How Long It Really Takes To Land That First Dev Job
Tags: beginners, career, codenewbie
Published: 2022-10-23 17:36:18

> If I Study For 10 Hours A Day, How Long Will It Take To Get a Programming Job

This is by far the most common question people have when switching careers to software engineering. And it matters. If you’re going to invest time and money into a new skill you want to know when the payback on that will be. Here’s how I’d think about it.

## Defining The Role

To dig in we need to first understand what a first role might look like. Usually the job titles you’re looking for will be “Associate Software Engineer” or “Junior Software Engineer” if you’re trying to land a first job. There are some exceptions to this but it’s a good rule of thumb when exploring.

So if you search for these kinds of roles in your local market you’ll probably see something like the following:

- 
1-2 years software development experience

- 
Proficiency with `insert specific technology here`

- 
Can communicate professionally

- 
…etc

1-2 years of software experience often means professional experience, but usually these roles will have exceptions for people with a bootcamp certificate or college degree. **You can** still land these jobs without either but it’s a little harder to make it through the resume screen.

Okay let’s work backward assuming that 1 year of software experience includes self-directed projects. Now let’s assume you’re starting from scratch. It will take you at least 1-2 months to wrap your head around the basics and pick up a [first programming language](https://dev.to/ramp_dev/picking-a-first-programming-language-9ko). The goal is to get to a point where you’re comfortable enough to take on a moderately-sized project - you will need to do several.

Now if we take that 1 year minimum at face-value and add 1 month of getting up to speed, then, at minimum, you'd be ready to apply to a role like this in 13 months.

## How Long It Really Takes

I have no doubt that a sufficiently dedicated person that had multiple hours of time per day to devote to programming _and_ had no gaps in their learning could land a job inside of a year. It would take a little bit of luck, some networking, and a hell of a lot of dedication but it’s possible.

A more realistic scenario, if you’re like most people, is that if you’re going this journey alone it’ll probably be closer to 18-24 months before you’re job-ready and then it may take a few months to actually get a job.

## Summary

So all-in, you’re probably looking at 2-3 years from starting your programming journey to getting a job. Depending on how you look at it this can be a very short amount of time (less time than college to break into a highly, in-demand, well-paying field) or a long time (2 years of dedication is a lot).

A few things that may help you shortcut this:

- Boot camps can be hit-or-miss. If you do your research well and find a good one it can significantly decrease the amount of time it’ll take.

- Apprenticeships, if you can find them, are a great option. This is what I did. The premise is to join a company that pays you to learn and in return you usually make a commitment to work for that company in an underpaid role (relative to the rest of the market) for a fixed amount of time. Even when the role is “underpaid”, you’re usually getting paid pretty well and can continue learning on the job.

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