Hi, I’m Currently working in a international company and my role is a Software Tester, I’ve been with this company for 7 months now. Right now I’m not actually enjoying my work, I really want a developer role, I’ve asked my Team Lead if the project could allow me to transfer into a developer role and He told me that I have a very minimal chance of getting it and there is this guy who is working as a tester and also want to be transferred into a developer role, so chances are that this guy will be the first in the line with this kind of changes and He has been around 2yrs in the project. My question is what move should I make so that I can land a developer role?
But first here is my exprience in programming:
Very little programming experience as my course was Electronics Engineering, I’ve done some programming in arduino and it was just very basic. I’m familiar with Loops, Condition statements and that kind of stuffs.
I’m currently learning JAVA right now, but I’m still getting myself used to into the basics.
Here is what I’m planning to do, and looking for some opinion/advices:
Quit my Job, and find a school and take some short courses (maybe 6-12months?) so that I can have more experience in programming and maybe network some programming people.
Quit my Job and start learning with my own.
I will not quit my Job but instead I’ll code during my free time at home (I only have 1hr free time at home, 2 hrs If I don’t render a overtime), I don’t know if I can be efficient with this method
It can be difficult to get into a job as a developer if you don’t have decent experience, and quite a bit more knowlege than you apparently have at the moment. For this reason, unless you have loads of money, I would advise against quitting your job without another to go to.
The only way you can really get a good grounding is by reading and practicing. And at least for me, this works best doing it at your own pace in free time. You will at least need to know:
The importance of documentation, simple self descriptive codeing, and following a code style guide if your company has one.
Don’t let that put you off though, it will take a long time to get good at it, but if you keep at it you will get there. Like any art it takes a lot of practice.
1-2 hours a day equates to 120-240 hours in 6 months (not including weekends) of active, motivation driven learning. That’s way more than what you would get in a classroom in the same time frame. I don’t know about JAVA, but for general web development that’s plenty of time so I don’t know if quitting your job is advisable.
Do the following:
Ask your team lead what the absolute, bare minimum required skills are and learn them. Once you’ve learned that ask what the next set of skills are. Repeat until you get hired.
Join a development meetup in your area and possibly find a mentor. You don’t need to know how to code to join a group. Just sit in and absorb everything
Consider the following:
Move in with friends/family if you can and ask to stay 4-6 months to teach yourself the skills you need. You would be “hard” learning fulltime (as opposed to “soft” learning from school)
Do the math and save enough money for about 6 months rent, take up a part time job, and start learning full time.
Thanks for the advice labofoz! Hmmm. I’m also interested in Web Development, Can I be a web developer and focus only on the backend? From what I’ve heard that company nowadays usually hire someone who has all the skills (Front-end and Back-end). What can you say about this?
I’ve only worked with small startups/companies where you tend to wear multiple hats, so I can’t really say. From the job posts I’ve seen though, it seems larger companies tend to look specifically for one or the other (not to say you can’t know both).
It’s probably no different than the company you’re working for now, where people have very specific roles like this guy is in charge of specific database calls and that girl is in charge of widget X. Large-scale web development is the same, it’s just that those roles are more generally grouped into front/back end.
Honestly I wouldn’t focus on being a web dev or this or that right now. Instead I would focus on getting Java to a marketable level since it seems you already have a leg up on it. The nice thing with Java is that it’s pretty ubiquitous, meaning you can get into almost any code related field with it
They can, if what you produce is used by people or has achieved something you can talk about like won a competition, or solved a problem.
I wouldn’t worry too much about that right now though. Just do some toy projects that allow you to make mistakes and learn from them.
Also getting feedback is very valuable, so use the online community, or joing a club or something. This is where formal classes are useful, because your tutor can point out anything you are doing wrong without realising (if they are worth their salt anyway).
Thanks for the java advice I’m now thinking of asking my Lead if I can be tranferred into the automation team instead so that I can atleast do some coding and I guess I will be more marketable if I resign with my current job. what can you say about it?
Can I put this Self Projects into my resume? Like can I make a Hotel Reservation system and make it upto date using java then put it into my resume, would those matter?
It sounds like you’re working a project that uses Java. I know 99% guranteed way that you’ll lead will put you on the developer team… well sort of. This is assuming you know Java. Ask him that you’ll volunteer to write JUnit/Mockito codes. No developer likes writing test codes so chances are pretty good. Now writing testing code is actually GOOD for you. It’s honestly, the best way to learn the application and you’ll learn how your developer’s are coding. If you manage to write test to cover 100% of the code then you may even be able to replace your lead developer.
I’m now thinking of asking my Lead if I can be tranferred into the automation team instead so that I can atleast do some coding and I guess I will be more marketable if I resign with my current job. what can you say about it?