Getting into tech without a Computer Science degree

Maggie: Okay. Awesome. So, hey everyone, thanks again for joining our event today. So welcome to Codementor events. My name is Maggie, and it's really great to have you all here with us. And I'm really excited to be here with our speaker Anita, a microbiologist turned front end developer and developer advocate to learn more about her journey into tech. My colleagues, Joyce, Darren, and Jen will also be moderating in the chat throughout the event. So if you have any questions, please type them directly in the chat. So before we begin, please make sure that you've muted yourself and to make sure that the event feels lively and fun. I would also encourage you to turn your camera.

Maggie: So I think we started off by asking a lot of audience about where you're from. So I see we have a lot of people from the UK, the US, Taiwan, and India, and all over the world. So that's great. So to begin, Anita will be talking a little bit more about her journey into the tech industry without getting a computer science degree and we'll be ending with a live Q & A. So if you have any questions, feel free to add them in the chat and we'll try to get to as many as possible. Anita, the stage is all yours.

Anita: Okay, thank you. Hello everyone, it's good to be here today. I'm going to share my screen. All right. Hope you can see my screen.

Anita: Okay. My name is Anita Ihuman, and I'm calling from Nigeria today. I'll be speaking on the topic, getting into tech without a computer science degree. And, during the session, I'm going to be giving you a bit about how I got into tech without a computer science degree as a microbiologist, and how is it able to manage that on them. And how you can also get started if you haven't already, and also if you have, or you have a current job and want to migrate or transition into tech, you can also learn that during the session on how you can finally excel in the space, once you get in a useful resource to help dive in on your journey.

Anita: All right. So it's not going to take long, but well, let's get to it. Okay.

Anita: So it's a bit about me. My name is Anita Ihuman. I'm a software developer and a developer advocate at Kyverno, policy engine for Kubernetes, and I'm a technical writer. I advocate for open source as well. I think that’s what got me to where I am right now. So I think I'll take open source if it's fun. I always do that. And I also love cats. So that's just a summary of who I am generally.

Anita: And to get started, I'll tell you a little bit about how I got here. Well, before then, let’s do a little bit of disclaimer, you know, and lots of person say it's not possible to get into this ecosystem, so the tech ecosystem without a computer science degree. And actually a few years back, it was so much of a big deal because whenever I see a job description is broadly written that I need a computer science degree and five years experience to actually learn a job. But I think over time, employee employers have started realizing that it's not about these certificates or how much time in school. It's about how much experience the person has a good time. So you can land a six figure job without a computer science degree.

Anita: I'm not saying that having a computer science degree is utterly useless. I'm not saying that you can’t do so much if you have one already, but if you don't, you can still achieve so much. And in fact, so many persons who are actually at the peak of their careers right now, don't have this degree, but I think they’re really, really great and they're happy. And you can also do that.

Anita: CS degree to me is just a prime. It's not the primary requirements to get started with your career in tech. Okay. So now that we have that out of the way, let me tell you a little bit of how I go to my journey right now. So, I'm a microbiologist by degree. Yes, I do like it per se. I mean, I like I from micro-organisms and all of that, but I didn't see it as a career for myself to venture into on the secret different lifetime. I mean, I never imagined myself spending my entire days in the lab handling the microorganisms, it’s an awesome career, but I didn't see it as something I could do.

Anita: And fortunately and unfortunately, in my final year I had lots of missing scripts. So I had to repeat the year. And that was the worst section or the worst period of my life, I would say. I mean I feel down, I feel like the world wasn't working with me or nothing was working in my favor. And at that point I was like, okay, in as much as I hated microbiology, I really didn't get my degree on time or I have to spend an extra year with that. And so what am I going to do with my life at this point?

Anita: And, so it's the same period when we had the COVID-19 lockdown. And, it was, we worked to my favor at that point, cause I always knew I wanted to try other things. I always know I wanted to go into other things. I, you know, just explore because yes, the world is my oyster. I can do whatever I want. I don't know how long I'm going to be alive. So I have to keep exploring until I'm tired of exploring. Yeah. Then I had friends who were also microbiologists at the time, but they're into tech. They’re really cool. I must admit. I, I always, every there, they had such smart gadgets. They would bring their computers to class and they do so many cool things. Attending conferencesm speaking at conferences, writing articles. I always envied that low key, but then I got to know them better. And they were like, okay, I could do this too. And I doubted it at first, but now I told myself, okay, since we’re in lockdown and my degree isn't going so well, I probably was just try this.

