As of about 2:30 PM on Thursday, December 12... I have a job as a front-end/interface developer!
As I had mentioned in my previous post, I was able to spin my brief amount of training and lack of experience as a plus, because they were specifically looking for someone who they could train on a new platform--someone who was willing and able to learn quickly.
It's pretty crazy when I take a step back to look at it: with no programming experience, I wrote my first lines of markup about 10 weeks ago. I wrote my first lines of JavaScript maybe about 6 weeks ago. But I was able to point to what I had learned and built in the course of a grand total of about 8 weeks' time, and use it as evidence that I'm able to pick up something new very quickly, and motivated to do so... and that was good enough for my new employers. So now... I'm a developer. A month short of my 40th birthday, I've successfully switched career tracks in the span of about 2 months' time. I have no illusions as to how lucky this was... but it's been a bad-luck kind of year for the most part, so it feels really good to finally have something break my way again!
Thursday, December 12, 2013
Tuesday, December 3, 2013
Floundering About
With the holiday season firmly upon us, I feel like I'm drifting a bit in terms of my training, self-directed learning, and career switch efforts. I have begun applying for entry-level developer jobs, but of course I don't expect much in the way of success at this point--I really need to build my skill set and portfolio a bit more. If nothing else, recruiters will probably be turned off when they learn that my level of experience with any given skill is roughly 2-2.5 months! I suppose my best strategy there is to try to spin it into "look at how fast I can learn new things--I did all this in only 6-8 weeks!"
Still, it will be an uphill climb for a low-end job, and the holiday slowdown will make it worse--but at this point I have no reason not to apply to anything that seems like I might have some chance of being able to do. After all, the worst-case scenario is that I spend some time in an interview and don't get the job--hardly the end of the world.
I did just have a phone interview earlier this morning. The recruiter admitted that I might not have enough experience for the role... but it sounds like a lot of it would be on-the-job training with a proprietary tool set anyway, so learning ability is more important than current skills. Again, hopefully I can turn my current state into a plus in that regard, by demonstrating the speed with which I can learn and improve.
Still, it will be an uphill climb for a low-end job, and the holiday slowdown will make it worse--but at this point I have no reason not to apply to anything that seems like I might have some chance of being able to do. After all, the worst-case scenario is that I spend some time in an interview and don't get the job--hardly the end of the world.
I did just have a phone interview earlier this morning. The recruiter admitted that I might not have enough experience for the role... but it sounds like a lot of it would be on-the-job training with a proprietary tool set anyway, so learning ability is more important than current skills. Again, hopefully I can turn my current state into a plus in that regard, by demonstrating the speed with which I can learn and improve.
Wednesday, November 20, 2013
H_Daily demo
Just a brief post today: I added the demo page that I made for Startup Weekend to my portfolio page. I've also added a much bigger site that I've built for my D&D gaming group.
I also had breakfast with a few potential employers this morning at the Grand Circus offices. My mentor assures me that I could get a front-end development job with the skills I have right now, but the pay would be pretty low--about half of what I used to make as a tech writer. If I can learn some back-end programming and thus be capable of full-range web development, that would be worth about twice as much--so, roughly what I was earning as a writer, and probably a little more.
Got some thinkin' to do... do I work (very) cheap for the sake of faster professional development, or try to get another tech writing job for the sake of income while I continue to learn and improve my dev skills in my spare time? No easy answer....
I also had breakfast with a few potential employers this morning at the Grand Circus offices. My mentor assures me that I could get a front-end development job with the skills I have right now, but the pay would be pretty low--about half of what I used to make as a tech writer. If I can learn some back-end programming and thus be capable of full-range web development, that would be worth about twice as much--so, roughly what I was earning as a writer, and probably a little more.
Got some thinkin' to do... do I work (very) cheap for the sake of faster professional development, or try to get another tech writing job for the sake of income while I continue to learn and improve my dev skills in my spare time? No easy answer....
Tuesday, November 19, 2013
Grand Circus
I've mentioned GC before in reference to Startup Weekend, but it's worth stating a little more, since GC is where I've actually learned all of the development that I know at this point.
Grand Circus is a training and development organization located in the heart of Detroit, with a mission to train people for jobs in the new economy--and an ulterior motive of revitalizing the Detroit workforce, and the city itself, in the process. It was started either by, or with backing from, many of the local giants of the tech industry--CompuWare, Quicken Loans, and others.
I've been taking a 10-week course on developing web pages--I wrote my first line of markup roughly 7 weeks ago, so everything that you can see in my portfolio (and hopefully not point and laugh at) has been learned from this one class. Tomorrow morning I have a breakfast event at GC to meet and network with many local potential employers. That's one of the great things about Grand Circus: in addition to teaching, they also find you a mentor (mine was a lead developer at Microsoft for 9 years!) and give you opportunities to meet local entrepreneurs and employers. You won't find much of that kind of thing at a community college!
