The Scrimba Podcast

Ineza (00:00):
You don't need to understand everything listed out in the job description, but just having a good overview or understanding of at least a good percentage of the stacks listed can help you to at least get into the company.

Alex Booker (00:14):
Hello and welcome to the Scrimba Podcast. On this weekly show, I speak of successful devs about their advice on learning to code and getting your first junior dev job. I'm Alex. And today I'm joined by the inspiring Ineza, a Scrimba student, and Boot Camp graduate from Canada who just got their first junior developer job. Ineza has started his coding journey by coding for #100daysinarow. Imagine pushing a boulder down a hill. It's hard to get it rolling, but once it starts, it doesn't stop. Now Ineza had momentum, he went on to build an impressive-looking portfolio and blog, which you can find and learn from in the show notes.
Now, when you have momentum, you need direction, yet at first, Ineza wasn't too sure about how he'd get a job exactly. In this episode, he shares the advice that made him feel more sure about what approach to take, channel that momentum, and ultimately find success. The really interesting thing is that to be considered for his current position, as part of the application process, Ineza had to record a video selfie introduction in which he had to talk about himself and his greatest accomplishments. I don't even know what I would say in that scenario, but we're going to learn from Ineza, so stay tuned for that. You are listening to the Scrimba Podcast. Let's get into it.

Ineza (01:41):
I first came across coding in 2016. I was still in high school. And I think I saw one of my friends writing code in the computer classrooms and I was super interested in what he was doing. And of course, watching movies about hacking and stuff, it all seemed so cool. And you'd want to learn more about it and how it's done. I guess at that point, I think I got into coding through Code Academy and learned HTML and CSS, the basics, but then eventually my momentum stopped. It was caused by some factors like school. I'd be coding, and then I stopped for a month, then I'd come back to it six months later or something. Then, I believe in 2020 when the pandemic kicked in, that's sort of when I was like, now I have the time since most schools are closed and we're all learning remotely and have basically more time to do anything I want. Why don't I get back to coding?
There's this challenge, which is always going on Twitter called 100 Days of Code whereby you post whatever thing you've learned in coding on that day, for example, a task you worked on or a project you're working on as a sort of accountability post that you're still progressing with the challenge. I started the challenge together with a friend of mine and I'd send him challenges daily. He was doing C++, I was doing JavaScript because it was a bit easier for me. That sort of gave me the momentum to keep coding every day and stay active in the community. Some people see the tweets or follow the hashtag and they're able to correct you when you've written the wrong code or show you a different way you could have done it. That's sort of how I started learning and discovering new communities.
Eventually, after completing the challenge, I then joined the bootcamp that was happening back home in Rwanda. The bootcamp was nine months long. We learned a lot of things ranging from React, Node.js to PostgreS, MongoDB, basically full stack web development to prepare us for careers. And we also had some months of internship. I guess that's why I sort of got a more in depth learning of how software development or web development is done in general. And I believe after completing it or towards the end is probably where I discovered Scrimba. That's where I was looking for a Tailwind CSS course.

Alex Booker (04:03):
That's amazing.

Ineza (04:04):
I'd been looking on YouTube and other websites, but I wasn't able to sort of follow videos effectively because I have to like switch from YouTube to VS Code and it can sort of become tiring. With Scrimba, I believe one thing I liked about it and I even saw the other day they posted a meme whereby the best way to describe Scrimba is, if VS Code and YouTube had a child together, that's Scrimba.

Alex Booker (04:28):
Yeah.

Ineza (04:30):
Because they're sort of integrated into one another. You can sort of watch the video and code into the same thing. So, that helped me pick up Tailwind quickly. And I believe Tailwind has become my favorite styling framework, which I now use to style whatever projects that I'm working on. Also, finding out that there was a community on Scrimba was super great because now I find another community of people who are learning and are in the same space as I am.

Alex Booker (04:54):
Did you complete 100 Days of Code in the end?