Anita: And that was when I got interested in software development. That's how I abandoned microbiology. I didn't particularly abandon it. I ended up finishing the course, but yeah, it had to do with microbiology and software development at the time. Well, that's how I got into the tech ecosystem or that's how I started my journey.

Anita: At the time I told friends and family that, okay, this is what I want to do. I don't want to do microbiology anymore. And you know how parents generally are, they will definitely bring up the talk that you started this particular degree, why don't you complete this degree for going into the next one was the possibility that you actually excel in this? I mean, so many people actually get degrees for computer science, but you don't have the experience. And the worst part is I was so, I had razor knowledge about the content. That’s one very fact, I had zero knowledge about the computer. I didn't know how to use the control C or control A, but I just knew I wanted to do this. And I decided to do it.

Anita: And I got myself because I'd always ask people what's what's in, should I click at this point? What policies should I use at this point? And that was it two months in, and I wrote my first HTML and CSS landing page. That was like the best moments of my life. I immediately tweeted about it and I had so many persons coming up to say congrats. I was, I felt like, yes, this is where I belong because I'd never seen an ecosystem where lots of persons accepted you regardless of your background and all of that. And I got to own, which it's a few months in, I heard about open source and I'm like, wow what is open source about. Curiosity made me do lots of research. I got into a community and started contributing.

Anita: Once I sit there and realize that, okay, I'm getting a hunger for it. I know at least , I can do a landing page if someone asks me to defend. So I'm not that terrible. I think the imposter syndrome kept coming in all the time. I mean, never goes away up to this point. I still feel that imposter syndrome sneaking in, telling me you’re a terrible developer advocate, you should probably go back to microbiology, but there's no going back right now. I come too far. Yes. So I kept all my open source contributions and I made lots of connections and network why contributing to open source and my contributions to open source, luckily for me landed me my current role as a developer advocate because imagine someone who was in microbiology and six months is I'm looking for a job in a cloud native competing organization. That would be absurd. But then I did it.

Anita: My current boss said I was a good fit for the role and I got hired. I've been managing my developer advocate role since then, as well as technical writing and public speaking; it hasn't stopped me from advocating for open source. My role hasn't stopped me from writing either and in my current role, I'm learning quite a lot about Kubernetes and the cloud native ecosystem. And, I've also contributed to an open source community project as well as a community manager. And I'm also handling that currently.

Anita: So that is how I can got to where I am from being microbiologist that hated the lab to a developer advocate and technical writer. So that's just all about my story. Now that we've heard my part let's get to it. Whatever you're doing right now, regardless of what it is that must have made you think, okay, I want to attend this section. I hear what this lady has to say. Well, let me tell you, you're welcome here. If you're from the current rule right now, and your mind is telling you I hate my job or you're having a degree in something else. Your mind keeps telling you, you know, you're not going to use this degree. Then that's a sign that you have to try other options.

Anita: I'm not saying that the tech ecosystem is for everyone. Everyone has to be, software developer to excel. I'm not saying that there's several other skills that you could use that I know that you are not learning right now. Getting into tech made me realize that all of these I learned in school, I would have learned them online. Yes, I would because Google was just a click away. And I didn't actually realize that until I got into the tech ecosystem. So all of the things I learned in school, I could have just left some, most of those online. But going to school also made me realize another thing. I made lots of friends and my friends introduced me to this ecosystem.So it wasn't so much of a bad idea spending four years in school at all. I would also add to that.

Anita: So if you get into this ecosystem… Can you turn off your mic please? Thank you. All right.