If you're interested in learning to code--not just web sites, but iOS, android, Ruby, and more--or just want to find out what the life of a developer or small-business entrepreneur is like, give them a look at http://grandcircus.co/
Grand Circus is a training and development organization located in the heart of Detroit, with a mission to train people for jobs in the new economy--and an ulterior motive of revitalizing the Detroit workforce, and the city itself, in the process. It was started either by, or with backing from, many of the local giants of the tech industry--CompuWare, Quicken Loans, and others.
I've been taking a 10-week course on developing web pages--I wrote my first line of markup roughly 7 weeks ago, so everything that you can see in my portfolio (and hopefully not point and laugh at) has been learned from this one class. Tomorrow morning I have a breakfast event at GC to meet and network with many local potential employers. That's one of the great things about Grand Circus: in addition to teaching, they also find you a mentor (mine was a lead developer at Microsoft for 9 years!) and give you opportunities to meet local entrepreneurs and employers. You won't find much of that kind of thing at a community college!
If you're interested in learning to code--not just web sites, but iOS, android, Ruby, and more--or just want to find out what the life of a developer or small-business entrepreneur is like, give them a look at http://grandcircus.co/
Monday, November 18, 2013
The Morning After
Detroit Startup Weekend finished up around 8:30 last night--about 50 hours after it began--with 5-minute pitches from 14 different teams (news flash: mine didn't win. ;-) It was pretty amazing to see what people could create in such a short time; roughly 80 people in one giant room, pouring out skill and creativity to create workable demos and presentations of products that literally did not exist in any form 2 days earlier. In fact, the actual development time was probably closer to 36 hours.
All in all, a very interesting experience, and one that I'm glad to have been part of... but it makes for a long, tiring weekend (for both me and my wife, who had to be a single mom for the duration) and I can't say I'm rarin' to do it again anytime very soon. Definitely an experience worth having, though, and anyone remotely interested should give it a go. Startup weekends are happening all around the world, so if you're curious check out Startupweekend.org.
All in all, a very interesting experience, and one that I'm glad to have been part of... but it makes for a long, tiring weekend (for both me and my wife, who had to be a single mom for the duration) and I can't say I'm rarin' to do it again anytime very soon. Definitely an experience worth having, though, and anyone remotely interested should give it a go. Startup weekends are happening all around the world, so if you're curious check out Startupweekend.org.
Sunday, November 17, 2013
Startup Weekend 5
Posting now from the 4th floor of Broderick Tower in Detroit, where Grand Circus is hosting Startup Weekend 5.
The premise behind Startup weekend is to get a whole bunch of people with ideas for startup companies or products--or people interesting in helping such a person--together for the entire weekend. Everyone has the opportunity to make a 60-second pitch for their idea, after which everyone mixes around and talks about the ideas. Each attendee can vote for up to 3 startup ideas, and several of the most popular ones get approval to move forward. Everyone breaks into teams--one for each idea that advanced. That's Friday night.
After that, it's a mad rush of development, market research, and creative brainstorming and content creation, with the goal of producing a "minimum viable product" before Sunday evening. In short, a group of about 5 people try to make a baseline, but usable and/or promising, product in less than 48 hours (the entire event is 54 hours long from start to finish.) On the final afternoon/evening, teams do a 5-minute pitch for a panel of judges, answer some questions, and wait for the votes. Winning teams get donated prize/resources (like a $100 credit for Amazon Web Services) and the top product gets free office space for a year, plus is entered to compete against other top teams worldwide, with some significant venture capital for the worldwide winner.
Needless to say, making a product in 2.5 days is a big task. I'm here as a front-end web developer, and inadvertently ended up as the lone developer on my team!
Now, keep in mind that I have yet to finish my first development class. I wrote my first line of HTML about 7 weeks ago. I was expecting to be an assistant, not an entire dev team.
In a perverse way, this actually worked out in my group's favor: since our technical abilities were limited, we didn't get too ambitious--from the start we knew that we couldn't produce a fully-functional product (I know nothing about back-end development yet--I'm going to start trying to learn Ruby on Rails in the next week or so). Instead, we focused on making a demo of what the product would look like. That took me most of the day on Saturday.
Now, on Sunday around noon, we're one of 2 teams with our tech finished. Other teams who were more ambitious are still scrambling and stressing out, but today's been fairly relaxed for us. I've been basically screwing around on my own unrelated web development all morning.
Startup Weekend is a heck of an experience--a powerful mix of creativity, knowledge, sweat, stress, sleep deprivation, and lots and lots of caffeine. If you're even a little bit interested, check it out--it's not free, but it's not expensive either, and it's a pretty unique experience.
The premise behind Startup weekend is to get a whole bunch of people with ideas for startup companies or products--or people interesting in helping such a person--together for the entire weekend. Everyone has the opportunity to make a 60-second pitch for their idea, after which everyone mixes around and talks about the ideas. Each attendee can vote for up to 3 startup ideas, and several of the most popular ones get approval to move forward. Everyone breaks into teams--one for each idea that advanced. That's Friday night.
