Hi Devon!
I came across your website today and really connected with your story and journey into web development. I can really relate to having a crummy job, no bachelor’s degree, and the desire for something better. I would really love to get your help as I am trying to transition into a web development career.
About a year and a half ago, I was introduced to an introductory computer science course online and I have been hooked since then. I dove into Python and backend web development soon after the course and have been hard at work building out my portfolio/blog site as well as developing and expanding an app that I use at my current 💩 job (as you call it). I can go into more details about the project later if you are interested.
Now I am looking to transition into a web development career. I would prefer to focus on backend services using Python, but I am also trying to broaden my skills into more frontend development since this will make me far more marketable. I have been going to web development and Python meetups every week for the past 6 or 7 months to network and collaborate with others. I am also co-teaching a 3 week Python course at a local meetup. I have my resume on basically every major online job board. I get tons of calls and emailed job descriptions from recruiters. Most of the time I am contacted about jobs that either require 5+ years of experience and/or a degree. I hope that I am on the right track here, but I need to know if there are major gaps in my knowledge and skills that I should be focusing on.
I greatly appreciate your feedback and would love the chance to speak with you over a video call!
Session Notes
Aris rescheduled our first session on the day of the session. He emailed the day of the second session to apologize for missing it, but that was 2 hours before the session time. I emailed back to let him know he hadn’t missed it. I dropped into appear.in at the time of the session, and he predictably didn’t show. I emailed to let him know we would try the mentoring via email instead.