Up next in 10
FAANG Software Engineer Job in 3 Months Self-taught_
26K views
Feb 6, 2024
The video "FAANG Software Engineer Job in 3 Months Self-taught" likely chronicles the journey of an individual who successfully landed a software engineering position at one of the prestigious FAANG companies (Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix, Google) within a short span of three months, despite being self-taught. It may detail the steps, strategies, and resources used by the individual to acquire the necessary skills and knowledge for the role, such as online courses, coding bootcamps, self-study, and practical projects. Additionally, the video might offer insights into the interview process, including technical assessments, coding challenges, and behavioral interviews, as well as tips for standing out as a self-taught candidate. Ultimately, the video serves as inspiration and guidance for aspiring software engineers who are pursuing similar career paths without a traditional education background in computer science.
View Video Transcript
0:00
How can I learn to code and get a bang job in a couple of months
0:03
What do you think of my goal to learn front end development and get a high paying job in six months or less
0:08
Or is it possible for me to learn to code and get a good job in three months
0:12
What are your thoughts on those questions? Because those are some of the questions that I get asked all the time
0:17
So in this video, I want to address some of those questions and share my thoughts
0:21
on this whole process, because I think a lot of people are just so caught up in
0:26
seeing some of the results of people who claim to have like gone from nothing to
0:30
being a software engineer in a super short time and end up at a fan company or
0:34
other large company making tons of money. And that can really set some unrealistic expectations
0:40
The first thing that I really want to focus on here is that no matter what learning to become a programmer, to do software development is going to be hard
0:49
It's going to take a lot of time. People spend years working on a computer science degree
0:54
And if you decide that you don't want to go that route and you're going to go the self-taught route, or even if you decide to go through boot camps, you're still
1:01
going to have to put in that time to learn how to be a good software engineer
1:06
how to write good code. There's just no getting around it. You cannot skip putting in the time and putting in the effort to become really good
1:14
It's super easy for us to hear those stories of like the software engineers
1:18
who are making a ton of money straight out of school or as a self-taught engineer
1:22
who lands this amazing job and think that that's going to apply to us
1:27
I know that I was guilty of that. And it's true that right now I am making a lot of money at a large software
1:33
company, and it is very much possible to go from being self-taught to making
1:37
$200,000 a year or more depending on where you live. But that just doesn't typically happen overnight
1:45
Perhaps one of the biggest flaws with these questions that people keep asking
1:49
is that how fast you learn is 100% dependent on you. Are you a quick learner
1:55
How much quality time can you actually dedicate to learning on a regular basis
2:00
Are you effective at picking the most important things to learn and being able
2:04
to be strategic, or do you just kind of wander around, get lost in stuff, go
2:08
around in circles, asking a programmer or a YouTuber or some other person, how
2:13
long it's going to take for you to learn how to code and be successful is
2:16
completely pointless. It is impossible for anyone to answer those questions. Everyone's different
2:22
So we just can't compare ourselves to others. And there's just no way for me or anyone else to know how long it is going to
2:27
take for someone else to learn and get a job. So I'd personally be skeptical of anyone who tries to give an answer to that
2:33
question that is anything other than it totally depends on you. I mean, I could share lessons that I've learned in the hopes that it helps other
2:40
people shorten their time to success. But what worked for me may not be best for everyone
2:45
And it doesn't mean that you have to do everything that I've done. Just take the things that you think will be most useful for you and incorporate
2:53
that if you think that it's going to be more beneficial than some of the other options that you're looking at
2:58
But really you need to be focused on you and what interests you
3:01
Here's something I want to be really clear on. And that is that no matter what career path you choose, there are two
3:07
huge factors that come into play. The first is going to be your skills
3:11
Do you have enough skills to actually get high paying job and
3:16
be put in charge of projects? If not, then you may need to spend more time and effort learning and building
3:22
things so that you can get there. Companies are only going to pay you a lot of money if they think that you have the
3:27
ability to make them a much larger amount of money. And I would argue that for most of us, the prerequisite to the second factor
3:34
that we're going to talk about in a second is having those skills so that we
3:38
are ready to pounce on an opportunity without having skills. Some managers just probably won't even point the scepter of luck our way
3:48
That second factor is luck. For example, at my last job, I was in the right place at the right time to be asked
3:55
to lead the starting up a new project from the ground up that was going to
4:00
have a lot of high visibility. I was offered this opportunity because I had the ability to succeed, but I was
4:07
lucky because other experienced devs were tied up on other projects. I was lucky because another dev threw my name out as a possibility, and I was
4:16