After that, it's a mad rush of development, market research, and creative brainstorming and content creation, with the goal of producing a "minimum viable product" before Sunday evening. In short, a group of about 5 people try to make a baseline, but usable and/or promising, product in less than 48 hours (the entire event is 54 hours long from start to finish.) On the final afternoon/evening, teams do a 5-minute pitch for a panel of judges, answer some questions, and wait for the votes. Winning teams get donated prize/resources (like a $100 credit for Amazon Web Services) and the top product gets free office space for a year, plus is entered to compete against other top teams worldwide, with some significant venture capital for the worldwide winner.
Needless to say, making a product in 2.5 days is a big task. I'm here as a front-end web developer, and inadvertently ended up as the lone developer on my team!
Now, keep in mind that I have yet to finish my first development class. I wrote my first line of HTML about 7 weeks ago. I was expecting to be an assistant, not an entire dev team.
In a perverse way, this actually worked out in my group's favor: since our technical abilities were limited, we didn't get too ambitious--from the start we knew that we couldn't produce a fully-functional product (I know nothing about back-end development yet--I'm going to start trying to learn Ruby on Rails in the next week or so). Instead, we focused on making a demo of what the product would look like. That took me most of the day on Saturday.
Now, on Sunday around noon, we're one of 2 teams with our tech finished. Other teams who were more ambitious are still scrambling and stressing out, but today's been fairly relaxed for us. I've been basically screwing around on my own unrelated web development all morning.
Startup Weekend is a heck of an experience--a powerful mix of creativity, knowledge, sweat, stress, sleep deprivation, and lots and lots of caffeine. If you're even a little bit interested, check it out--it's not free, but it's not expensive either, and it's a pretty unique experience.
Changing Tracks
I came out of college with an English degree.
Hey, stop laughing! I was also pre-med--I took the MCAT, started interviewing at medical schools... and then decided I didn't really want to be a doctor after all. Sure, money and prestige are great--but medicine is extremely demanding in terms of hours, ongoing education to keep up with advancements in drugs/tools/techniques, and so on. I wanted a job where my kids would call me "dad", not "mister Deacon."
Of course, with an English degree, my options were limited. Still, a friend got me into a contract job as a technical writer, and that led to another contract, and that led to a 5-1/2 year position doing documentation for a software company... which led to another, 8-year position with a different one.
Then I found myself out of work. And the market had changed. Despite having 15 years of practical experience in the field, jobs were few and far between and competition was fierce. In addition, the profession seemed to have changed--no longer were we writers; rather, we had become data-entry and formatting editors. It's become very hard to find a technical writing position in which I could actually make something, even as a first-draft; instead, it seems that employers largely expect the writer to simply take a draft from a Subject Matter Expert, and treat it as sacrosanct.
I decided it was time to retrain. I had just turned 39.
Not exactly the traditional midlife crisis, I know, but I already had the convertible and I'm blissfully happy with my wife and daughter--my career was really the only unsatisfactory aspect of my life. But what could I do? I wasn't really qualified for anything other than writing, and had no training in other writing forms like marketing or proposals. Whatever I did, it would be starting from scratch--and that was, quite frankly, terrifying.
Luckily my wife was still employed, with solid benefits, and though she didn't make quite enough to cover our monthly costs, we had a good bit of a safety net saved up. I needed to make a change, and we were in a position to make it feasible... as long as I had the guts to start over from scratch in a completely new area!
Hey, stop laughing! I was also pre-med--I took the MCAT, started interviewing at medical schools... and then decided I didn't really want to be a doctor after all. Sure, money and prestige are great--but medicine is extremely demanding in terms of hours, ongoing education to keep up with advancements in drugs/tools/techniques, and so on. I wanted a job where my kids would call me "dad", not "mister Deacon."
Of course, with an English degree, my options were limited. Still, a friend got me into a contract job as a technical writer, and that led to another contract, and that led to a 5-1/2 year position doing documentation for a software company... which led to another, 8-year position with a different one.
Then I found myself out of work. And the market had changed. Despite having 15 years of practical experience in the field, jobs were few and far between and competition was fierce. In addition, the profession seemed to have changed--no longer were we writers; rather, we had become data-entry and formatting editors. It's become very hard to find a technical writing position in which I could actually make something, even as a first-draft; instead, it seems that employers largely expect the writer to simply take a draft from a Subject Matter Expert, and treat it as sacrosanct.
I decided it was time to retrain. I had just turned 39.
Not exactly the traditional midlife crisis, I know, but I already had the convertible and I'm blissfully happy with my wife and daughter--my career was really the only unsatisfactory aspect of my life. But what could I do? I wasn't really qualified for anything other than writing, and had no training in other writing forms like marketing or proposals. Whatever I did, it would be starting from scratch--and that was, quite frankly, terrifying.
Luckily my wife was still employed, with solid benefits, and though she didn't make quite enough to cover our monthly costs, we had a good bit of a safety net saved up. I needed to make a change, and we were in a position to make it feasible... as long as I had the guts to start over from scratch in a completely new area!
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