Getting Started in Tech: Building Your Career

1. Getting Started in Tech:
Building Your Career
June 2017 - Los Angeles, California
http://bit.ly/tech-la

2. © 2017 Thinkful. All Rights Reserved. 2
About us
We train developers and data
scientists through 1-on-1
mentorship and career prep

3. © 2017 Thinkful. All Rights Reserved. 3
About us
Noel Duarte
Old LA General
Manager !
Georgie Thomas
New LA General
Manager ✨👀

4. © 2017 Thinkful. All Rights Reserved. 4
About you
Why are you here?
I’d like to become a developer
I’m curious about what the tech industry is
Programming/career experience?
First lines of code yet to be written
Been self teaching for 1-3 months
Actively working as a developer

5. © 2017 Thinkful. All Rights Reserved. 5
Why are we here?
Traditional career building:

6. © 2017 Thinkful. All Rights Reserved. 6
Why are we here?
Traditional career building:
Junior sales
/ SDR
Account
executive
Sales Manager
VP Sales

7. © 2017 Thinkful. All Rights Reserved. 7
Tech is weird
Career trajectories are far more varied
Tech isn’t one industry. It’s every industry.

8. © 2017 Thinkful. All Rights Reserved. 8
Tech doesn’t fit traditional career building
Full stack developer
Front-end developer
Back-end developer
QA developer

9. © 2017 Thinkful. All Rights Reserved. 9
Full stack developer
Front-end developer
Back-end developer
QA developer
Tech doesn’t fit traditional career building

10. © 2017 Thinkful. All Rights Reserved. 10
Full stack developer
Front-end developer
Back-end developer
DevOps
Product developer
Growth hacker
Reliability engineer
QA developer
Architect
Manager / team lead
Tech doesn’t fit traditional career building

11. © 2017 Thinkful. All Rights Reserved. 11
Full stack developer
Front-end developer
Back-end developer
DevOps
Product developer
Growth hacker
Reliability engineer
QA developer
Architect
Manager / team lead
Tech doesn’t fit traditional career building

12. © 2017 Thinkful. All Rights Reserved. 12
Full stack developer
Front-end developer
Back-end developer
DevOps
Product developer
Growth hacker
Reliability engineer
QA developer
Architect
Manager / team lead
Tech doesn’t fit traditional career building
UI/UX Designer
Product Manager

13. © 2017 Thinkful. All Rights Reserved. 13
Tech is everywhere
MLBAM (advanced media) -
digital arm of Major League
Baseball recently valued at
$3B, about as much as the
New York Yankees

14. © 2017 Thinkful. All Rights Reserved. 14
Tech is everywhere: Politics

15. © 2017 Thinkful. All Rights Reserved. 15
Dating

16. © 2017 Thinkful. All Rights Reserved. 16
Transportation/Travel

17. © 2017 Thinkful. All Rights Reserved. 17
Everything else!

18. © 2017 Thinkful. All Rights Reserved. 18
Tech is everywhere
“Goldman Sachs is a
Technology Firm”
- Lloyd Blankfein, CEO
9,000 out of 33,000
employees are on tech team

19. © 2017 Thinkful. All Rights Reserved. 19
Goals for tonight
Identify different types of jobs available and the skills
you’ll need to qualify
Career building from the ground up:
Build in-demand skills
Prepare your application materials
Networking and searching for a job
Interviewing
Stay current

20. Where to start?

21. © 2017 Thinkful. All Rights Reserved. 21
First jobs: Front-end Developer
What: Skills & Tools
Building the parts of a
web application that
people interact with

22. © 2017 Thinkful. All Rights Reserved. 22
First jobs: Back-end developer
What: Skills & Tools
Writing the business
logic and handling
data storage and
manipulation

23. © 2017 Thinkful. All Rights Reserved. 23
First jobs: Back-end developer
What: Skills & Tools
Writing the business
logic and handling
data storage and
manipulation

24. © 2017 Thinkful. All Rights Reserved. 24
First jobs: Full stack developer
What: Skills & Tools
Build features front to
back
+

25. © 2017 Thinkful. All Rights Reserved. 25
First jobs: QA developer
What: Skills & Tools
Write software tests
and conduct manual
tests to catch bugs
before they’re shipped
Unit testing
Regression testing
Breaking software

26. Before you apply

27. © 2017 Thinkful. All Rights Reserved. 27
Building skills
You can build your niche with any set of technologies,
but we (Thinkful and our network of 350+ engineers
around the world) found the following to be
particularly in-demand:
Vanilla JavaScript
Node.js for server-side programming
React
React Native (everyone needs a mobile presence)

28. © 2017 Thinkful. All Rights Reserved. 28
But take that with a grain of salt, but also don’t.
Building skills

29. © 2016 Thinkful, Inc. All Rights Reserved. PRIVATE & CONFIDENTIAL29
Building skills

30. © 2016 Thinkful, Inc. All Rights Reserved. PRIVATE & CONFIDENTIAL30
Building skills

31. © 2017 Thinkful. All Rights Reserved. 31
Building skills
JavaScript is the most commonly used programming language on earth. Even
Back-End developers are more likely to use it than any other language.
Click me!