Anita: So if we get into this ecosystem, there's so many things you should look out for. It is yes, it is rosy. It gets really rosy. Whenever the returns start coming in, you're going to feel like, yes, you've made a huge accomplishment for yourself, but there's so many other things that come along with it. It's time consuming. So you should look out for that. You're going to spend most of your time doing lots of research on Google, asking questions, reaching out to people, but then, that's part of the journey. It gets overwhelming. Yes, it does. Because this is an ecosystem that there's so much to learn that you probably haven't heard of, and the more you learn, the more you realize that is a vast void waiting for you to fill up with knowledge and you just have to keep learning because yes it is an ever evolving ecosystem. Things keep changing every day. I think last month I learned one thing about Kubernetes and this month it's a new thing altogether, and I have to learn that as well, but where it gets in along with it. So it's an ever evolving ecosystem. We don't, you don't just stick to one, one particular fuel and feel like that's it. Because if we want to stay relevant in this ecosystem, you have to keep evolving with the trends that come up as well. And also it is life-changing life changing experience in the sense that you get to meet tons of people. I've met people from different parts of the world, just like on this section. I can see people from all around the globe and, most, most persons here. I'm not even sure I know where the particular continent is, but, I'm talking to you right now. And that's like a life changing experience because I'm able to share my talk and share my experience with you. And that's something that I feel really, really fulfilled about. So it's really a life-changing experience.

Anita: Gets to the next part. We're going to look at how to get started. It's very easy. It's not so much of a big deal. If you already have a job that you're looking to transition to a new field, we can also look at that in this point. And also if your students, I want to manage your academic works as well as the new career path, you can also tackle that. So let's get into it. It's very simple. The first thing to always do, whenever you want to start the new thing is do your research and do your findings, find out all about programming. So what is it exactly you want to learn about this program and what is it exactly you want to find out?

Anita: So whatever it is, just focus on learning the basics. It doesn't matter if you want to be like on the code and or document and documentation and or design and or analysis and whichever one, it is a different path that you could actually look into in the tech ecosystem. It's a very vast one. So whichever one you're looking to dive into, always understand what programming is because that's where you get to understand which area is the best fit for you, which programming language you want to and, where your strength actually lies. So, first understand what program is all about, and then look at different programming language that, this is very, very important because the new trends and languages keep coming every day, but then just look for the one that will give you a basic knowledge of what a basic website should read or what's simple programming app should look like, getting you're good to go and then understand different career paths for each of these programming languages.

Anita: So as the Python developer, you know, there are different choices. And we asked that you could get involved in, you could focus on the front end or just go to the back end, which is not JS. And as, whichever programming language that you learn once you're able to understand basics, which is HTML, CSS, Javascript, and Python, you can also, you can add this point, dive into any ecosystem, or you can actually look out for any areas.

Anita: First thing to look out for is always understanding the basics. So low wage programming is all about the kind of different programming languages and then see if you want that you know, you'll be able to learn in this short time and get started with it. And once you've understood these basics, I know which area you're going to look out for. Next thing is to decide your career path. And the different career path like I said, it all depends on what you want to do for yourself in the future. When I started on my end, the first thing I told myself is I want that to be a data analyst, but then I realized that I don't like, I can't need so much data because it gets confusing.

Anita: And the next thing I do myself is I want to be, I want to study cyber security and I realized that probably I'm a, like, sneaking into people's affairs, but I don't think I like it so much to make it as a career. Then, I told myself I want to be a web developer at this point. I didn't think of any downsides of being a developer. And I went through it and I was good at being a front end developer. And I've been at that end since landing my front end skills. I'm also learning other things alongside. So just decide career path whichever way you can. The best way to actually decide a career path is to ask questions. So if you see persons that are already in the field, find out which areas they're in and find out what made them get to that point. Every person has a reason for why they learn any particular thing.

Anita: Now, if you see they're reasons not aligned with what you're looking for, then move on to the next. I'm doing lots of research because it's even crazier. When you get into, let's say you get into web development two months in, and then you realize, oh, this is not what I want. There's too much code. I don't like this, move to the marketing end. Then realize you have very little knowledge about marketing and probably too boring for you. And then you say, oh, finally design, you want to do, you've spent about six to five months contemplating on which career path is best fit for you. And that is a lot of time and time matters a lot in this ecosystem. So you want to use your time wisely. So you have to decide the first month of looking at what's programming language, you can still learn. While you're doing that, try to decide a career path for yourself. And if it's web development, you know, that different areas under web development, there’s front end, there’s back end and there’s full stack.

