I got into software development as a career change. I was lucky enough to get into an apprenticeship through the Washington Technology Industry Association (WTIA) to be a software engineer at Microsoft. My cohort was given about 5 months of coding bootcamp learning web development and C#. Then we were each assigned to a team at Microsoft for one year. After the year was up, I did not get hired, so I’ve sought work elsewhere. I really enjoyed the web development part of my training, specifically coding in JavaScript, so I’ve been studying vanilla JS and Node.js and looking for full-stack jobs. I’ve had some bites, not many or often, and I haven’t gotten further than a phone/technical interview. I think part of that has to do with my perceived skills but a bigger part has to do with my level of experience. So when I’m not applying to jobs, I spend time on the part I like the most: reading through books and docs and trying things out in personal projects. I would love a full-time job building stuff in JavaScript and Node, especially if I get to keep learning new things. Your pitch about doing this kind of work as a freelancer was appealing to me because I would love that kind of flexibility and also I need to start earning some money before my unemployment runs out. 😕The ideal times for a mentoring session are between 10:30am and 2:30pm, but I’m open to other times if those don’t work for you.Thanks again, Devon. Have a lovely evening!
Session Notes
Drew wants to attend the meetup on Thursday.
Roadmap
- Identify a problem you can solve within music. Keep in mind, this could be a piece of functionality you’ll build into a customer-facing site, or you might be building some internal tool for labels, talent agents, radio stations, or someone else. Web development doesn’t always have to mean a marketing web site. You could build a piece of software that just happens to run on the web, or you could even use Electron or something similar to build desktop software using web technology.
- Build a project as your own client. Make sure your project is similar to what you want to build for clients.
- Test the market. See if anyone is willing to buy what you’ve built. If you’re close, tweak what you have to make it an easy decision for your target market. If not, you may have to start over with a different problem. Note: The more work you do in step 1 (identifying the problem), the less likely you’ll have to start over with a new problem after you build. You might even consider trying to get pre-orders at step 1. If you solve a problem that’s painful enough, your market will pay you based on the promise of the solution alone.