Ineza (04:57):
Yes. Yes. I did complete 100 Days of Code in the end.

Alex Booker (05:00):
Oh, congrats.

Ineza (05:01):
It did take some time.

Alex Booker (05:02):
Did you sort of do it in 100 days in a row or did you take some breaks here and there? I sometimes see people wondering if it's like 100 days of code in a row or just 100 days of code and you can take breaks.

Ineza (05:13):
I wouldn't say that I did it 100% in a row because there were some days when it was just too hard and I probably post the post like at midnight, so it was for the previous day. But I wouldn't advise it, for personally, I see the best way would be to take some breaks because it sort of gives you some time to go over what you've learned the past day so that you're not learning too much things at once and eventually forgetting everything. So it's sort of also healthy to take breaks as well. Going in a row can be pretty hard even mentally for you to be able to focus. So I'd say take some breaks, like probably on the weekends.

Alex Booker (05:52):
A 100 Days of Code wasn't as popular when I learned to code, but I really like the idea of getting 100 GitHub commits in a row, right? So you have the green blocks in your profile. And I had the same experience. Like I did it all in a row, but some days it was like 11:50 at night and I was like, oh no, I have to quickly do some things. So I'd log in and like fix a typo or something. Do you think that learning to code in and of itself is a skill? I'm wondering if there's any advice you can share with people listening based on your experience?

Ineza (06:22):
Yeah, I think with experience, it definitely does get better with learning to code. Because I guess before, when I was starting to code, I would specifically look for beginner tutorials, for example, React or something. But nowadays it's more of when you're learning to code, you sort of relate it with what you've learned in the other languages or frameworks, because the logic is similar, but the syntax may be different.
For example, there's a project that we're working on that uses Vue and Nuxt.js. My approach to learning it was reading through the documentations, because some of these open source projects, a lot of the times have good written documentations that you can go through and sort of understand. And I guess with experience, you're also able to understand the docs better as you read. I don't think a year ago, I would've started reading docs and understood anything at all. So progressing on, it does help to read documentations.
But then one other way I've found that effectively helps me to learn and understand new stuff is building projects, because you learn by doing. So you're able to implement what you've learned or what you've read. And you're able to see the changes and you are able to see the errors that could come across when you're doing it in a particular way. And it prompts you to do more research about what you're doing. Yeah, so building projects is another way that I found that helps me to learn stuff.

Alex Booker (07:46):
How did you decide what kind of projects to build? When you're first starting out, it's quite straightforward at least to follow a tutorial. It's quite clear what the outcome is going to be, but actually building your own projects is a skill, as you have to think about what frameworks and technologies you're going to use and most importantly, how you bring them all together to actually build an app or a website or whatever.

Ineza (08:08):
If I'm using like a project to learn a framework or a language, I think the basic one that I'd go with is like a to-do app. If I can create a to-do app in React, I can also maybe try to understand how I'd create one in Nuxt or Vue, or even maybe a weather app, because those are pretty easy to sort of get started. And it's also easier to find people who've built tutorials or come across problems when doing a similar thing. So I'd suggest maybe going for simple projects then after at least understanding how the whole logic behind how that app was built, then you can sort of, I guess, start to progress to more difficult projects that you can learn from, such as building a portfolio or something.

Alex Booker (08:51):
Coming up, how Ineza stood out by recording a selfie video introduction.

Ineza (08:57):
Hi, hello. So my name is Ineza. The reason you should hire me-

Alex Booker (09:02):
But first I'd like to please ask that if you're enjoying this episode of the Scrimba Podcast, that you do us at Scrimba a favor and share it with your friends in your community, such as on Discord or on social media, like on Twitter. Word of mouth is the single best way to support a podcast that you like. So thanks in advance. Next week, I'm talking with Ian Douglas, a senior developer and very experienced interviewer and interviewee. In recent months, he interviewed at various companies like Amazon and wrote in public on LinkedIn about each experience for us to learn from.