Anita: And if you're going for design, you know that there are different aspects of that design. You have either a UI/UX you have the graphics, motions, animation, or so much more. Then we have under markets in relation, you're going to see a lots of roles from advocacy to content, creating community management and all of that.

Anita: And on that database, we have different areas as well as administration on cyber safety. So under each of this part here, whichever one you choose, there's definitely a job waiting for you. So you shouldn't look at if their jobs are very, because I see tons of job openings every single day, and I'm like, I wish I had this skill I would just applied for this role. But sometimes it's not about getting the job that might get some experience because once you have the experience, the job will come to you very, very easily. It doesn't take so much time once you have the experience. So understanding career path you are looking and then start getting your experience in that particular area.

Anita: Now, now that you've understood what you're looking out for, how do you maintain this balance? Between your current job or your academic work, and then this new found career that you've chosen for yourself? Well, it gets really, really tricky at this point, because you would try to see up or maybe this is the university meeting, you know, take it full stop and then breathe. And then. Relax. I'm not stress my brain, but yeah, that also leads me to speaking to you. So you might not want to listen to that. Sometimes you want to just give it a break and then rest, but then also that comes as well with the procrastination and try to manage, how do you manage your time with your current job and what you're doing all your academic work and this.

Anita: On my end, I tried as much as possible to learn at night because I spent most of my days or my afternoons either in school or handling tax. I stayed with my parents at the time. So I was doing mostly house chores or staying in school. Or doing one thing or the other that consumed majority of my time. And at the end of the day, I get so drained. The only time I had to learn was actually night hours. So I spent most of my nights trying to learn a little icon. I spend like three hours in the night just learning one thing. And it helped me a lot because within a period of one month, I was able to understand good enough to start practicing even with nights learning.

Anita: And at that point I realized, okay, now that I can switch my time. I have control what exactly it is I am looking for. I started allocating my time schedules, even if it's one hour a day is one hour I had to learn one thing or contribute to one thing. All right. Practical. And that also helps me a lot. So learn time management it's matters a lot because your time is everything. Imagining spending 20 hours on your current job and you want to let's say divide, divide that 20 hours of what your hours in week two. Your parts, your part job, or your new career path that you're looking in for? Well, it's actually simple. You do have the time frame from when your mind is relaxed enough to actually get something new from when you knew that you're free from the cause that you're going to get him from work or you're free from the assignment or the tax that youre going to receive from your work.

Anita: And at that point you just can't use, okay. If it's 6:00 PM to 8:00 PM, you're scheduled for that. Yes. I'm willing to learn. Even if it's one topic for that particular few hours, you're going to focus and learn that thing and then do the same thing the next day. Continuously and within a space of three months, you actually acquired so much knowledge from just giving or sparing two hours, three hours for learning. Another thing is prioritization.

Anita: Learn to put task first. So for me, I have this tasks, I have this notes, what I put down almost everything I have to do most of the time it gets so filled up. I have to like stick them on the walls just to make sure I don't forget on every single time I align them, according to which one comes first. So with tasks that I'm willing to take on for that particular moment or that particular day. So if it is your job or a particular responsibility that I have to do, then go to it once you're done with that, come back and learn and prioritize. If it's a new topic that, you know, that experience will help you in your tech career, then put it first. Make sure you master that and get get good at it, try putting things that are more important to come first. Whenever I organize new tasks, you can use task management tools, try to use your Google calendar because I always set reminder on my end to get notification whenever I have to write an article or whatever, I have to read a book or whenever I have to actually study. So I actually dedicated times for this and get notifications for that.

Anita: You can also use task management tools like Trello, you Trello board to help you organize what exactly your meant to learn. And the prioritization is good in a sense that you must have understood the topics or the areas that you're supposed to focus your energy on, and then you're working towards that. So this has helped you in the prioritization then play to your strengths. There’s this say that a Jack of all trades is a master of none. Which is true. It's partly true in the sense that you become a master of none when you do not prioritize. You become a master of none when you try to put all of your eggs inside one basket and handle all at once. That's when you become a master of none.

