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I also poured over HN while working dead end retail for 3 years. It quite literally sent me into the mental health system.

I picked up a heeeap through osmosis, did a dev bootcamp for web dev/JS/React, spend a year being rejected from places, did almost nothing but self study + Github projects at the same time, self learnt Python and it finally paid off this past October with an offer.

I started my position as a graduate Site Reliability Engineer this last Monday since it's my employers inhouse program where grads rotate 4 times (ie frontend, backend, mobile) in the first year before settling into a position. Personally, I have 2x 6 month rotations of SRE and Cloud Data and it's very exciting!

Come to think of it, I've still been meaning to write a post about all the "junior" positions I was rejected from. It really sucks when you're starting out.

One startup who I did a test with, and never got a response, actually went bankrupt earlier this year which was a weird feeling.




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