Decode your power

I studied Chemical Technology at Poznan University of Technology - I worked in a laboratory. I was mainly involved in quality control of reagents, raw materials and products as well as learning new technologies in production.

I have been interested in programming since high school - but then I treated it as a hobby. At university I had a chance to participate in exhibitions, events (even the Android Developer Group exhibited at the Polytechnic) and lectures dedicated to programming - then I decided that this is what I want to do.

I made the decision to enroll in a course because learning on my own would take too long. I learned from courses, books, tutorials and did my own projects, but I still felt that it was terribly inefficient for the time I was spending - in addition, most tutorials offer simple, uncomplicated, small projects - I didn't get a chance to prove myself with something really substantial.

What I liked most about the course at Coders Lab was the motivation to learn and the group that I still keep in touch with today. Also, one person from my course works with me in a team, and another person from a parallel course works in the same building as us. However, now I think that there were few issues that are basic in an interview for a job in Java, i.e. when to use which collections, what exactly the differences are. There was little time for Spring and I missed the recommendation of some great resources for future learning (and there are quite a few at the moment). However, at the beginning the amount is overwhelming and you don't know what to start with.

The final project was more of a pleasure than a challenge for me. I was finally able to realise ideas that I previously had no idea how to go about.

After the course, I attended interviews, solved tests, including those on Codeity and Codewars, did sample questions from interviews. Each time I knew what I had to improve. I observed what are the trends in the current market and what is required from juniors.

The company that hired me also sent me to various training courses and expanded my course knowledge. There were trainings like "Clean Code", later "Clean Architecture", a lot of Pluralsight (design patterns, DevOps, Jenkins, etc.). But the basics from the course still remain, I use this knowledge often. The outline of all the skills learned during the course allowed me to easily know where to look.

I currently work for a small Polish corporation (about 500-600 people). It is a consulting company, dealing mainly with the implementation of insurance systems for companies. So I mainly program in Java and Gosu. I also have some conversations with clients - depending on what is needed :).

Unfortunately, I have an impression that recently people started to look at people after intensive programming courses with hostility and stopped taking them seriously. Also, the level that is expected from juniors has increased a lot - often there are even offers requiring 2 years of commercial programming experience posted as a "junior" position. This has increased the amount of work you have to put in to find a job after the course.

Looking back on the course, 300 hours of learning seemed so much and now it's actually so little :). As of this year, I have already completed 150 hours of various courses, trainings and workshops, and there are still at least ten times as many ahead of me.

Each graduate had different motivations and doubts at the start. But they made a bold decision and took that first, difficult step toward change. They let go of past achievements and lessons learned and... changed their professional lives. See how they did it.