Anita: So what if you become an expert at none of them, that's what's happening in that situation. But then it's in an area or in a case where you try, so you know what each of the jobs or each of the tasks first and then take one step at a time. You'll be able to master one and then while you're mastering that you're beginning a new start with something new. So try to play with your strengths. Don't stick it all on yourself. You're human. So while you're learning, try as much as possible to tell yourself that I'm human and my brain needs to rest to absorb all that I have done and all that I am doing, because if your brain doesn't rest at the end of the day, you'll be burned out and you're wasting lots of cognitive resources because you're focusing all your energy on learning different topics, different things at the same time.

Anita: A typical example in this scenario would be learning two programming languages at the same time without actually having a better knowledge or better understanding of one. While you’re trying to learn JavaScript, you're also trying to learn Python. These are like two very different programming languages that focus on different areas generally. And then you're letting them put some stats in both of them within the same period and trying to manage yourself at this point, you're going to burn a lot of mental resources and you end up not actually being, it could ask anyone or be an expert at any of these programming languages, because you either confuse yourself along the way, and then you get exhausted mentally and you stop learning along the way. So we don't want to do that. So play according to your strengths and try to tell yourself that you're human and you have to let your brain absorb all the things.

Anita: And then try as much as possible to be realistic with your goals. So when I started my career out, I tell myself, I give myself two years of when to be a senior. I'm going to be as a senior role, which is very possible, which is very possible. While you're calculating all of the this try to look at all that obstructions that are going to be coming up along the way, cause you have to learn. It's not easy to assume as a senior role from just two years of working experience. It's not really easy. I'm a genius, but then it's not really easy. So, you have to be realistic, look at things that you can achieve, short-term period, long-term period. And then calculate how very feasible is this my goals or how peaceful, are my dreams that I'm working towards. And if you think they're long, this plan that you have should be long-term goals, then you should put them under your long-term goals. And then if you're working towards short-term, make sure they are actually something you can work towards within that short-term period and those goals that you should work towards for a lifetime. Try as much as possible to be realistic with your goals while you're organizing your time.

Anita: And by the time you've learned how to, you know, toggle between whatever you're doing right now on your new career path. The next thing to do is to understand how to get or excel in this particular career. People have different ways of doing things. You know, it doesn't really work for everyone. There's no rule or there's no step to step guide to become an expert per se. But if I'm judging based on how other persons or people's experiences, as well as mine, I will say the first thing is to actually look out for its consistency because in anything you're doing, that is tech-related or any field at all, consistency is always the key. How much time or how much devotion you give to that particular thing you want to learn.

Anita: So it's an example, is this, I was meant to take a certification course on Kubernetes administer it’s CKAD I think. That's the name of certification CKAD and at the time I thought I could actually do it. I mean, although I was very new to Kubernetes, but then I told myself I could do it, which is very possible. But then I had to like toggle so many things and I wasn’t consistent with my learning process. And I did the first trial of the test. Fortunately, they give you two times, you have to try out, you know, take this test. I did the first try out. After two months of study, which was not consistent. Mind you. I was switching between my life, my job, and also my side gigs that I usually get, my writing gigs and the open-source engagement. So I was switching between all of this and I wasn't consistent. And at the end of the day, I really didn't blame anybody for not making it pass the first trial. I felt I didn't devote so much time to that, but I believe that if I was consistent and I had put that particular certification first, I would have actually gotten it. But I had so much to do at the time. That's what another thing about consistency.

Anita: Another example is I have a friend. She was consistent with that contributions to open source. She started contributing to open source almost the same time as me, but she was consistent like devoted to this particular thing, contributing to open source and advocating to open source. I was in a period of five months and she earned the Github star profile. And that's one of the things you gave from consistency, because she told us that this is an area I want to focus my energy on and she kept and gave all of her time and effort to that particular. She was consistent and kept on pushing for open source and she got what she was looking for.