Ian Douglas (09:36):
Part of building up the whole tech interview guide was just to provide my perspectives of being in the industry for almost 26 years. Having been an engineering manager and doing lots of real interviews, looking at somewhere between 12 and 15,000 resumes and CVs over my career, and then having left my last role gave a little bit of fresh perspective on what the interview process is like now.

Alex Booker (10:00):
This episode is going to be a sort of condensed version of what Ian learned, as well as his best advice for new developers and people breaking into tech. If that sounds interesting, remember to subscribe in your podcast app of choice, be that Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Pocket Casts, whatever. This way you won't miss it and you'll support the show. Back to the interview with Ineza.
Did you build a portfolio and have some projects and things as part of your journey?

Ineza (10:28):
Yes. I think I built my first portfolio in the bootcamp because it was one of the projects that were given, but then we built the portfolio using HTML, CSS and JavaScript. But as time went on, I didn't feel quite satisfied with how it looked. So I decided to rebuild it from scratch, using frameworks. I used Next.js and Tailwind CSS. Those are currently my favorite stacks to work with. It's currently hosted on ineza.codes and it took some time to sort of understand what to put and what not to put. But I basically focused on putting the essentials, like showcasing the work that I've done in open source and the articles I've written. I sometimes try to write, though I've not been as consistent lately, but writing articles is one of the other ways that I've found that helped me to sort of learn and understand the different stacks that I work with.

Alex Booker (11:23):
It looks amazing. It's even got like a light and dark mode. I mean, you've not just written a couple of posts. You've written quite a few and they look fascinating, like Implementing Stripe in your Gatsby Timeship. I have to say, I don't know what a Gatsby Timeship is, but it sounds very interesting. So let me link it in the show notes for people to check out and hopefully it will give them some inspiration. When you were feeling a bit more confident and ready to start applying for jobs, how did you approach it? And when did you find this opportunity? How did it come about?

Ineza (11:54):
I think I started applying for jobs last year after completing the bootcamp, though, of course, I was met with a ton of rejection emails and, of course, most of them stood at the fact that they found a more suitable candidate. So I basically kept on applying and my strategy at looking for jobs was at least having knowledge in a good percentage of the criteria that is listed in the job description. I was looking mostly on LinkedIn. There also used to be a job section on Stack Overflow, but it was recently removed. And also Indeed. Indeed is also another great site to look for jobs.
My approach at looking for jobs was, which I actually learned from one of the videos with tech recruiters that Leanne hosted, it was basically that you don't need to understand everything listed out in the job description, but just having a good overview or understanding of at least a good percentage of the stacks listed can help you to at least get into the company. Because at the same time, if you find yourself understanding almost everything, it could also mean that you're probably overqualified for the job. I applied to, I guess a lot of jobs, I probably lost count of how many I applied to.

Alex Booker (13:08):
Were you writing like a cover letter for each of them or was it just the easy apply sort of way?

Ineza (13:13):
Yes. Some of them, I did write cover letters and others, they only probably required your portfolio and your resume and that was it. This year, I applied to my current company and surprisingly, they responded sooner than I expected, asking me to do a video introduction of myself, which I hadn't seen in the other jobs that I was applying to. So basically I had to record a video of myself telling them about why they should hire me and what's one of the best things that I've accomplished that I'm proud about.
Hi, hello. So my name is Ineza. So the first question asks, why should we hire you? So the reason [crosstalk 00:13:53].
If I remember well, I think one of the reasons I gave why they should hire me was because I think my aspirations were sort of in line with their company's missions. And I also expressed my knowledge in the stacks that they were using. And I also admitted that even those that I might not know well, I am quite ready to learn and improve my skills in them.

Alex Booker (14:13):
Do you have some idea about why this company wanted to speak to you? Was it a different way you applied or do you think maybe you were just really well suited for the role, like your skills matched the job description? Another idea I had is maybe they were a bit more open to inviting people to submit a video. And then once they saw you on the video, they were like, oh yeah, Ineza. This guy seems cool and knowledgeable and he wants to learn and continue growing.

