resources, create a Rails project, and start working as a junior developer right now. Even if you don’t have that official title yet, and if you are right, you can do it yourself in front of people. This path is not easy, but it is absolutely possible without a degree and without an expensive food camp.
