Getting into the tech scene when you have no skills
josephwalla.com
Getting into the tech scene when you have no skills
1–10 of 52 posts
Re: Getting into the tech scene when you have no skills
#2I would add understanding of social media too. It has become a must since past few years to have a substantial online presence. Personal branding is something that will take you a long way ahead. You can crash parties only once in a while, but in social media space, you can have real-time one-on-one interactions with almost anybody anytime!
Re: Getting into the tech scene when you have no skills
#3I've always been wary of the online programming sites like codecademy and the like, because when I did Rails for Zombies I realized it never shows you how to set up an actual Rails application nor how Git and Heroku work. Are all the tutorials similar in that they baby you?
Re: Getting into the tech scene when you have no skills
#4"Do work for free" is the worst suggestion I've heard in a long time. Your time is valuable; it should be to you and it should be to the person you are working for. Even if you aren't getting a monetary remuneration for your services there should be some kind of compensation, and you should be clear – at least in your head – what it is. Never – ever –work for free. It may seem like a good idea but its not.
Re: Getting into the tech scene when you have no skills
#5"Do work for free" is the worst suggestion I've heard in a long time. Your time is valuable; it should be to you and it should be to the person you are working for. Even if you aren't getting a monetary remuneration for your services there should be some kind of compensation, and you should be clear – at least in your head – what it is. Never – ever –work for free. It may seem like a good idea but its not.
> The problem with having no skills or track record is that it's not worth paying you
Required experience for paid work is a fact of life. If you don't have the skills to work for pay in a certain area you work for free. You can do that by putting in the time on your own side projects or you can accomplish it some other way. Like doing free work in exchange for experience.
Re: Getting into the tech scene when you have no skills
#6I've always been wary of the online programming sites like codecademy and the like, because when I did Rails for Zombies I realized it never shows you how to set up an actual Rails application nor how Git and Heroku work. Are all the tutorials similar in that they baby you?
Yes they are.
I had a couple friends who wanted to learn JavaScript and went to CodeAcademy's course[1] only to find it was more like Programming 101. Not a single mention of what is a closure, how you can modularize your code, how prototypes actually work, etc.
Re: Getting into the tech scene when you have no skills
#7"Do work for free" is the worst suggestion I've heard in a long time. Your time is valuable; it should be to you and it should be to the person you are working for. Even if you aren't getting a monetary remuneration for your services there should be some kind of compensation, and you should be clear – at least in your head – what it is. Never – ever –work for free. It may seem like a good idea but its not.
If you're not planning to have monetary return from a project, it's almost always better to work on a personal side project than for someone else.
Your enjoyment of the project will be higher, you have more control over scope and tech stack and you can choose to solve an interesting problem within your ability.
In short, think it as marketing material development for yourself, which will be way more effective at getting future work than some free work you can get.
Re: Getting into the tech scene when you have no skills
#8"Do work for free" is the worst suggestion I've heard in a long time. Your time is valuable; it should be to you and it should be to the person you are working for. Even if you aren't getting a monetary remuneration for your services there should be some kind of compensation, and you should be clear – at least in your head – what it is. Never – ever –work for free. It may seem like a good idea but its not.
> The problem with having no skills or track record is that it's not worth paying you Required experience for paid work is a fact of life. If you don't have the skills to work for pay in a certain area you work for free. You can do that by putting in the time on your own side projects or you can accomplish it some other way. Like doing free work in exchange for experience.
That's not for free. Doing work for free means "I will do this for you and get nothing in return." All I'm saying is don't run around willy-nilly doing work for free, thinking that will somehow magically lead to success; be cognizant of what you will actually get in return. And I'm not saying that money is the only type of payment, not at all.
Re: Getting into the tech scene when you have no skills
#9I've always been wary of the online programming sites like codecademy and the like, because when I did Rails for Zombies I realized it never shows you how to set up an actual Rails application nor how Git and Heroku work. Are all the tutorials similar in that they baby you?
They're a kick off point I've found, they teach a man how fishing could work, and point off from there. They're great for picking some nice basics and then the expectation is you'll head off and learn from there. It's not a great end to end solution though. I'd say the Rails tutorial by Hartl is the best for the end to end coverage, but often they never seem to go that far.
Re: Getting into the tech scene when you have no skills
#10I've always been wary of the online programming sites like codecademy and the like, because when I did Rails for Zombies I realized it never shows you how to set up an actual Rails application nor how Git and Heroku work. Are all the tutorials similar in that they baby you?
My experience is that those sites are best used understanding the languages themselves. There are other tutorials (like Michael Hartl's Rails tutorial) that walk through building an application from scratch while learning the language (or at least the framework.)
I think some of these sites can do a much better job when it comes learning how to create projects, but I don't necessarily think that is what they were targeting originally.