Ineza (14:40):
Yeah. I definitely think the portfolio in your resume, yes, I did submit a resume, but of course, I guess another thing that they wanted to know was sort of your personality and how well you can express yourself and your goals. And I think I managed to do that through the videos and that gave me the edge, I'll be sort of called to the next round. So the videos definitely did play a big role because, I think it's probably the first time I've seen it in, or not the first time, but very few companies do this. And those that do, they basically want to know more about your personality and how well you can express yourself and trying to align your goals with their mission and the projects they work on. They're just trying to see whether you'd be a suitable candidate for the role.

Alex Booker (15:28):
It makes sense. And I think working remotely, it is also quite good just to see that they are comfortable on camera and you maybe have the right sort of communication to have a good chance of success going forward. Just quickly before we go too much further, what is the company exactly?

Ineza (15:44):
The company is called Relevant Bits. It's a Canadian company. We all work remotely with developers and other team members working in many different countries. So our company basically focuses on developing applications for clients. We also build our own in-house applications. My role at the company is a full stack engineer. So I'll be mostly interacting with the team to fix bugs or create features in some of the applications for the projects that we are doing.

Alex Booker (16:16):
It sounds amazing. And congratulations again.

Ineza (16:18):
Thank you. Yeah. And also the company is quite small, so we're not like a huge company. I like it because we are able to sort of meet with each other and get to know each other quite well. That's a plus.

Alex Booker (16:31):
Was the job interview process challenging after you sent the video?

Ineza (16:35):
After sending the video, the next step was to meet the CEO and the CTO. I would say it wasn't as challenging, but it needed me to be sort of aware of what I know and express it in the best way possible. The first couple of minutes were based on basically trying to have a more casual conversation and trying to know basically who I am and my history and background in coding. The other session was now focused on my technical knowledge. It wasn't a technical interview where I must do live code or anything, but it was more of a discussion into my thinking and what goes behind the decisions that I make when I'm creating applications, how I would go about certain things. For example, I remember one of the questions I was asked was, what is my favorite thing about React and what don't I like about React? And there were also other questions trying to sort of understand how basically I go about creating applications, testing and all of that.

Alex Booker (17:37):
And so how has it been now that you're on the job? Have you had a good onboarding experience and are you're enjoying the projects?

Ineza (17:43):
The onboarding experience was great. The first two days was me trying to sort of integrate myself into their code base, understand their applications and everything that is going on. And of course, studying out, it may feel overwhelming, but I'm glad that as the days go by, I'm sort of slowly coming to understand everything and I'm able to at least complete off some tasks. The team as well is amazing. It's an incredible team to work with. We talk about a lot of stuff. For example, music, I was glad the other day to find out that my CTO is actually a lover of electronic dance music, which I'm also into. He's also a coffee enthusiast. So these are some things that we talk about, but it just makes the job super lively and fun.

Alex Booker (18:33):
100%. I mean, you all spend so much time together, right? It's obviously good to be good collaborators, but if you can have something of a good rapport and some things in common, that's really promising too. I'm really happy for you. And I'm sure it must be quite a proud feeling because you started your journey many years ago really while you were in school. And then you did the bootcamp, then a bit of Scrimba. For all the struggles and challenges along the way, you're exactly where you're meant to be now, right? And that's really exciting. I'm just wondering, what are some of the challenges that you experienced back then that maybe someone listening is suffering from too?

Ineza (19:07):
I guess beginning coding, one of the particular challenges that I faced was staying consistent, because sometimes you can start this language and then it becomes tough, then you decide to switch to Python. And then at some point it becomes tough, then you switch to something else. So staying consistent with one thing is something that I struggled with before I eventually decided to stick on one route. You'll see so many tutorials about so many cool apps that you could create and you sort of divert your attention to that. And trying to stay consistent with what I'm learning and also trying to do it on the daily was where my biggest challenges were. But I believe when I started the 100 Days of Code, it made me stick to JavaScript and from sticking with JavaScript, it made me eventually to go deeper into web development.
One thing I can say is, find something that you want to do and focus on that one thing, instead of trying to build general knowledge about all the programming languages that you come across. When it seems hard, always continue striving to become better and continue building more projects.

