How to get a job as a python (or any other language) developer

[FullThrottleTX]

I’m doing some research myself, and there’s two areas that seem to be booming. The first is digital marketing. Not too sure about details, but you’re basically doing something to help people make money, which will never be out of style.

The next area is cyber security. It’s a $120 billion dollar industry that’s only growing. This will require staying up to date with all the new threats that people like Kim K don’t want to deal with.

Big players with stacks in both fields. Stacks that they want to give to us for a job well done.

It seems like boot camps that offer full stack offer this too. Both are high in demand. These are the two I’m thinking of going into.

Both of those fields are wholly unrelated to what you'd be learning in a typical bootcamp. Cyber security is more on the DevOps side of things, and you don't get there until you have some more general experience in development/engineering. Why would a company put a recent bootcamp grad in charge of their security?

I used to be a digital marketer and while I used some programming in that, it's not the same field at all. You will have a lot more job opps that pay well in software engineering/web development than digital marketing. Digital marketing is overly competitive and a lot of people are doing it.

Every startup company now is trying to launch a tech product and they need engineers to build it. That's more what I do...

 

[FullThrottleTX]

^ Not a Python specialist, but it's used for Automated Intelligence and Data Science Analytics. It's widely popular because it's syntax is very simple. It really depends on what you want to do: Web Dev, Game Dev, Software Engineer, etc.

If I was in your position, I wouldn't focus on how quick you could get a job in the field... but how efficient you would be. I would recommend you get some $20 courses on UdeMy, master them, and then go on a Bootcamp if you can afford it. Might be an overkill... but with this recession coming... and women dwarfing men in college degrees... I'm not leaving anything to chance! A cert + proficiency = guaranteed Job!

My current role is an EE specialist in the O/G industry. Nobody can really take my job, given how much of a niche it is. It's also incredibly technically intense.

My hope is that once I start programming, I can get good enough to the point where I can get into roles that are technically difficult so that I don't have to compete with riff raff. My current role has no women for competition, no SJWs, etc. Just masculine men who don't play politics.

Is programming even the right field for this, or should I be looking at something like analytics or something else? I want deep specialization so that I can command a large salary with little competition.

O/G is interesting. Most of tech though is rife with SJWs. Few women, but the men are pretty beta and left wing.

You can't really specialize in something until you get some general experience, then you can shift to a specialty. Like I specialize in ecommerce, for example, which fits well with my past background in marketing. I'm really good at building APIs as well.

 

[whitewashedblackguy]

Both of those fields are wholly unrelated to what you'd be learning in a typical bootcamp. Cyber security is more on the DevOps side of things, and you don't get there until you have some more general experience in development/engineering. Why would a company put a recent bootcamp grad in charge of their security?

I used to be a digital marketer and while I used some programming in that, it's not the same field at all. You will have a lot more job opps that pay well in software engineering/web development than digital marketing. Digital marketing is overly competitive and a lot of people are doing it.

Every startup company now is trying to launch a tech product and they need engineers to build it. That's more what I do...

Yea, I was assuming that it would come a bit later when I got some exp. Go to boot camp, work for a while, then go back to school to branch out. Of course, everything depends on how good you are, right? I've heard of people walking into a company, showing them how fucked their shit is, then charging them to fix it.

Good to know digital marketing isn't the squeeze. Forsure avoiding that.

 

[sittinpretty2020]

Upon further research and applying for bootcamps, it seems pretty much all of them require you to do a few basic "coding exercise challenges" and then an interview in order to get accepted. I don't know what the interview consists of, but it seems a little over the top.

I guess they do the challenges to screen the retards out, but I don't know why they'd want to interview potential paying students.

And after you get accepted, the full-time bootcamp is apparently very arduous and competitive.

You'll be doing fast-paced projects and "sprints" all day, very stressful stuff for a newbie I'd imagine. That's not really my style. I'd want a more relaxed environment, especially if you're going to have to teach this stuff to yourself anyway. I might not take one after all, or I'll take one part-time, or search for more lax ones.

@FullThrottle, was that more or less your experience?

 

[Captain Gh]

Even though you're paying... bootcamps are not a walk in... since their reputation is VERY IMPORTANT! 1 disgruntled vocal student who makes enough noise... and it's a 10k loss... PER HEAD! Screening is key... and with super cheap UdeMy courses available, I wouldn't recommend for a newbie to apply for a bootcamp right away

 

[FullThrottleTX]

Upon further research and applying for bootcamps, it seems pretty much all of them require you to do a few basic "coding exercise challenges" and then an interview in order to get accepted. I don't know what the interview consists of, but it seems a little over the top.

I guess they do the challenges to screen the retards out, but I don't know why they'd want to interview potential paying students.

And after you get accepted, the full-time bootcamp is apparently very arduous and competitive.

You'll be doing fast-paced projects and "sprints" all day, very stressful stuff for a newbie I'd imagine. That's not really my style. I'd want a more relaxed environment, especially if you're going to have to teach this stuff to yourself anyway. I might not take one after all, or I'll take one part-time, or search for more lax ones.

@FullThrottle, was that more or less your experience?

It's a bootcamp.
It's not supposed to be relaxed.

That's the whole point. Despite this, I had at least 3 kids kicked out of my class who didn't show up on time, goofed around, ect.

Meanwhile I was working 18 hour days without a break for 4 months. It was pretty much non-stop coding and building portfolio projects for me. Guess who got a job at the end?

If you can't do what is required, you definitely shouldn't go to one. Also, you probably won't like software engineering if you don't like stressful sprints with deadlines where you're working like a dog.

 

[tylerdurden1993]

Hey Guys.

A quick question here, does anyone know if it's possible/how easy it is to get an expat job in the software industry.

Basically I'm a junior python developer with just under 10 months commercial experience in the UK. I'm looking at Asia mainly.

Thanks in advance

 

[oilbreh]

Hey Guys.

A quick question here, does anyone know if it's possible/how easy it is to get an expat job in the software industry.

Basically I'm a junior python developer with just under 10 months commercial experience in the UK. I'm looking at Asia mainly.

Thanks in advance

Your best bet I think is to find something remote locally or specialize in something where you can make it with freelance comfortably.

Bootcamps are rough, I tried one early on and got kicked out. Worked out for me as I was refunded and was at the burn out part where I wasn't taking in anything. What I did learn helped me get started on my own. Really depends on your learning style.

Im still amazed at how python took off, the spacing you need to do is annoying, it really offered nothing over the other scripting languages, and doing anything with threads is a pain. Not to mention the version bs you need to deal with. For web dev Django just seemed like a crappy version of rails.

 

[Realbor]

If you become a decent programmer, is it difficult to get jobs where you can, how do you call it in english, do "remote work" ?

 

[Thoughtcrime]

Your best bet I think is to find something remote locally or specialize in something where you can make it with freelance comfortably.

Truth right there.

Im still amazed at how python took off, the spacing you need to do is annoying, it really offered nothing over the other scripting languages, and doing anything with threads is a pain. Not to mention the version bs you need to deal with.

Regarding the spacing - yes it's dumb. And I'm annoyed by it, as well. But honestly, it's a very small thing that you can get used to. I really think that the dynamically typed aspect of it is the real shortcoming. But you could say that about many programming languages.

Personally, I think that the reason why Python is so incredibly popular is because of the awesome syntax. It is very friendly, almost english-like. But it's actually a programming language. This is why it has become a very common introductory language in universities and a language of choice in many fields like data science.

 

[burncushlikewood]

i just find c/c++ much easier to program because of its closeness to machine code makes it more structured to use mathematically, a lot of people get into software and up quitting, you gotta make sure you understand discrete mathematics and recursive math. Code is like mathematical human language to communicate with a machine, c/c++ being more useful for hardware control. People with bad speech and mathematical understanding will be at a disadvantage considering codes similarities to learning human language. Wondering what programming language converted to french or Portuguese (lua), would be best to use coding wise.

 

[KingKrule]

I'm wondering if its possible to get job in programming if it's all self thaught and you have no bachelor/master? Let's say you have alot of hours to learn and become somewhat good at this. How hard would it be to get a remote job?

 

[tylerdurden1993]

I'm wondering if its possible to get job in programming if it's all self thaught and you have no bachelor/master? Let's say you have alot of hours to learn and become somewhat good at this.

Have you even bothered to read the thread

How hard would it be to get a remote job?

Getting a remote job with no prior commercial experience would be really hard in my opinion why would a company let you work remote when you haven't proved yourself to be able to do the job yet?

Also is good to be in the office for your first job as you are able to ask face to face questions to the senior developers who work in the office which will help to improve your understanding in my opinion

 

[BlueMark]

Im still amazed at how python took off, the spacing you need to do is annoying, it really offered nothing over the other scripting languages, and doing anything with threads is a pain. Not to mention the version bs you need to deal with.

Regarding the spacing - yes it's dumb. And I'm annoyed by it, as well. But honestly, it's a very small thing that you can get used to. I really think that the dynamically typed aspect of it is the real shortcoming. But you could say that about many programming languages.

Personally, I think that the reason why Python is so incredibly popular is because of the awesome syntax. It is very friendly, almost english-like. But it's actually a programming language. This is why it has become a very common introductory language in universities and a language of choice in many fields like data science.

Python is a good way to quickly put together a proof of concept program or just run a one-off data crunching job. Its initial starting costs are low. It's only when you decide to scale it up (whether running a lot of performance critical code or having a large code base) that it becomes a problem.

You should think of Python as shell scripting on steroids. It should not be the core language of your stack. My advice is to learn Python as a complement to a statically typed language like C, C++, or Go. Don't become the guy who only knows dynamically typed languages, and beware of jobs that only use dynamically typed languages.

 

[KingKrule]

I'm wondering if its possible to get job in programming if it's all self thaught and you have no bachelor/master? Let's say you have alot of hours to learn and become somewhat good at this.

Have you even bothered to read the thread

How hard would it be to get a remote job?