lucky that my manager approached me first. The same goes for skills
4:20
I could have all the skills needed for a position and end up with an interviewer
4:24
who just asks a couple of questions that I just don't have a quick answer for, and I lose that offer
4:29
Or I could have a cold during the interview and just not be thinking clearly, and I could show up to an interview and they already decided to
4:36
give that job to the person they had interviewed right before me. That would be unlucky
4:41
In contrast, I could get tipped off to a job opportunity before it
4:45
hits any of the job boards, or I could get an interview before even filling out an application
4:50
An interviewer could end up asking me all the right questions that aligned perfectly with my specialization
4:56
I could look out and the person that the company really wants to hire ends up
5:01
asking too much money or takes a different offer, and so they decided to
5:04
come to me and give me that offer as a backup. I can't control all of that
5:09
What I can control is how much effort I put into being able to pounce on that opportunity
5:14
I can do things to improve the odds of getting lucky, but I can't completely remove luck
5:19
I can't control other people's agency, but I can put my best foot forward
5:24
I can let managers know that I'm interested in more opportunities to grow
5:27
and I can ask for opportunities and be a squeaky wheel. I can choose to engage in meetings with other devs rather than just sitting
5:34
quietly in the corner going unnoticed, but this all takes time. And the time that it took for me to go from no code to where I am is
5:41
my software development journey. Yours could be totally faster than mine, or it could be slower
5:47
but that's going to be your journey. So you need to make the most of your journey and just stop comparing
5:51
your journey to other people's. You need to find happiness in the progress that you're making
5:57
Did I go from a complete noob to making that kind of salary in three months or in six months
6:02
Nope. The honest truth is that most of us won't. It took me years to get there
6:06
And here's a quick recap of that progression. From the time that I started learning software development to where I felt
6:13
confident in my ability to actually learn and figure things out was about nine
6:17
months, and that's with me spending most days, every night, a couple hours a
6:21
night, really focused on trying to learn how to code, to build things, trying to
6:27
be strategic and like with the stuff that I was learning and where I was putting
6:30
my focus, focusing on learning popular frameworks to put me in the
6:34
best position to get a job. I then utilize those skills and really worked on finding ways to implement
6:41
those skills and do things for the current employer I had at the time and
6:45
proving that I could actually deliver more value doing that stuff than doing my other job
6:51
It's true. That's a little bit of an unfair advantage when it comes to trying to just find
6:55
straight up a first software job after you've been learning to code
7:00
But I'd venture to say that a lot of people out there have this opportunity
7:04
If you're to look for it at your current company, that's where I would start is
7:08
looking for ways to utilize what you are learning to do things, even if they
7:13
aren't asking for, I had to do some work in the evenings just to build out some
7:18
stuff so that I could prove what I could do, because no one was going to just say
7:22
yeah, go ahead, do whatever you want and stuff. I had to show that I was going to be able to deliver value, but that was only
7:28
going to get me so far. I had ambitions. I wanted to be a software engineer, working at a larger tech company
7:34
working on larger applications. So I ended up making a move to an enterprise company
7:39
And that was kind of my true experience jumping into full-time software
7:45
development at a company that actually has lots of systems in place, lots of
7:49
tooling that you would encounter at a lot of software jobs, you know, having
7:52
to work with, you know, big systems, lots of data, bigger projects, having
7:58
bigger problems, working with other teams and having to really worry about
8:02
get repos and all of that process. You know, at the time I was ecstatic for, you know, how much I was making
8:09
even though I was contracted, I didn't really get health benefits. I didn't get PTO unless I decided to basically lose out on actual income
8:18
because I was paid on an hourly basis, but it was my break in to the industry
8:23
And after spending some time there, I ended up moving to another company where
8:27
I was going to be doing a lot more software engineering, building
8:31
applications, having opportunity to grow and develop my skills. And I was at this company for a couple of years, which was great
8:37
because I got a good pay bump. And I was giving more opportunities to learn and more leadership opportunities
8:43
And, and I was able to work with other technologies, different frameworks
8:48
and start to really spread out like my knowledge in my area of specialization
8:53
It was only after working at those companies for several years before I finally lucked out and got a position at a larger tech company
9:01
I mean, I had applied at them before and I'd had some phone interviews that just didn't pan out, but it took me years to get from self-taught to where
9:10
I was working at large tech company. And I had good sizable raises as I switched jobs and my salary went up at a good pace
9:19
but I definitely did not go from being self-taught to $200,000 a year right away
9:26
In this video, I go into more details on my journey and the salaries that I made along the way
9:30
Thanks for watching and I'll see you in the next one. Lates
#Career Resources & Planning
#Computer Education
#Jobs
#Programming