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Discussion on: Iā€™m Arit Amana ā€” Engineer, Founder, Mother. Ask Me Anything!

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aritdeveloper profile image
Arit Amana

G'day mate! (in my best Aussie accent šŸ˜…)

Seriously, thank you for your kind words, Brett! I will answer your questions best I can.

How do you pick a path? There are SO many pathways into dev, but how many of them are obscure paths leading to little demand? How many lead to high demand skills but with an over saturation of talent?

Excellent question!

The short answer is: pick a path that will gain you in-demand skills , so you can better compete for jobs.

With the barriers to entering a dev career as low as they are, it has also led to higher numbers of early-career devs, which increases the competition for jobs seeking 0-2 years experience. Peruse jobs boards, identify companies that sound great to work for, and take note of the tech stacks they advertise. What comes up again and again? (psst! React!) That's where you want to focus your learning.

So I'm wondering if cramming in a Bootcamp is viable. If you think it's the most direct way (especially for someone easily distracted by shiny new dev toys), do you have any recommendations where to start looking?

Hmmm, bootcamp. So sexy, right? Promises of a shiny six-figure income after 6 months of learning-to-code. No money due upfront, remote classes, the whole nine.

I'll keep this short: in my humble, bootcamp-educated opinion, the most consistently positive result of coding bootcamp is a (hopefully) comprehensive portfolio. That's it.

Now you mention working nights, 30 hours a week. If you could spare another 30-35 hours, then most of the bootcamps out there could work for you.

However, if you'd like something very self-paced, perhaps take a year to complete, I recommend LaunchSchool. You can also search Google for "self-paced coding bootcamp".

Oh, and in the interview, you said during the day while caring for your daughter, you were watching videos etc to absorb info. Can you recommend some of the sources which satisfied your hunger for knowledge?

Oh this was all YouTube. I love the TraversyMedia channel. Also FreeCodeCamp's channel is great as well.

Good luck my friend! Hit me up @aritdeveloper on all platforms. I'll help any way I can.

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mogsta profile image
Brett

Hi @aritdeveloper

Thanks for the golden advice! I knew you'd understand me ;)

As a busy parent, yep, an extra 30-35 hours per week might exist in theory, but even if it did, I doubt they'd be productive hours... so your suggestion of self-paced bootcamps would be more on the money in my situation.

LaunchSchool sounds great, though I checked and they're only for US-based learners. But I'm sure I could find something similar available to Australians if I dig a bit, and ask in the right forums.

I know there's a lot of talk about six-figure incomes, but that has never attracted me. I'd be happy enjoying a coding career on a waiter's income. But of course, happy to accept the tips :P

And thanks for putting me onto TraversyMedia. I've been through his CSS, Flexbox and Grid crash course videos in tandem with FreeCodeCamp to help consolidate what I was also learning there.

I really need to watch the Git crash course, cos I have no idea about that beast. I'm afraid Git requires one to be the careful, tidy, planning type. If so, there's another skillset I'll need to master :P

Thanks again,
Brett