Are You a New Developer? Follow This One Tip! (With Scrimba Student Danny)

The Scrimba Podcast

🎙 About the episode

Meet Danny Vogel 🇩🇪🇪🇸! Danny is a lawyer-turned-developer who decided to switch careers after ten years in law! In high school, he thought he could never do maths and picked a different path. It was meeting his wife, who is a software developer, that made him stop seeing coding as something unachievable, and the search for a better work-life balance that made him start learning. When he quit his job, he focused on coding. But nobody was responding to his job applications. Danny then went to a developer meetup in Barcelona, where somebody gave him wise advice...

In this episode, Danny shares about his coding journey and the struggles along the way. You'll learn how to approach projects, why a "shotgun" approach might work for you, and why it's better not to work remotely if you're just starting out. Danny also talks about his experience with Chingu.io, a platform that pairs you with other developers to create group coding projects, and how he's benefited from joining it. Ultimately, you'll find out how Danny landed his first dev job, even though the company didn't advertise the job he's doing now as a junior position!

🔗 Connect with Danny

• 👨‍💼 LinkedIn

⏰ Timestamps

• Danny always liked computers but never saw himself as a coder (02:26)
• Is coding more about letters or numbers? (03:03)
• Danny went into law, studying in Barcelona and New York. How did it feel to switch careers after ten years? (03:45)
• What made Danny learn to code? (05:22)
• Did Danny’s wife, a developer, play a part in his decision to learn to code? (06:10)
• Coding and law are often misrepresented in movies and on TV (07:20)
• How Danny learned to code (07:45)
• Frontend vs backend (08:43)
• Was learning to code hard? (09:14)
• Community break with Jan the Producer (10:35)
• How Danny knew it was time to quit his job in law (12:21)
• What was Danny’s approach to looking for dev jobs (13:47)
• Danny went on a meetup and got a great piece of advice (15:09)
• Danny also joined Chingu.io - what is it? (20:38)
• Group projects vs. solo projects (21:49)
• How Danny’s projects helped him land the job he now has (22:26)
• Shotgun approach! (23:06)
• People often talk themselves out of applying for jobs not classified as junior (24:07)
• Give yourself options! (25:35)
• Quick-fire questions: Danny’s wife, coding to Muse, and videogames! (27:07)
• Danny’s interview process (30:12)
• What’s HackerRank, and why you should be prepared for it (32:45)
• How Danny felt when he got the job (37:01)
• Does Danny’s experience in law help in his new role? (39:13)
• Should new developers work remotely or at the office? (41:43)

🧰 Resources Mentioned

• Danny's gameState app
• Scrimba Bootcamp
• Chingu.io
• Angela Yu’s web development course

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