Alex Booker (20:17):
Just to kind of wrap up, I was wondering if you had any sort of closing advice or thoughts you can share with really somebody who is in the position you were in, in the last couple of years, learning to code and trying to find their first tech job.

Ineza (20:30):
Getting your first job is definitely not going to be easy. Especially coming from a self-taught background, a lot of tech recruiters would see that you probably don't have a degree or something and that you lack the experience or something. But then, I guess we also have a new side of recruiters who are actually looking to hire people who came from bootcamps or self-taught backgrounds, because they know these people can be experienced as well.
What I can advise is, never give up applying. Keep applying, even though you feel that you may not match most of the qualifications required for the job. You should just apply anyway. And they'll probably reach out to you with an exercise or an interview like it happened in my case. And also documenting what you learn is probably one of the advices that I was given, which led to my articles. I got that advice, I think from one of my mentors, whom I met through Twitter in the 100 Days of Code challenge. So he advised me that, I guess one thing that you could sort of do for me in return to how I have helped you is to document your knowledge or what you learn, because it sort of helps the people who are upcoming in learning to be able to learn from your experience and become better developers. Documenting what you learn or writing articles can sort of help to strengthen what you've learned and you'll be able to pick up things much quicker.

Alex Booker (21:59):
Wow. That is tremendous advice. You mentioned you were part of the Scrimba community and even 100 Days of Code, some people consider a subcommunity on Twitter. I'm just wondering, what was your experience like with community? Did it help you find success?

Ineza (22:15):
Yes, definitely. When you're starting out, you usually sort of feel alone and you don't know who to ask because, for example, if you post a question on Stack Overflow, it will probably take some time before someone comes across it and decides to answer it. And sometimes it may be misleading and it will take some other time before someone comes to correct it. But then on Scrimba, when I joined Scrimba on Discord, I realized that it's sort of a community where it's live and it's active. There are like different sections on the channel where people can ask different questions from HTML to JavaScript. We're all learning and it's super fun and, I guess, easy to get help. It sort of creates an atmosphere for people to be able to learn well and not feel guilty for asking certain questions because it will make them look stupid or dumb or something. The community on Scrimba is definitely a great place for people to learn from.

Alex Booker (23:12):
Isn't it cool and motivating to see people post when they get jobs and they get hired? I just think, by the way, it's really cool that when you got the job, you came to the I Got Hired channel and you sharing your story and success motivates more people. And when they get motivated, they get successful. And eventually they post in the I Got Hired channel and it's like this really cool sort of loop.

Ineza (23:35):
Yes, yes. Definitely. I also used to feel the same way before I got my job. When I was still getting the rejections and I would watch people post in the channel and I'll sort of stay motivated because I know one day it will definitely be my turn. Posting on that channel, it was sort of an achievement, I guess. It sort of did make me happy. So to anyone else who is listening, I'll probably advise you to keep pushing and definitely one day, we'd love to also hear your story in the I Got Hired channel.

Alex Booker (24:07):
And who knows, maybe even the Scrimba Podcast.

Ineza (24:10):
Yeah.

Alex Booker (24:10):
Ineza, thank you so much. And congratulations again.
That was Ineza, a Boot Camp graduate and successful Scrimba student. Thank you for listening. If you've made it this far in the episode, you might want to subscribe to the pod for more helpful and uplifting episodes with recently hired juniors and industry experts alike. As a reminder, I'm speaking with Ian Douglas from Postman next week in what will be episode 58 of the weekly Scrimba Podcast. You can also tweet me, your host, Alex Booker, and share what lessons you learned from the episode so I can thank you personally for tuning in. My Twitter handle along with Scrimba's is in the show notes. I will see you next week.