I Keep Getting Rejected! How Do I Get Web Developer Experience?!

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all right it's Saturday of the Thanksgiving long weekend and I'm headed to CrossFit I don't want to be doing this I'm not feeling so well today uh like I'm not uh I don't have a cold or anything my stomach's pretty upset so hopefully I don't die um but I got a topic for today I had a couple sent in so I'll try to get two done today if I can uh so one on the way there one on the way back and uh the topic is around um kind of this I think a lot of people are experiencing this type of thing like this chicken in the egg problem for getting experience and uh what I mean by that is like you're applying for a job sorry let me get some heat on here um you're applying for a job and you need to have

some type of experience going into that job because that's to meet the qualifications but like you can't get a job to meet the qualification so you never build the experience um same kind of thing happens with like credit cards and stuff right it's like hey you can't get approved for this credit card because you don't have good enough credit but then you can't build credit because you don't have a credit card like this type of thing and uh I think I don't know I don't want to say like I think there's an obvious solution because obviously it's not that obvious if uh if people are getting stuck on this so um this is pretty relevant to what I was writing about in uh the newsletter that I put out this morning actually so I wrote it last night put it out this morning and I

have a live stream um depending on when you're watching this you can catch it live still so that's going to be this Monday coming up it'll be December 2nd uh if you're watching this in the future you've you've missed the live stream but uh all of my live streams are on my main Channel Dev leader and all of the live streams are recorded so you can always go back and watch them um and then if you're able to like if you liked it and you're like hey next time I want to be able to like kind of chime in in the chat just try to see if you can make it for one of them um I try to do them every Monday at 700 p.m.

Pacific so um and then also I should mention uh cuz I briefly did like people sent in these questions right so uh if you want me to talk through anything just write it in a comment send me a message um happy to kind of chat through it this one came in from LinkedIn so um someone messaged me there to go over this um okay so I was writing about in the newsletter just like different things to focus on for building projects and um one of the things that I recommend people do is like cuz I think people hyperfocus on like hey let me go build um like how do I build a startup or how do I make a business out of it and it's like man let's just like it's just overkill for most people for what you're trying to do in the beginning

which is just build build that experience so in the recommendations I give for that kind of stuff it's really about like you know pick pick a space that you want to be building in so if it's web applications mobile applications embedded desktop whatever pick pick a space that you want to be in and then I recommend trying to align uh to a hobby and that way as you're building stuff and getting stuck like at least you have this hobby element that uh makes it interesting for you and that way it doesn't feel so bad as you get stuck my one mirror is completely foggy that's no good um there no heated mirrors in this thing probably not um okay so the reason I think that's like relevant is the first part actually which is like build projects in a space that you want to be

in and if we think about this question where someone's saying like hey I don't like actually the way that it was framed was more that they're actually doing well in the interviews but they're being rejected because um you know it's it's the feedback they get is that hey you don't have experience in this area now if you're not getting experience in that area like you can create that experience and you might say well that's not really that's not true because like I'm not actually working at a company doing it but like there's there's different things that as like as a hiring manager I would be looking for here and I want to explain um depending on level of experience and everything like that like what I would hope to see for someone who is not just brand new is like is that you've built software

in teams like that's really helpful right I understand if you're brand new that that's not going to be the case right that's that's part of starting somewhere so something that I would hope to see from software Engineers they built software in teams and then what's nice is like if you've built software in an area that's relevant to what we're doing and I don't necessarily mean the domain like that can be nice so when I was building digital forensic software it's pretty rare that you're going to find other people that have built software in like for digital forensics right but if they built desktop software if they understand like some of the technology we're using that can be a value ad um but again like you know I'm going on a bit of a tangent here but I've definitely hired people that like they were able

to demonstrate good software development capabilities without having to have exact experience in the same technology or the domain so not a requirement however if that's the feedback that's being received like hey uh for and I think in this case it was web development you don't have experience in web development what I would recommend this person do is go build projects that are like using web technology if they had specific feedback about different Stacks to use like even better right go build build literally anything pick the language in the stack and go build something and again I would take my advice from before which is like align it to a hobby uh I always you'll hear me always joke about and it's half a joke but uh joke about using like Pokemon right like go build a a pokedex tracker um I say it because I

think like I know Pokemon's awesome and I think everyone's going to have their own hobbies and stuff so it doesn't matter what it is it could be something like Pokemon it could be like soccer related it could be movies it could be anything so if this person's getting feedback like you know we need to see more experience in web Tech and like specifically we would want to see like you're working in Django cool like go go build something in that right um the the part about like well it's not like professional experience it's not in a team it's not whatever like personally as an engineering manager or a hiring man manager I would be looking for that not necessarily coupled together so if there was an expectation that hey like we want to see that you've built software in teams just as an example I