Getting a remote job with no prior commercial experience would be really hard in my opinion why would a company let you work remote when you haven't proved yourself to be able to do the job yet?

Also is good to be in the office for your first job as you are able to ask face to face questions to the senior developers who work in the office which will help to improve your understanding in my opinion

I wondered about the remote job as well, not sure why I formulated myself that bad.

 

[worldtraveler3]

and beware of jobs that only use dynamically typed languages.

May I ask why?

You are discrediting entire ruby population, haha, ( which I’m not a fan of anyway)

Python jobs are hard to get, at least in Europe, because there are a lot of applicants, because everyone think it’s hot and they should be doing it. It’s basically the sheep effect, you have loads of Indians doing it now. Not sure if you think that’s a good thing or not. Nothing against Indians.

I like python though, it’s great for machine learning, which is the hot topic now.

Listen to the above, you shouldn’t be getting a remote job in your first 1-2 years. Full stop.

 

[Castillo]

As a senior developer and team leader for many years in banking (I interviewed many developers too) my advice is also to learn C# Asp.Net and SQL (SQL server / NoSQL MongoDB etc), along with JQuery / Ajax etc. A lot of these technologies go hand in hand when doing application development. The Microsoft and other certifications are no substitute for experience, but as a junior dev they give you a broad understanding of the capabilities of the product and show that you are keen to learn - they certainly helped me get into banking. At least, do a SQL server certification as the knowledge is very useful. You wouldn’t believe the number of developers we interviewed in a investment bank who wrote on their Resume that they were experienced developers with 5-10 years but did not even know what a database Index is or why it is used.

 

[Blaster]

Im still amazed at how python took off, the spacing you need to do is annoying, it really offered nothing over the other scripting languages, and doing anything with threads is a pain.

The spacing is really one of the genius elements of python. It took a coding convention that everyone was using anyway and gave it sensible semantics, reducing visual clutter and solving code-formatting arguments all in one shot.

It's much simpler and more consistent than Perl and more intuitive (and usually, performant) than Ruby. This clean consistency is why it was attractive to scientists, many of whom had experience with languages like Matlab. Python is a language you can pick up and learn in addition to a primary scientific toolset. You don't have to drink the kool-aid and dive into the culture like you do with Ruby, or deal with Perl's dozens of weird idiosyncrasies (I still have a soft spot for Perl though I must admit), or deal with Java and JVM headaches. Java's not necessarily a bad choice if you know what you're doing with it, but at this point research software in the Python ecosystem has far surpassed Java in most cases.

Python just kept growing and growing steadily over time by being consistent and reliable. Where as web developers are always moving onto the next fad, scientists were a bit more cautious. If there was ever a "killer app" for Python, it was probably the venerable NumPy, which never made a huge splash but has been there all along. This was a key foundation for scientific computing and over time a whole ecosystem of scientific software grew from it. Now you have massive libraries of scientific software like Anaconda as well as extremely popular tools like Tensorflow and Jupyter Notebook. That's in addition from the solid scripting capabilities for powering more optimized tools written in C, C++, or even Fortran.

Not to mention the version bs you need to deal with. For web dev Django just seemed like a crappy version of rails.

The verion 2to3 debacle was bad for python but migrating isn't too painful right now.

Python web development has gravitated toward Flask, usually with some kind of javascript frontend like react.js. The elaborate ORMs of the previous decade are overkill for many developers now, who are often using multiple backends anyway (rdbms, message queues, key-value stores, etc.)

Ruby basically had two niches: Web Development and System Administration. Ruby's popularity for web development is almost entirely based on Rails, and Sys Admins (especially DevOps fad-chasers) liked it for being kind of a "Perl with less headaches."

Python on the other hand, is popular in dozens of niches from data science to web development to system administration to teaching.

 

[Blaster]

First, let me say I don't know why anyone would go from programming/engineering into marketing/sales/product management, unless they couldn't hack it. There are just so many more jobs in engineering than in marketing/sales - and they usually pay better.

Except for the jobs that do. Enterprise sales, the kind responsible for bringing in multi-million dollar contracts for large, expensive systems, will often have a hardcore engineer on the team. They know that for some customers, they'll be walking into a room full of engineers that know their own systems really well and won't fall for any kind of standard spiel. They'll need the domain expert there to field questions.

 

[FullThrottleTX]

First, let me say I don't know why anyone would go from programming/engineering into marketing/sales/product management, unless they couldn't hack it. There are just so many more jobs in engineering than in marketing/sales - and they usually pay better.

Except for the jobs that do. Enterprise sales, the kind responsible for bringing in multi-million dollar contracts for large, expensive systems, will often have a hardcore engineer on the team. They know that for some customers, they'll be walking into a room full of engineers that know their own systems really well and won't fall for any kind of standard spiel. They'll need the domain expert there to field questions.

Those guys are still engineers and they aren't working on commission.
That's more something you fall into rather than a career path. Most engineers don't want to be bothered with talking to customers directly, they can hardly stand product managers let alone non-technical outsiders bothering them with questions.