32. © 2017 Thinkful. All Rights Reserved. 32
Planning + Prioritizing
Location
Industry
Company size
Compensation
Technology
Training
Role

33. © 2017 Thinkful. All Rights Reserved. 33
Materials
Resume/Linkedin/AngelList
Github profile
Personal website & portfolio
https://robbykim.github.io/portfolio/ — doesn’t
have to have a wow factor
but if it does, make it clean: http://hannahmcca.in/

34. © 2017 Thinkful. All Rights Reserved. 34
Soft assets
Develop your personal story (elevator pitch!)
Catalog your network

35. Creating opportunities

36. © 2017 Thinkful. All Rights Reserved. 36
Zen and the art of applying to jobs

37. © 2017 Thinkful. All Rights Reserved. 37
Referrals
The single highest-converting channel
50-80% of jobs are never posted

38. © 2017 Thinkful. All Rights Reserved. 38
Applications: Golden Tickets
Create something that demonstrates your skills and is
applicable to the job
Litmus test: will it make the person reviewing your job
application smile and want to share it with their team?

39. © 2017 Thinkful. All Rights Reserved. 39
Pop quiz
What % of applicants get an interview?

40. © 2017 Thinkful. All Rights Reserved. 40
Pop quiz
What % of applicants get an interview?
Low end: 5-10%
High end: 30-35%

41. © 2017 Thinkful. All Rights Reserved. 41
Wild (or not so wild) card: Recruiter
Tech recruiters serve as your agent
They reach out to companies on your behalf and
arrange interviews
Their business is to find you a job
Overall highly valuable — they have connections and
help keep your expectations real

42. © 2017 Thinkful. All Rights Reserved. 42
How Thinkful alumni find jobs

43. Interviewing

44. © 2017 Thinkful. All Rights Reserved. 44
Most common funnel
Phone screen
Take home tech challenge
In person interview
Some tech (sometimes algos, usually follow up to take
home)
Some personal

45. © 2017 Thinkful. All Rights Reserved. 45
Interview tips
Ask for context before an interview
Discuss your work
Become deep in one set of tools, and conversant in a
broad list
Don’t focus on being new

46. © 2017 Thinkful. All Rights Reserved. 46
Pop quiz
What % of opportunities go from in-person interview to
offer?

47. © 2017 Thinkful. All Rights Reserved. 47
Pop quiz
What % of opportunities go from in-person interview to
offer?
>50%

48. © 2017 Thinkful. All Rights Reserved. 48
Mindset
Put yourself in a position to have a positive mindset:
Continue to line up your next interview until you’ve
signed on the dotted line
Every opportunity is perfect and no opportunity is
perfect

49. The first job leads to the second

50. © 2017 Thinkful. All Rights Reserved. 50
Staying current
Technology advances relentlessly. Grow with it. A few
resources we particularly like:
Thinkful (workshops, courses, community)
Youtube videos
JavaScript documentation
Meetups!

51. © 2017 Thinkful. All Rights Reserved. 51
Moving up: Senior Developer
What: Skills & Tools
All previous duties and
to estimate your work
accurately, handle
challenging problems
with less support,
support junior
colleagues
The tools don’t
change*
Your ability to use
them does

52. © 2017 Thinkful. All Rights Reserved. 52
Moving up: Engineering manager
What: Skills & Tools
Mastery of technology
used by your
company. All abilities
and skills of a senior
developer, plus the
ability to manage a
team
Soft skills,
management ability

53. © 2017 Thinkful. All Rights Reserved. 53
Coding Plus Product: Product manager
What: Skills & Tools
Take business goals
and turn them into
product requirements.
Work with developers
and designers to
deliver. Measure
success. Repeat.
Customer development
User stories
Wireframes
Analytics

54. © 2017 Thinkful. All Rights Reserved. 54
Coding Plus Marketing: Growth Hacker /
Technical Marketer
What: Skills & Tools
Run experiments to
drive new and repeat
users, usually at
startups
User acquisition
Analytics
Fast prototyping

55. © 2017 Thinkful. All Rights Reserved. 55
Coding Plus Community: Developer Evangelist
What: Skills & Tools
Build community
around a technology
by helping customers,
creating content, and
participating at events
Specific technical
expertise
Teaching
Customer support

56. © 2017 Thinkful. All Rights Reserved. 56
Coding Plus Sales: Sales engineer
What: Skills & Tools
Sell complex technical
product by helping
customers understand
how it works and how
they’ll use it
Coding
Communication

57. © 2017 Thinkful. All Rights Reserved. 57
Coding Plus data: Data scientist
What: Skills & Tools
Use statistics and
programming to
answer questions with
data
Statistics
Machine learning
Programming

58. © 2017 Thinkful. All Rights Reserved. 58
Getting there
Skills
Brand
Network
Also, most importantly, succeed at your job

59. © 2017 Thinkful. All Rights Reserved. 59
Getting there: Skills
Levelofsupport
Structure efficiency

60. © 2017 Thinkful. All Rights Reserved. 60
Getting there: Brand
Speak at conferences at meetups
Blogging: articulate the journey
Find your niche (and then blog)

61. © 2017 Thinkful. All Rights Reserved. 61
Getting there: Network
Make time (and find budget)
Be helpful
Talk to people (online or offline)

62. © 2017 Thinkful. All Rights Reserved. 62
Getting there: Network
325+ mentors with an average of 10
years of experience in the field

63. © 2017 Thinkful. All Rights Reserved. 63
Try us out!
Try the program for two
weeks, includes six mentor
sessions - $50
Learn HTML/CSS/JavaScript
Option to continue onto web
development bootcamp
Come talk to me if you’re
interested (or email me at
noel@thinkful.com)

64. Thank you.
June 2017