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Job as Entry Level Developer

After 4 months of work, sometimes focused, sometimes not, I accepted a job as an Entry Level Ruby on Rails Developer yesterday. This is after starting with zero knowledge on November 1, last year.
Beyond knowing a little about coding (but getting the definitions of  REST and AJAX wrong), what were the reasons for the job offer? 

I think it was the meetup group I started in January that made me stand out from the rest. The motivation for the meetup group was to help me become a better coder and to indulge my teacher instincts. After some initial meetings at the library and my home, an IT hub in town offered to host us. This meant extra advertising and prestige for the group.

After announcing the meetup group at an Agile meetup group for developers, I got some volunteers to give talks. The first volunteer offered a talk on Ruby. As I was comfortable with Ruby I prepared a coding tutorial.  After the tutorial, which was attended by some beginners and some advanced developers, I was invited for a series of interviews at a large software company that works with Ruby on Rails. 

As Joshua Kemp and others have pointed out, networking is a powerful force. Even before this job offer I was receiving LinkedIn offers for jobs way beyond my current ability. Beyond that, being highly motivated also makes a difference. The head of one software company I spoke to recently talked about the CompSci grads he interviews. According to him, many of them have done no coding beyond their coursework- they don't seem to be that passionate about programming. 

I still have a lot of learning to do and a long way to go before I feel competent as a developer, but the path is much clearer now. 

Thanks to the many people whose help I have benefited from over the past four months, (and whose resources I will continue to use as I keep learning). Special thanks to Joshua Kemp for his inspiring blog, Quincy Larson-creator of FreedCodeCamp and Erik Trautman of the fantastic Odin Project. There have been other resources I have used and which I have mentioned in previous posts, all of which have helped me reached my goal.  Thank you.

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