Anita: Another thing you should always try to put first is being focused. There're so much things, there're so much going on in the tech ecosystem. I know that every, every two months or every month a new technology and a new skill comes up and people are, you know, agitated to learn it. But oftentimes if you want to, you know, learn and actually meet your targets, just try as much as possible to look beyond the noise that is going on around you. So people are talking about this new programming language and you and your own parts have been learning impractical programming language for two months, and you're just at the brim of, you know, getting a hang of it. And then suddenly someone tells you that there's this new programming language that is going to be the future of tomorrow. There's something your mind telling you, let me just abandon what I'm doing. And then go on learn this particular new one. No. By the time you abandone that, you've abandoned all the time, all the knowledge that you acquired just to chase after something that they told you is the future but you’re not certain what if it’s the future for everybody, but it’s not the future for you.

Anita: That's a question you should always ask yourself, but just try as much as possible to stay focused on your lane. Try as much as possible to ignore the noise around you because too many persons who would comment around it's the newest trends, newest topics that they feel will be best for you, but try as much as possible to focus your energy on parts that you've chosen for yourself and work toward a particular lane. And then grow your network.

Anita: So, network is very, very important in the tech ecosystem. Recently, I saw a tweets that says the tech, the tech community is focused on clicks. Well, I didn't much, I didn't actually try to debate on that. Cause some words does, there is some truth in that because you see a lot of persons belong to communities and you'd be wondering why are they part of a community while it can be moved on their own? Well, it's simple. You have a better opportunity to grow and learn faster if you’re among people who share like minds and ideas with you. I ended up at that particular time, you realize that if you have a question, you will be, you find it very easy to reach out to somebody else who has solved that, that particular task or that particular problem.

Anita: A few days back, he help you with his own ideas and experiences. So that is all about, you know getting the experience and then focusing on the network building, join yourself with communities, Twitter is like the very perfect place to grow your network as a programmer. Twitter and LinkedIn as a programmer, Twitter should be your best buddies and also stackoverflow and communities like that. Places you should be looking out for when engaging with people, because at that point you're going to meet people who share the same thoughts and ideology with you. So if you're in the DevOps ecosystem, you see a lots of persons who are also in that aspect, who can contribute their tools and ideas to help you, and you can also impact their own knowledge as well. You might be surprised that even as a newbie, you're able to help somebody else, and the person’s really grateful for life because you've made an impact by just answering a single question.

Anita: I remember this happened to me, I think earlier this year, I helped somebody, a company reached out to me and they said they wanted me to talk to the community I was contributing to if they can adopt to their project. And, well, I loved the project they were bringing in because it helped to onboard people into open source. It was an onboarding project. Yeah. And at the time I was like, okay, I tried as much as possible to make the communication as smooth as possible even without knowing this person that reached out to me, even without prior connection with this person. And that was it. And I think that was where the community ended. And just yesterday I got an email that they launched projects and they got about 26 million funding. That was, I was impressed because I think I made a little effort to return to contributing to what they were doing. And I felt really, really happy about myself. Although I am not part of the project. I felt I did something that helped somebody else out there. So grow your network, regardless of how small it is, grow your network helps you a lot, connect with other people, ask questions, try as much as possible to do a lot of public learning.

Anita: Public learning helps you. You can do this by writing technical articles or creating video content that helps other persons, or even help yourself. Because I don’t know, for me, I learned to write through writing and speaking. So, if you’re also one of the persons that learn through this, you can also try as much as possible. But if you learn by asking questions on public slack channels or public community handles, you can also do that and ask your questions or you realize how many persons you connect with after you've learned of this. Connection is always a good key. And just under that seems to help you understand that networking helps you in this ecosystem.

Anita: I got my current role because I connected with someone who came to, you know, speak about their project, which is Kyverno. In the community I was contributing to. And afterwards, if I can fast forward to like four months after, they reached out to me that I was doing a great job, and that I should come and check out this room. So you see, networking helps you a lot. No matter how little, or how small the experience you've acquired is, try as much as possible to reach out to people and ask questions. And good thing Twitter has these Twitter spaces now to bring people together and share their thoughts and opinions. You can join some of these spaces and try to ask questions and connect to the speakers or anyone who is the that space. You'd be surprised at how much impact those people will make in your life. Not today. It might not be today. It may not be tomorrow, but within a very short period, you'll see that that person actually impacts your life in one way or another.

