Ask HN: Non-CS Hackers, How Did You Land Your First (dev) Job? Being a self-taught web developer, I find it difficult and irrelevant to crack Big O and Stack&Heap interview questions. For those who don't have a CS background, what's your story on landing the first job? |
That out of the way, don't give up. There are lots of positions out there, and many people are hiring. Keep on trying and don't give up. Careerbuilder and other websites can help a good bit in terms of getting your name out there. Recruiters on there and other resume places have helped me find other jobs, and I am currently at a solid company with good pay. Passion helps a ton, I've found. Find something to be passionate about, both in the tech field and outside the tech field.
But just to touch one more thing - the concepts you are struggling with take practice. I had to teach myself most CS concepts, and a lot of it involved going to MIT's site or going to Harvard's site and grinding them out. I spent many many hours on YouTube and elsewhere just trying to understand the concepts and, most importantly, writing software utilizing these concepts. I still regularly quiz myself once a month on some random interview question, such as how to write a DFS or BFS from scratch, how to reverse a binary tree, or how to implement something like Dijkstra's from scratch without looking anything up. If I find myself needing to look stuff up, I make a mental note on the concept(s) I'm rusty on and do a few more exercises pertaining to the concept. If I find the stuff easy, I make sure not to review it for quite awhile (utilizing Anki is a great way to do this, by the way).
BTW, I have a BA Humanities :)
For the actual CS bits, I've been teaching myself. I recently got an article published in Hacker Noon on Big O which was a way for me to consolidate my learning. Algorithms and Data Structures are next!