My advice for new developers

So, you just graduated from school or a coding bootcamp. Now what? How do you find your first job? How do you determine what to charge an hour? How do you stand out? So many questions! Luckily, this article will help you by guiding you in the correct path to becoming an outstanding developer that has a lot of offers. Best of all, its going to be real short because its not complicated. At all :).

How to find your first job?

Finding your first job out of school or out of a coding bootcamp may seem intimidating and just plain impossible. I know, I went through it, I applied to over 800 jobs before I landed my first job as a developer. In applying for all those jobs, I found something very interesting, if I would apply for junior developer jobs, no one would take me seriously but when I applied to regular developer jobs I would get a call back. This made me realize that (most) companies don't want people who they think are junior, they want people who can actually get the job done. So, don't apply to junior developer jobs, because chances are that you will not get a job in the industry as fast as you would, if you just apply to a regular developer job.

What is the difference between a junior developer and a regular developer?

The difference between junior developers and regular developers is what they get paid. A lot of people (most who, I bet, aren't developers) will argue that experience is difference, but it isn't. The reason is because information is available to everyone, if you don't know how to subscribe to an observable in Angular, for example, you can easily Google it and find the answer. Both a junior and regular developer have the power to Google things, so get your money and apply to a regular non-junior level job.

How do you determine what to charge an hour?

When asked how much money you want to make, never answer the question directly. Always say something along the lines of "Well company X pays X amount for this position so based on this data, I think X+ is appropriate for this position." Be ruthless in your negotiation, you are the hot commodity everyone wants. Play the cards to your advantage. Be ballsy about what you want. Never split the difference. Recruiters and companies make money out of you, so you have to also make money!

How do you stand out?

Learn how to market yourself, add recruiters to your LinkedIn, write articles, write posts, go on Stackoverflow and answer questions, make courses online, on Youtube, anything. Be different and unique about how you stand out. Teach kids how to code, do things on purpose. Success will not come to you, you have to go out and look for it.

Thanks for reading this and hope it helped!