How to accelerate your dev career using communities, hackathons and free education

If anything, the year 2022 taught me that developers do not flourish in silos. The Covid years prior somewhat gave a false sense of confidence in the ability of "true introverts" to flourish in vacuums without people. I am here to tell you that based on my journey(and there are many)- that belief is a fallacy. To whet your appetite, the year 2022 was a roller coaster of achievement, for my first year in tech. It ended with a rich network of professionals, 2 hackathon wins, 1 major finalist hackathon appearance as well as being inducted into two accelerator incubation programs, with organizations that have a global reach as far as the EU. And yes, I did not do this alone.

There are so many "how to get a job in tech" articles that we are all accustomed to. My aim is not to regurgitate what many a plethora of methods have already been repeated time and time. To kick off as a disclaimer, I am documenting an approach that could assist anyone reading this article, it is also an observation that I still think needs further discussions to be effective. That said, let's begin!

Accountant????

Before we begin. Before my first year in tech, I was an accountant having worked various roles in a company I started as a dishwasher (long story). I had no prior experience in coding professionally but did develop a knack for simplifying tasks and automating some processes with low-code solutions. Before making the switch to tech i needed a different approach, considering I did not have a computer science degree as a bargaining tool for getting into interviews.

Developer Communities

I had an unused Twitter account and decided I needed to connect with other developers in the tech industry. This is where I got introduced to Tech-Twitter. I followed a few accounts until I reached a community called ,Home of the Geeks | Geekulcha and they seemed to have some great engagement and events. I followed the community and they followed back in less than a day. Soon enough I connected with other community members associated with Geekulcha. In the Geekulcha feed, I got to see what other techies were doing, and the events that they were hosting and this community soon became a one-stop shop for anything tech related. They posted information about free courses, free events, workshops, and all the tools that a noob like me would need to get her career started. Later through them I soon got connected to other tech communities like Join the OfferZen Community In both instances, i got exposure to seasoned professionals, attended events hosted by both, got advice and worked hard to implement the approaches from the people I met in these communities. This is why dev communities are very important for any developer, starting or seasoned.

Hackathons

I attended 5 hackathons in total, and all these hackathons were posted through the Geekulcha community platform. This was a chance to network, showcase skills and work in team environments to find the best solutions for different problem statements. We made solutions that addressed problems for Activist organizations, Fintech solutions, Gamification of Labour, the Gig Economy and much more. Through these hackathons, we also networked with non-tech professionals like lawyers, and project managers who also gave different approaches to guide UX/UI or narrowing down issues like security. Hackathons are a huge melting pot of talent and innovation that I encourage all kinds of professionals to consider and participate in.

Free Quality Education

Free quality education for me means gaining the appropriate skills to solve real-world problems. I consider myself to be a hybrid self-taught developer, meaning that I have taught myself certain frameworks and languages however I also found it more useful to sort of curate my curriculum. For my use case, I had to apply for free scholarships on most known platforms, for example The Scrimba Scholarship Program, Bertelsmann's Scholarship https://www.udacity.com/bertelsmann-tech-scholarships. Through Geekulcha I was also inducted into the MTN App academy. Microsoft also hosted different cloud skills challenges throughout the year. My ultimate favorite though was freecodecamp https://www.freecodecamp.org/ .Combined these resources offered a project-based approach to solving problems. I do not discount any other platforms not mentioned here, however, i am providing an insight that such good platforms exist in different geographies.

..........Volunteering

I know this one is not in the title of the topic but is the most important approach that needed a mention. The first hackathon I attended started with a Twitter dm to the Geekulcha CEO, whom I asked to volunteer to assist with any kind of help at a hackathon. He instead invited me to my first Hackathon in 2021, The StartupBiz Hack. I entered as a solo participant and did not build anything substantial, as I was only 1 month into my tech journey. The following year, however, I had a team and we were one in two categories as the best pitcher as well as the best fintech solution. It is though here that we got inducted into the fintech accelerator and the story continues. I also volunteered for my first ever NodeJsOne Conference https://nodejsone.com/, we connected well with the event organizer, and soon I became a community volunteer for the ICodeJava Conference https://j-sa.co/ as well as the UXSA Conference https://uxsouthafrica.com/ . This is all to say some of the most amazing things to happen in anyones life, start with simply volunteering to help.

In Conclusion

If anything is to take away from this blog, is that we need each other as developers to grow, educate and make an impact. Like a pride of lions that need each other to adapt, teach, skill and survive, we all, need each other to accelerate our journeys in tech. So if you're reading this, this is a call to action for you to join and get engaged in your community. Make that change!