How to get a job in Start Up industry?

A couple weeks ago I have a little chat with a friend of mine. So he high school graduate student and then have experience teaching English at some boarding school but he also interested to become programmer.

He ask me like this How to enter this tech job world?. I think this is interesting question. To answer this question we need to talk about my story first.

So back in 2014 when I first decide to go all in to this industry, actually i don't have any concern like how to get a job in this industry. What I do it just learning day after day, and then along with it I found myself get involved with the community in this world. Spend most of my time learning and active to join community event, share what I learn and then I get the job and everything seem easy.

As I look back to my journey I think it's quite easy at first and then getting harder and harder overtime. So now let me try to answer that question with telling you what you can do about it.

Preparing your Skill

The first thing you need is to prepare the skills. This is included what are the things that you like the most in this tech world. Because there so many field in tech industry. But this time we will focus on technical stuff which is the programming field.

So there are at least three field you can start if you are new in this industry.

1. Web Developer
2. Mobile Developer

This field also have they own sub field again.

Web Developer

If you want to start to learn the field and need to get a job as soon as possible you will need to choose this.

1. Backend Engineer

If you don't like to work on user interface if web development this field is the best thing you can choose. As Backend developer you will working on the system of the application that you build, what you need to focus is learn about the database and API development using Rest or GraphQL. The opportunity in this field actually quite promising because the demand is big. In fact I'm in this field right now.

2. Frontend Engineer

If you don't want to be dizzy to think about the system and prefer to build beautiful user interface but doesn't want to working with design tool this field is the perfect field for you. Becoming frontend developer or sometime people say FE dev it's also in high demand as well.

3. DevOps Engineer

If you don't want to build a system and then don't like to create user interface you can choose other field which is a DevOps. This is field is not as high demand as Frontend or Backend dev but most of the startup will need the devops guy on their team. The responsibility of the devops person is to help the backend and frontend dev to ship their work to the world. You will be managing server, you will make sure that no body stealing your company data and the web still up and running even if the developer is writing a bug in their code.

Mobile Developer

I myself actually start entering the career as programmer from Mobile Developer.

1. Android Developer As you can see everyone use their mobile phone to do anything right now every company will present their service on mobile apps and especially on android mobile phone. This position is not as high demand as Backend or Frontend dev but it's also a good start if you want to entering this career. But if you want to start to learn android development you will need to prepare a computer with quite a high spec at least you have i7 core and 8GB of RAM.

2. iOS Developer

A friend of mine that working as iOS developer told me that it's hard to find iOS developer this time, so if you just have maybe 3 months experience to work on iOS dev it will be easy to get a job. But you will also need to have macbook and IPhone to start learning iOS development.

Learn in Public

So you have choose you field and then start learning. So if you goal is to get a job and you didn't go to university like me you can start to learn in public. We use social media a lot this time and you can use social media to share what you have been learn with your friend. Beside that you will need to make a friend with the people that working in this industry as well. Because if you can present good progress of your learning this people will be offering you a job opportunity.

In fact my first job is coming from social media. You can use any social media, but as for me I use facebook at that time, but it will be good for you if you use other social media like twitter, tiktok, instagram etc.

The point is to show yourself to the world what you can do. Even better if you write a blog post about the topic that you are studying. In fact I have got a job offer because of my blog post. Writing a blog is helping you to understand about topic that you learn because you need to explain it again. Sometime you will need to do some research when you are writing your blog post.

And the most important thing to remember is consistency is everything. Don't you ever stop to learn, even if you got a job already there are more things you need to learn, and that what I have been doing until now.

Join Community

Learning to code is really hard, sometime or most of the time you will get error all the time. Sometime you will feel everything you do to fix that error it's just didn't work. If you come in this situation you will need to have someone around you someone you can ask for help, or someone to hangout.

There is so many benefit to have a community you can get a job opportunity from community you can hangout with them you can ask for help and you will not lonely. In fact if I didn't join a community i don't think I can survive until now.

So how you can find a community? Actually you can find it just from the internet, facebook is one of the biggest place to find community, you can start by searching a programming group. Or you can also join a bootcamp, or online course and hanging out to some social media like youtube, twitter, tiktok, whatsapp, telegram etc.

Be active in the community help someone if you have the knowledge, or raise a question if you have interesting topic share a useful article or your own blog post, contribute to community event and anything is valuable to the community.

You also can start a business from the community.

Portfolio

If you learn something you need to learn to build something out of it. Software engineering is not a science it's and art. So need to learn to craft the code you write, the application you build. Some time when you build some project you will learn more than if you just read a book and write some a little code.

You have to try to build complete application, make it actually usable. Your project could be making money. So in the industry this skill of crafting the art of software engineering will be much - much needed rather that just the technical knowledge.

If you don't have any experience to work at some company you will need this portfolio that you can show to the hiring department when you apply for a job.

Searching for a Job

The adventure of searching a job is not easy. But if you need it you must find it. There are a lot of place to find a job board this time. You can use linkedin, social media or just google it. When you applying for a job the possibility of being rejected is very high especially if you still a beginner.

And you need to prepare yourself of being rejected. Because sometime when you learn something you don't know what the industry need, what skills is required at the job. So if you get rejected it's okay that mean you can learn what makes you can not get that job.

So in this phase here is what you need to do. Apply for a job -> if rejected -> learn again -> and then search again -> and repeat. Do this until you get the job, believe me you will made it if you not give up.

One thing that I think it changes me a lot, you need to have story, you need to have something unique about you, you need to show you achievement or you doesn't have it yet make an achievement. Create something that you can show that you are worthy.