Anita: Yeah, so these are a few tips to help you succeed in this career path part. And with all of these being said, you might want to also look at the resources to help you get started. Now you like understood the, you heard my story and then how I got to this particular point, you've seen all the points, all the tips that helped me on my end. And I hope this also helps you as well. Now, if you want to get started and you are wandering how I'm going to share these slides afterwards. So you can look at some of these links and check out, most of these sites are really helpful because it helps me on my end to, you know, learn about a particular language I was taking at the time. So this might also help you on your end too. You check out the Udemy and Crousera sites, they have available courses for whichever career paths you're looking for. It doesn't have to be code-related. If you want to learn anything. Even if it's just normal documentation and technical writing, even if it's relational course, you can also look out some of these on these channels as well. And then YearOne is another community that I recently found out about. They help self-taught programmers gets connected with each other and then link them with recruiters who are looking for employees. So you might also want to check out theYearOne site because I joined this recently and I think it's really a great one they're doing out there.

Anita: And finally, what I like to say is there is no wrong in being a self-taught developer. I think before I used to feel embarrassed about it.

Maggie: Hey everyone. I think the speaker is probably experiencing some technical issues on her end. So let’s just give her a few minutes to get back online. And I think she's back.

Maggie: Anita, can you hear me? Okay. Sorry about that. So I think we just have a few more minutes going on and then we can go directly into we're probably go directly into the Q & A section, but I think, Anita is almost wrapping up her talk right now. So. Just as a brief recap, Anita shared about how important it is for kind of beginners to learn about programming basics and essentially what a programming language is. She also shared more on why kind of having an educational background in a computer. Science is essentially secondary to getting into Tech. And I see, we have a lot of questions in a Q, in a chat right now. So once Anita gets back or we'll make sure to get to as many as possible, but I do know that we're running a bit over time, so I'm really sorry about that.

Maggie: So we'll try to get to maybe two or three questions during the Q & A part. But if we don't get to your questions, no worries. you can always post it on the event page itself, and then our team will make sure that either us or the, or Anita can also directly go into the event page to share it.

Maggie: Let’s give Anita maybe one to two more minutes.

Anita: Hi, sorry for that. It was a disconnection. Well, I was just about to round up, so I might as well just get to that. Yes. So there's nothing wrong with you being self-taught developer, regardless of how many years you have in your experience, once you come across someone who has like five years experience. There will be this imposter syndrome telling you you're not good enough, but, I just want to tell you today that for you to have been able to learn or get past HTML/CSS, and then get into any programming language, you're awesome. Cause it's not really easy as some persons who just stop at HTML/CSS for like six one year or sometimes it never continue. And I wonder if they just didn't want to, or did you find out the time to, you know, get started, but then so long as you're able to get past this phase, you're doing an awesome job just to keep doing what you're doing and being good at it.

Anita: So thank you so much. I hope this section has impacted you or taught you enough about getting an awesome job at actually getting a computer science degree. I'm not saying a computer science degree, it's ultimately useless, I'm not saying that lots of persons who are currently managers or administrators in their current roles, never had a computer science degree, but then doing great at it.

Anita: But you too kind of also assume roles like this and just be good at it. So I hope this has helped you in one way or another, thank you so much for your time. I'll take up any questions right now, if you have any for me.

Maggie: Awesome. Thanks for sharing your experience and for giving us a talk, Anita. So we do have a few questions from the audience. I think we're just gonna maybe run through one or two and for the rest of the questions that we did not get through. I think people can just post it directly on the event page and maybe Anita can go directly on the event page itself to answer those questions.

Maggie: But for the first question, it was from David. So once you've done all the initial learning, how do you kind of land that first job?

