A story about an entry-level developer's frustration
⏰ Woke up one day 🌅 feeling good, cause meeeen! I wanna be a software developer 🧑💻
🔎 Searched on Youtube, learnt the basics, created some demos 📁. Ooh! nice 🤩 Dev ain't bad at all
Joined some boot camps 🏕️, made some dev friends 🧑🤝🧑. Oh Wow! this s**** is awesome
Wanted more so I bought 💵 some courses, created a Twitter account cause TechTwitter they said was the best
🤝 Followed some folks, got some tips and yeah TechTwitter is the best
Kept on learning 🐱👓 and practising more because practice they say makes one perfect
So it has been some years and I felt like yoo! I got this. Let me apply for some jobs 👔
Started writing some CV's 📋✍️, created a LinkedIn 👤 account to apply for jobs related to my tech stack
Applied for internship jobs, freelance jobs, entry-level jobs, like all the jobs I could think of
Was at this point that I knew s**** 💩 is getting crazy
Went through the mail, got plenty of rejected 🙅 applications. For some, I don't know when they are going to reply
Maybe when Thanos grows a moustache 🥸
Started getting frustrated 😔. Imposter syndrome kicked in. F**** I have to put food on the table, why me?
DMed some folks for advice. I continued sharpening 🏋️ my skills cause I had the belief things will be fine
Thought of startups so I started. It failed but I learnt. We move 🚙
Volunteered to build apps for some friends and organisations to improve my experience. Some rejected and others accepted
Added the volunteered work to my CV and started applying for some jobs because I spent the little I had on improving my skills
Finally, I got some replies 📫 with links to the code test. Felt glad.
Opened the replies 📬 and what 🤯! I get these scary questions to answer
Tried my best, got some answers right, submitted my response ↩️, and hoped 🤞for the best
Results came back and I failed ❌ but I realised I needed to learn hard if I want far
Not having enough resources to purchase some courses and data bundles, I depended on late midnight bundles, torrents, free courses, and Youtube courses
Developed a portfolio site, updated my CV, and improved my LinkedIn, GitHub, and Twitter accounts with some tips
Doing all this and still, no jobs started hitting me hard 😞. All I wanted was to do what I liked while getting paid
Began to doubt me 🤦, see TechTwitter as showoffs, and losing passion and love for development
Some will say I was after the money but sincerely speaking who does not want to enjoy their hard labour
After some time ⌛, I decided to quit. I stopped coding, stopped learning skills, and stopped focusing on my career path
I called a friend to talk to and the encouragement I got made me realise that I must keep on fighting
So I resumed my software development career and something 😲happened one day
I got an alert and it made me happy 😃
The alert was from Google Photos and it was an OTD picture. The picture was about a URL cutter ✂️⛓️ project I did during the early stages of learning development
I laughed and said I have come far.
So though you haven't crashed ®️ the jobs yet and you don't know what you are doing wrong 🤷 it is ok