don't necessarily need to see you've built software in teams working with Jango like that's I don't there's nothing about the text stack or the language that that needs me to marry those things together right so if the requirements for the level were like we want to make sure that you have some experience building software in teams that's like one thing to go look for and if they were like and we want to make sure you have experienced building in webtech okay that's another thing to look for they don't have to be joined now I would imagine for this person if they're going for uh I I actually can't recall and I don't want to pull my phone out while I'm driving um I think they're actually at a more intermediate level if I'm not mistaken so I think if they're going I think yeah the

context was they want to move away from building like more like infrastructure and platform stuff and do more user facing so they're already sort of at least like an intermediate perhaps even closer to senior I'm not exactly sure so if we adjust this a little bit right this person does have experience working in teams building software awesome right it doesn't matter at all that it's not in webtech you have experience doing it cool you're able to to go through behavioral interviews and stuff like that talk about challenging sit situations talk about how um like either challenging situations with individuals navigating deadlines changing requirements like all this kind of stuff you have experience doing that not in webtech doesn't matter um because I think that's another thing that a lot of people again maybe hyperfocus on or or miss the mark on is that when we're

doing behavioral interviews it's like I'm not there to like go understand all the technical details like I'm there to gauge behavioral things so I want to see how you work in a team how you navigate these different things how you approach them your thought process not not oh um you know you optimize this thing and it's because you use this trick and like that's cool but it's just not what I'm after so for this individual they have experience at Mid to senior level they can handle behavioral stuff now if they're trying to get into these roles uh and it feels like I mean there probably feels like a bit of a step back for them right because they're saying you know I've been in the industry for a little bit building stuff but I want to shift gears for what I'm building am I going

to have to be considered like a junior at this or something like that I don't like I don't necessarily think so um and I say that because like I've hired people that don't know C or they've been hired on like around the time I'm starting on a team they don't know C and like that's fine right like they don't they don't need to like are they are they good software developers do they know other languages like can they can they build things yeah okay like they'll learn c not a big deal um different companies have a little bit more luxury with this by the way um I would say I don't have like hard evidence on this but I would say larger companies uh generally can afford that kind of thing uh and small companies where like you know you're you're kind of fighting just

to stay alive they might not uh they might not have the like the safety net to feel like they can spend a month two months 3 months ramping someone up in a programming language and some people don't like to hear that like oh like it's on startups only want to hire like seniors and stuff it's like not really not necessarily but like if you think about it if you're trying to keep a business afloat and you're not able to start paying or getting value out of someone immediately like that's really tough you have to think about it from a business owner's perspective it's going to be really tough to justify and hiring is generally has like a risk component associated with it right so I mean maybe new companies aren't as good at hiring either like they got to work on that get their processes

down so anyway it's just something to think about so I got to move over here let me in buddy the front of his car is all beat up I don't want to drive too close to that um so yeah when it comes to the project part specifically I think you can and you should create your own experiences um if you have the feedback coming in that companies that you're not getting into or saying we Sorry like everything else is good but we want more experience there go build some stuff go build some stuff right it doesn't matter what it is um if you are getting different feedback on different text Stacks perhaps um and you're not necessarily like you know anchored to any of those you're happy to kind of go explore like build different things build here's an example go build your your Pokedex

tracker and then rebuild it in a different language and a different text tag try that right now you have experience actually comparing and contrasting these different Tech Stacks you could understand them maybe better because you're learning where some are stronger some are weaker um like this might feel like it's a waste right it it might feel like it's a waste because you're like well why would I go build the same thing I already have it but like that wasn't the goal the goal is to build the experience right if you're building experience doing it that's what's going to matter so when it comes time to being able to explain this on a resume like I think personally it's a cool opportunity to be able to say I built this thing you know I use this framework uh I I rewrote it or you know I

even if you wanted to swap Technologies out for like a database or something if that was some of the feedback talk about that right like I I think that that's a really cool way to demonstrate that you were using these things to go learn and understand them because when I'm interviewing people guess what I want to understand if they're learning and understanding the technologies that they're working with um like that's ultimately what I'm trying to assess this is probably one of the dumbest things I could have seen someone do pulled out across three lanes of traffic absolutely stupid but hey you can't fix stupid right oh man okay well I'm pulling into CrossFit here this is a pretty short one um I'll have another one on the way back but yeah the idea was really like create those experiences for yourself don't wait um don't

feel like you have to go necessarily back to like well I can only apply to Junior roles um you might have to kind of uh you know lower the bar on that kind of stuff but um you can can and should create your own experiences I think it's a great opportunity there's no parking oh there's one parking spot nice okay is there yeah just one and I don't have a working mirror was a really tight parking job yikes I'm also beside this enormous Tacoma and this other big truck beside me got this guy and you got this guy I don't know if you can see it so I I can't see a thing there's a cyber truck behind me looks like a big shiny dumpster okay I will see you folks later hope that helps just a quick one for today take care