How to Get A Job In Tech
"Competition Is Stupid, Collaboration Is Genius."
Introduction
In this blog post, We will be discussing about How Can You Grab Your Dream Job In Tech.
If you have been following us, You would know that we write and spread awareness about Open Source, Collaboration, Networking and much more.
In this blog post, Not only will be talking about them but also adding some more points to them and giving you a set of Action Items so you can get an extra level of clarity and perception about it.
Let's Get Started..
Learn in public
Share your learnings on Twitter
1. You started learning a new language - share your learnings on Twitter
2. You learnt a new concept - write a thread about it explaining it in the simplest possible way you can
3. You attended someone's Twitter Space on Development and Career - Take notes about it, Upload your notes on Twitter or Write a blog about it.
4. You can do challenges like #100DaysOfCode in which You consistently share your learnings on Twitter for 100 Days straight and some other challenges like this which can get you some following and networking
5. Have casual chats with people on Twitter.
One point to be noted here is follow and interact with those people who have "Proof Of Work and Credibility"
I know that initially it will take up lots of your time but it's totally worth it. Take out some time out of your day to write about something that you know explaining it to the people who know less than you, Be it Twitter threads or Blogs on Hashnode or Dev.to - In that way you give back to the community. See, Knowledge and Help always flows from someone who knows more - to someone who knows less, So How can you contribute? - by spreading knowledge to the people who are behind you or who know less than you. That's the way to grow!
Contribute to Open Source
Contributing to Projects can change your life for good
We have already written a Blog about it where we discuss -
1. Understanding Open Source
2. Why is contribution Important and why should you even care about it
You can check it out here
In this post let's talk about some Action Items and We will also be giving you a Golden Tip which you must stick to in order to take your Open Source Contributions to the next level.
How can you contribute / Add value?
Raise issue, Review some one else's pull request, Discuss about a new feature...
GOLDEN TIP: Come with the mindset of How can I add value?
Case Study
Let me give you a case study / example...
Suppose, you are a beginner and you want to contribute to projects, you are desperately searching for Beginner friendly issues to contribute but all the issues you find are just outside your current scope of knowledge and You found one issue which was very easy to do and beginner friendly, You went on GitHub and saw that the issue has been assigned to some one else
Now normally people get sad that "Oh I found this issue, I could easily contribute to it but it is assigned." You get frustrated.
But If you are a person with growth mindset you will always think "How to add value to others" - In this way you can probably go and see the conversation the assigned person was having with the project maintainer and if you See that some key point was missing in the discussion - You can just go and add to the conversation that - "You know what, You can do it in an even better way by adding these lines to your Code" Or Something like, "Hey seeing the discussion, I would like to add that, When solving the issue please remember these points...". You go about describing your experience of solving a similar issue and how not knowing a few things really troubled you and so on, so that that person doesn't commit the same mistakes and waste time as you did.
This is how you add value.
Conclusion
There is high probability that the Company in which you will be working in future will pick you up by seeing your contributions on GitHub and How you add value to other people and projects. GitHub is a social coding site, so putting your projects up and remaining active there can really be a game changer.
Remember: You can't just make a very big and massive contribution in Large-scale complex projects initially. It will take some time for you to get there.
Initially contribute to smaller projects and "Good First Issues", then as you acquire more knowledge and learn more Increase the complexity of your contributions.
Got Stuck!!?
There will be times when you get stuck, When you don't know why the error happened in your code and How do you fix that?
Don't hesitate in asking for help. One of the reasons you should join a tech community like EddieHub because the people there are Super supportive- You can just go and ask for help, share your Code and they would help you out. It is always better to have a new and fresh pair of eyes looking at your code, when you don't know what's really going on there.
There's one thing that needs to be cleared here is
Asking questions publicly on Discord channels or Twitter VS Asking questions Privately through DM's?
Answer: Ask Questions Publicly Always
Why should you ask your question publicly and avoid DM's?
1. If other people have same problem and some one answers your question then Hopefully their questions will also get answered.
2. If you ask a specific person through DM's, They may be busy and might not check their DMs or Just not care to answer your question considering their priorities
So always make a point of asking questions in public - Ask on Twitter - If you have a certain amount of followers there, may be you will get quick answers or the best way is to Join global tech communities and ask your questions their for a quick and reliable answer. Also, Not just ask your questions in the community but also give back to the community. For example: If you see someone has joined the community in which you are a part of and you know the answer to the Questions he/she is asking, you can guide him and that's what we mean by being Active on communities.
Just keep this simple thought of "How can I help or add value to it" and you will reach height because ~ It's Tech
Few More Tips!
1. Be passionate, Learn extensively and share your learnings
2. Not just sharing your learnings, You can take it one step further by Building in Public - Share about the projects that you build, How you built it, what resources you used to learn the tech stack, what problems you faced, How did you fix those problems. Share about your downfalls - not just highs but also lows.
3. Thinking about multiple ways of solving a problem is good but Don't just think, Start! Write your First piece of Code and then work on making it better and optimising it.
4. As a Beginner you are not supposed to be knowing much things, so when asked about a particular thing that you don't know, you should not become nervous and start panicking, You need to remember that as a beginner what other person knows, I may not know but you must be willing to learn. That's How you Ace your Job Interviews - You don't know everything, but you are willing to learn - This is what is needed.
Build this attitude of :
- Helping others - "How can I help or add value" and
- "I may not know this but I am willing to learn"
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