IT career and study in Poland. How i ended up here

Studying in Poland


Why am I here? This is a very spontaneous decision that occurred to me after I came across a similar article about studying abroad. Maybe she will also affect you and you will discover new opportunities.

image
Opportunities will be found for those who seek them.

Please follow the cat.

Studies and preparatory courses

image

Admission to the university and even abroad was completely new to me. During the year I took Polish courses. They began 2 months before the start of the academic semester. For all the time of the courses, I did not differ in the best attendance, but I had good results. Studying in a group of foreigners like me very quickly began to bear fruit. Group classes simplify the threshold of entry and make you communicate for 4-6 hours a day, which is of course useful. Upon arrival, of all the words I knew only one thing, I won’t say which word.

Quick integration with the help of new local acquaintances, future friends, helped me express my thoughts in 3 months, of course not as I would like. But even after a year and a half here, having fallen into the midst of those who are not used to the fact that you don’t know all the slang (in the future you tried to express yourself more easily), they let me know that there is room to grow, the problem was not global and very short-lived.

I remember the big eyes of the Russian speakers during the first month when the lecture was given by the teacher, and not the Polish language teacher who knows how to find an approach, but there were small concessions, with the understanding that everything comes with time and the teachers did not refuse help. In total, it was complicated, but somehow everything settled down over time, without noticing.

General Learning

  • Studying in Poland for students begins on October 1
  • The winter session begins after the New Year holidays, the summer at the beginning and end of June.
  • Duration of study:
    Bachelor's degree - 6 semesters
    . Engineer
    degree - 7 months. Master's degree - 4 months.
  • Studying in Polish is cheaper than an English-language program.
  • Universities are divided into: private and public

I will not write specifically about the university, since each university has its pros and cons.

Student path

I did not have the opportunity to study at a state university. They need a level of knowledge of the language - B1 (Polish, English). It was possible to spend 1 year and go to general classes and simultaneously study the language at the university. Since I clarified that I arrived without knowledge of Polish, I chose a private university, with a very international audience.

Since the Faculty of Computer Science is Engineering, the subjects are accordingly basic. All expectations about fashionable frameworks and foreign teachers were a little dispelled. I would like to see advanced programming teachers, and not those people who ended their careers 15 years ago and did not write a line of code except for classes.

Regarding state universities, such as: University of Warsaw and the Warsaw University of Technology.
From my workmates, I hear much more positive reviews and I see that the knowledge base is an order of magnitude higher. Not to mention the fact that you can always do something extra. It is only a university program.

Work searches

During my studies, I started looking for work and visited the so-called Targi Pracy (organized meetings with employers).

image

Before I started looking, I accordingly decided the issue of a work permit.
For me, the way out of the situation was to get Karty Pobytu (a type of document allowing the arrival of a foreigner, with access to the labor market).

The first meeting was not entirely successful. I got the opinion that I looked better than some HR. Of course I was unprepared for everything, compared to subsequent meetings, but for that I had motivation and thoughts on how to use my potential the next time and what more to pay attention to and of course coffee, donuts, Playstation and interesting performances and presentations of companies and their activities, as well as new technologies - eyes were running wide.

After that I started sending out packs of CVs and of course it didn’t “shine”; the column Experience (length of service) was absent. It was pretty mean and nondescript. Of course, there was no experience. But you can write projects, even the smallest, because this is already something. Which I accordingly did.

Second meeting
. CV prepared and printed. I already roughly understood what to look for potential employers and a couple of days before the meeting I looked at the list of participants and studied their personal sites - what the company does, who it is looking for, whether there are practices. By the way, practice, for example in the summer, is a super opportunity to improve your knowledge, resume and confidence in your skills. After several dozen conversations, the day was over. In general, after this meeting in the future I received calls and letters from HR.

For a month I went for interviews. I visited several companies.
The downside was that at first I did not know what it looked like and was not sufficiently prepared.

I was in different types of companies, even in a real garage, yes, concrete walls and this is a former warehouse.
In a big television company. Everything was perfect, but as a Junior-a Front-end they overestimated me and looked abruptly.

Well, a few more. I will say that I did not like this process:
- stupid questions off-topic (or it was really very subtle humor)
- empty promises (when they do not care who will work for them - if only cheaper, but promises to advise you to the boss and accidentally mentions that there were already 10 people like you, just to call in half an hour and bring down the price)

In general, after all the meetings, having landed slightly, I found an interesting offer with a very crooked page of the company, I hope they do not see this and decided to send the CV. After a day or two, I received a letter offering to remotely take the test. The site with the vacancy had the necessary skills and I decided to refresh my knowledge and prepare well. We agreed on a date and the test was supposed to be sent in an hour, dealt a bit faster and I was invited to talk. There was another test and conversation. As a result, that day I was already their new employee. It was all in essence. What the Boss said to me is exactly the one we were looking for for this position, well, what’s super .

In general, I want to say that the first step was taken and already forgotten as a nightmare.
If I knew that I would love programming and the atmosphere itself only in the office, I would start the search even from the first year of study, but then I was in the afternoon. The fact that it turns out is what we like, but it turned out to be much better in the working environment. I did not meet cranks at the university who would enthusiastically suggest writing something together.

If you are interested in which Web Development technologies and languages ​​are more in demand and paid for in the Polish market (from my observation):

  • JavaScript (most likely obvious)
  • AngularJS (maybe they themselves do not know what they want, but it is everywhere stuck)
  • NodeJS
  • ASP.NET
  • RubyOnRails (offered several times a job, with the ability to frontend to learn from them for several months)
  • Django (in my company most of the projects on it)
  • PHP (mainly the demand where the quality of the product didn’t really bother, but specifically “make up a million sites under Joomla and don’t have time to explain”)


Thanks to those who have read, I will answer your questions with pleasure.

Also popular now: