Web development as an incentive or chasing a dream

Greetings to all!

My name is Dmitry. I am 36 years old and I am a web developer / designer. I work in one German IT company.

This is a story about how to achieve something more, overcoming difficulties. Here I will consciously use only names, believing that all participants want to remain anonymous. But if one of them reads this article and recognizes himself, then only with their permission will I indicate the names, their sites and projects.

It all started about 10 years ago. Young or not very young person i.e. I decided to get an education in Germany. I myself am from a poor family, without any connections and to catch in my city a normal person has absolutely nothing. I will not describe the whole process with tickets, visas, an invitation from the university, I am not writing about this here at all.

I, like each of you, met success stories of people from England, the USA or South America, and almost always found reflection of my life in them. And now, I just want to tell my story. Although I understand that I am not the only one who has experienced a similar situation, about which below.

There is probably no reason to read all this lyrics to people who have an IT education, are fluent in English and super experienced, who understand everything in life and understand everything better than anyone else. I am writing for ordinary people who, by virtue of life circumstances, have lost heart, do not know what to do, and even if at least a little, this story will give you the strength to look at your still unsolved possibilities from another point of view.

0. Start


So I was 26 years old. He studied economics in Germany (BWL). Honestly, I knew German reasonably well, but I did not know English at all. Nevertheless, my language level was enough to find unskilled work and more or less exist on this money in my spare time from school, also during school. Of course, I tried to look at the offices or not such hard work, but all my attempts, and there were more than one hundred, failed. I understood that it was necessary to study at the university, but there was no strength after sitting down to work after books. Although I understand that there are people in this sense stronger than me.

In order to earn money, I started trading on ebay.de and other resources - these were mainly things. I bought cheaper and sold a little more expensive, but the profit was insignificant, this activity took a lot of time and it was quite difficult to compete with large or not very large companies and private owners. Often went to zero and it became clear that there is nothing to earn, at least for me.

What did I do? This is mainly physical labor, where you constantly feel humiliation and an acute shortage of money: in restaurants, in the kitchens, in warehouses, I sorted out various products, cleaned premises, in hospitals, at construction sites, there was also work at some banquets and forums as the waiters. Here I recall a case where I met a girl who in long rubber gloves in a poorly lit room was frying pans. It turned out her name is Irina, she is with Perm, she also came as a student and better yet did not find a side job. But I will write about this girl later.

All this could be experienced. The most unpleasant thing is that life passes by, and you do not get either experience or useful connections, and you really cannot finish your education. Sometimes it came to the point that there was simply no money to buy food and clothing. Hungry, cold in the winter, slush with torn shoes you go to work, where you can put on dry clothes and stay warm for a while.

Acquaintances who felt better financially helped, but you yourself understand, everyone has their own life and their own problems, so you climb it yourself. Nevertheless, I am grateful to Eugene from Rostov, who gave me a winter jacket and to Alexander from Kiev, who gave me shoes for work. Later, I sincerely thanked these people. I thanked not for the fact that they gave clothes, but for the fact that they did not remain indifferent to the fate of another person.

This whole story lasted about 5 years, where attempts to make one’s life better ended in complete failure, and each time it became lower and lower in the social sphere. status, while suffering pain and hardship. But the situation was still not completely deplorable, there was still some resource for life.

1. It happened once


When the boiling point reached its maximum, the question arose before me what to do and it was necessary to fundamentally change something, because then there was only despair and a strange feeling of unwillingness to live.

Perhaps you had a similar one, but you finally and irrevocably decided to change your life and understand that you are ready to sacrifice many for the sake of achieving your goal. I had the same situation. I was serious and very determined to change my life for the better.

By a strange coincidence, one way or another I was interested in the IT topic and tried to read the news, but I was specifically interested in the creation of sites and single-page applications. Here are some resources entwickler.de , t3n.de , www.heise.de subscribed to. But it was all at the level of simple interest and never caused thoughts to start making money on it. But this is precisely what became the starting point.

I started collecting information about site building. Every free second, during a break at work, in transport, at home, I studied a new field of knowledge for myself. It turned out that the main structure is HTML, we draw all the styles in CSS (later mastered less and scss), and write the logic in JavaScript. So I managed to create the first site that looked extremely wretched, but it was at least some kind of result and little experience.

Some are looking for some kind of magical courses (with another Internet guru) after which you will immediately acquire new knowledge. This is not entirely true, because the information is collected from different sources: these are of course books, video tutorials, articles, the same courses (any you can find), including online courses, and a lot of practice. Securing the lessons learned with practical examples. And of course, one of the best sites for developers at stackoverflow.com where you will find just a bunch of answers in the course of project execution. In any case, this is work and diligence that must be applied.

I must say that I was already 31 then and the situation was aggravated by the lack of higher IT education, work experience and good command of it. and English. tongues. Those. an absolutely uncompetitive candidate without the slightest prospect will get into at least the most seedy office. Having selected some more or less suitable positions where juniors were required in front-end development, I nevertheless sent resumes which came either by refusal or remained unanswered. Therefore, by standard methods, I had no chance to find work in the forehead and I understood this well.

