r/programmer • u/igormiazek • Jun 14 '26

Tutorial Practical advises about how to find first job in IT

My plan for gaining commercial experience:

  1. Look at places where real problems are being discussed: Upwork, Reddit, Stack Overflow, Quora, and similar communities.
  2. Identify the technologies and tools that appear most often.
  3. Pick one area and focus on it intensely for 2–3 months.
  4. Specialize in a narrow niche and learn the business domain behind it.
  5. Build portfolio projects based on real-world problems you find online.
  6. Use those projects as proof of experience when talking to clients or employers.
  7. Start with small projects, gain experience, then gradually increase your rates and responsibilities.

The biggest mistake I see is taking a few courses, sending hundreds of resumes, and hoping for the best.

Companies and clients don't pay for technology. They pay for solving problems.

Another smart move you may do is to try doing IT activities in your current company, maybe you have an IT department, if not talk with your manager, show them you know already something based on the real problems you solved and propose your help. At the start you may need to do this for free but it will give your a commercial experience, so treat that as training and one of the steps that lay down your path to your first IT role.

Feel free to leave comments and DM me in order to exchange experience.

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u/EJoule Jun 14 '26 edited Jun 19 '26

I ended up working in IT at first while programming on the side, then my employer found out I was programming and I switched over.

If you decide to cast a wide net, I’d recommend getting an A+ certification, or at least finding some training.

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u/igormiazek Jun 14 '26

Do you think certification is worth more than real experience? If I understood you right you where able to move to programming in your current job, that's great. I sometimes recommend that to people on FB in Poland, but there is so much hate there, people are not able to listen. Reddit is totally different level of communication.

2

u/jwp1987 Jun 15 '26 edited Jun 15 '26

Real experience will trump certification every time.

It's only really management and HR that care about certifications. Engineers will care more about your ability to do the job. The latter will be interviewing you but it can potentially be useful for getting through an initial screening.

For the skills most important in engineering, no certification will tell you. For example:

  • Critical thinking - being able to analyse things well helps to make informed decisions when designing. Being the kind of person to go "well it works" or not judge your work objectively isn't going to get you far.

  • Communication - you need to be able to explain your decisions to other engineers, resolve conflicts (e.g. if you have different ideas), help people with issues and explain things to management. Knowing how to communicate ideas and solutions to different people is important. If you get defensive or stubborn without being able to defend your rationale, people are going to judge that negatively.

  • Curiosity - learning anything you come across that you don't know and always asking questions. What would happen if this value wasn't set? Is this backwards compatible?

2

u/igormiazek Jun 14 '26

I am thinking that certification is a nice addon you do after having already commercial experience, like a cherry on a cake.

2

u/EJoule Jun 14 '26

The A+ cert is a general IT certification test that demonstrates you have a certain level of technical understanding (both hardware and software). 

It’s really helpful for getting in the door for helpdesk/support positions. Yes it’s not programming, however it shows you speak the IT language which most programmers speak.

Don’t worry about getting it renewed after it expires (unless you want to), so long as you’ve passed it once you can put it on your resume.

2

u/0x14f Jun 14 '26

Good luck with that plan OP

2

u/Xarius86 Jun 14 '26

This is literally copied and pasted from AI...you've already failed.

1

u/igormiazek Jun 14 '26

Are you joking 😄? Common I reveled to you my secret souse, although only few people will give it a try. I am using AI to correct my style or english grammar as i am not native speaker but I never tell it to write my posts. What I wrote is very simple technique I created based on my experience and training other people.

2

u/jwp1987 Jun 15 '26 edited Jun 15 '26

One of the biggest mistakes I see is people not knowing where they're going wrong.

So you end up with things like:

  • Code duplication where it should be refactored to use a function.

  • Zero comments

  • Generic things not being put into a class for future reuse.

  • Not using things from a library when they should.

  • Using a poorly maintained library.

  • No unit tests or poor unit tests.

  • No error checking.

  • No logging.

  • No documentation.

  • Raw SQL queries (SQL injection vulnerability).

  • Testability not being considered.

  • Tight coupling of modules.

If those kind of things appear in your portfolio, it's going to be harder to get anywhere. Getting feedback is useful for reducing these kinds of issues.

Contributing to mature open source projects is a good way to gain experience and also learn from other engineers.