Anita: Well, it's not so easy landing your first job because recruiters always look for ways to put in so many requirements for a role, but you know, you can handle it's your experience, but then once you see the requirements for that particular role, if you're intimidated, you tell yourself this role is not for me. But one thing I've learned from applying for jobs is even if they put five years there, normally no one’s stopping you from applying. Cause he might have way more experience compared to the person who has five years experience. You don't know that and you never know that until you actually apply. So by the time you've gotten yourself to the point where you can, if you're going for a developer role, for instance, and you've gotten to the point where you can't handle a simple landing page, then you can handle a page with multiple options and page layouts then you know that yes, at this point I can actually look up internship role. And now is it because it's not really easy becoming a full-time developer because you have to have few experience. I can only get this field experience from taking up roles, such as internship roles, and then no way to get these field experiences is by engaging in contributions with open source to really, really help you to get the experience you're looking for.

Anita: By the time you have all of these, then you can actually go on and start deleting your portfolio and raising me. And while you're learning, try as much as possible to flex your skills by developing past projects that you could put in your resume or your portfolio for people to refer to and see how much you've done. Some persons are so shy and feel so intimidated and they never put their project out there. And at the end of the day, they wonder why I didn't, if I get a jobs on time, but it's okay to show off what you've done regardless of how the little it is. It's okay to show off to the world, post on Twitter, LinkedIn and tell people, yes. I might not be an expert, but I did this and I feel good about myself. So it’s okay to do that. And at the time you start doing that, it's okay to start applying for jobs. I hope that answers the question.

Maggie: So thanks for sharing that. So essentially having a great portfolio that you can share with them, with other people out there.

Maggie: So for the last question it's from Farroq. So it's very similar to the previous question, but how do you kind of fill the gap that self-taught developers have for not having a computer science degree.

Anita: Sorry, I didn't get that. Can you repeat again?

Maggie: How do you fill the gap that self-taught developers have for not having a computer science degree?

Anita: Well, I dunno what gap you're referring to per se because, most of the.

Maggie: It was more about kind of like the fundamental computer science, theoretical concepts, such as maybe data structures or algorithms, that kind of concepts.

Anita: All right. So I'll give you a difficult example. I knew quite a number of computer students back in school. And I'm going to tell you they're not actually practice in computer science or programming at all today. It's all of the basic knowledge they acquired from computer studies and all of that. They didn't put it to use. And even persons who actually acquired all of these came out to you say you don't have the basic understanding of building a program or an application that's to show you that it doesn't really matter all it's yours that you learn in school. Those years don't actually mean so much, when you're looking for a job or when you’re looking for a role. What matters and what recruiters are looking out for is how much experience you've been able to, you know, gain within that period of time learning how much projects you've worked on. And she can actually show up that. Yes, you have the full knowledge of.

Anita: I really wouldn't say, I'm not saying that this computer science is ultimately useless, like I said earlier, but then, oh, the theories really don't count as much as the practicals and the experience you have would.

Maggie: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Thanks for taking the time to share your thoughts and for answering all the questions today. So that would be a wrap for this event. And if anyone else have any questions or thoughts, feel free to kind of leave them in the discussion section of the event page. Before we end. Anita, do you have anything else you'd like to add or like to share?

Anita: Well, not really, if you have any questions up to now, you can also connect with me on any of my social media handles and ask them right there. I'll be glad to answer and you can also connect as well. So I'll also be glad to connect it to you. Thank you so much for listening for your time. It was really awesome sharing my experience today, I hope the story helps you in one way or another, but thank you so much for your time.

Maggie: Awesome. Thanks. Thanks again for joining us. Everyone thinks huge. Thanks to our speaker, Anita, and I hope everyone enjoyed the talk today and just stay tuned for, we do have an upcoming event next week on November 24th, called building software from scratch, the user centric approach. And I hope to see everyone there. We also post it in the zoom chat, some more additional information about our events.

Maggie: So feel free to check those out before you leave. So that's a wrap for our event today and just a huge thanks to a speaker. And for everyone for joining. As initial note we would also leave this zoom meeting open, full another five minutes. If you want to just interact with us or the audience or Anita has time to kind of stay on and answer everyone's questions. Awesome. Thanks again, everyone feel free to hang around or leave.