2. Two in one


Having considered my savings, it became clear that I could hold out for a maximum of two months without work, and during this time I was going to implement a plan that had matured with me. Namely, to offer yourself as a junior developer who is free, but for experience, will work or undergo practical training. I understood that it won’t give me much, but it will be an experience, and I can already be on the trail. to show such projects, solved such problems and in which issues he participated. And in this I saw a weak, but hope for a start in the IT field. It is unlikely that anyone would think of working for free and this could distinguish me from other applicants. Also, it was necessary to show the employer something from the completed projects, even if they were made with errors or completed “not in trend”.

There was no time or deep knowledge to create a portfolio. Therefore, I made my biography in the form of a dynamic infographic (now I would have done everything in a completely different way), which I implemented on a closed site. All diagrams, biography, skills, and small completed projects, everything was presented on this site. Drop-down lists, buttons, menus, sliders, etc. everything was agreed among themselves and assembled into one single project. And now, when I sent the resume, I attached a link to the site where the login and password for access were attached. And any potential employer could immediately assess the level of qualification and, let’s say, the degree of need for the company. Via webmaster.yandex.ruI recorded all the IPs who came in, from which parts of Germany, where I clicked with the mouse and what I looked through. Well, for valuable advice on designing a high-quality design, I would like to thank the talented designer Denis from Moscow, who helped me figure out the selection of the right fonts and colors for the graphics for free.

Of course, I could register on de.linkedin.com and www.xing.com But firstly, I was not a super cool specialist in development and I didn’t really like the openness of this data, if anyone wanted, I could see who I was and where he worked. Later, I still ended up there, for self-promotion, although this is not important.

3. From centrifugal to centripetal


About the third day after the CV was sent out, something inexplicable began. If earlier I received 100% of 100 failures. Now 80% were invited to talk, called, offered to remind myself later. And one company on the same day invited for an interview, where I came.

The company itself was small and consisted of 5 people. At the interview was only the head of this company. He understood that there was no education and work experience, and my German was not of the best quality. But he had before my eyes my project, which was completed, albeit not professionally, but you could try to start working with me. Frankly, he just believed in me.

They were engaged in the creation of dashboard applications for the industry ( generation 4.0 who knows) This chef liked my “site” and even looked like the work they are doing. They used JavaScript and their own framework version 1.0, which later did not please me, because the application became clear the raw, no documentation, few specialists. But I could not know all this at the very beginning of the path, the most important thing, finally, the years of deprivation and suffering end. They accepted me. The salary was offered almost 4 times higher (they did not even ask why the word is free in the resume) in comparison with what I earned earlier and I simply could not believe it. And I did all this myself and have never seen such money in my life.

Nevertheless, the volumes and deadlines were a little annoying. A year later, I left there. But I still managed to get experience in “combat” JavaScript, a little in PHP and MySQL databases.

I’ll skip several episodes, other companies also had work, hard new knowledge, confusing code, getting to know Jira and Git, inadequate “colleagues” and some eternally screaming effective managers (yes, they are here too) who cannot establish mutual understanding with customers who could not agree on a price for working with Ukrainian and Polish companies and are not able to understand how to remake their GPS web system on GLONASS or when the company’s chief agrees to create a new product, signs some paper, and only then asks the specialists at the company if they will be able to realize this project simply in the dark ... etc. But all this was the richest prof. experience in German companies that hardly anyone will tell.

And yet I was lucky. There I met several “our” programmers from Ukraine, Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan, who did not need to explain for a long time and we understood each other perfectly. All the same, our people are our people, probably only abroad you understand this. So that no one speaks, we are one people.

Through time, life scattered us in different directions. Someone went to freelance, two guys opened their startup (something with a backend and setting up the server side), the rest moved to other companies. But we always maintained contact with each other and helped as best we could. They shared information and “recommended” to our bosses, good specialists, naturally our people. So we arranged a guy from Kazakhstan for a good position as a PHP developer related to the state. insurance, another as a “freighter” to a logistics company, another to the IT security department of one of it. banks. Then I found Irina, about whom I wrote above. Her work was better than the previous one, but still ungrateful. Together, they arranged for one audit company with a very decent salary, which she is now very happy.

Instead of an epilogue (almost thesis)

The most powerful word is hard work.
Self-promotion and self-presentation as the key to success.
Do not wait, but create the future yourself right now. All power is in you.
Difficulties temper and gather whole people around you.
Former classmates, classmates, friends are checked only in deed, and not in words.
And of course help each other!

PS: Almost all my friends from Ukraine and Russia do not know this story, and they were always sure that if I was in Germany, then life was a success. Those difficulties that are described have a place to be. They are still waiting for some, others are already behind. But I sincerely wish you never to know about them.

And remember: "nobis libertas appropinquat" (we have freedom).

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