Getting your first developer job is tough. There’s no sugar-coating it. It feels like everyone wants "junior developers" with 3+ years of experience. But hey—I'm here to tell you it is possible, and I want to share how I landed my first role as a Junior Fullstack Developer. Maybe it'll help someone who's on the same path.

TL;DR 

I interned at Thomson Reuters, which gave me some industry exposure.

But what really helped was building Proof of Concepts (POCs) every weekend to sharpen my coding and debugging skills.

I regularly opened random GitHub projects just to understand them—and see if I could tweak or improve them.

I focused on going deep into a few core languages instead of spreading myself too thin.

Being a Program Assistant (PA) also played a huge role. Helping first-year students made me better at reading code, explaining it, and thinking critically.

Internships Are Great—but Don’t Stop There

My internship at Thomson Reuters was a great first step. I got a taste of real-world development, learned how teams collaborate, and became more comfortable with version control, agile workflows, and deadlines.

But internships are short, and honestly, they can only teach you so much. What made the biggest difference for me was what I did outside of that experience.

Weekend POCs: Small Projects, Big Impact

Every weekend, I made it a goal to build something small—a Proof of Concept (POC). It didn’t need to be polished or complete, but it had to solve a problem or test a new idea.

Sometimes it was an API that scraped data. Other times it was a basic frontend app with a cool UI feature I saw online. These mini-projects pushed me to Google harder, debug better, and get more comfortable jumping between backend and frontend.

I wasn’t just writing code—I was learning how to think like a developer.

GitHub: My Favorite Study Tool

One of the best pieces of advice I can give: pick a random project on GitHub, open it, and try to figure out what’s going on.

Look at the file structure, read the README, try running it locally, and then break it. Yep—break it on purpose. Change stuff and see what happens. This not only improved my understanding of how real-world projects are built, but it also helped me become less afraid of code that wasn’t mine.

Reading and understanding other people’s code is a superpower.

Depth > Breadth

I used to feel pressured to learn everything: Python, JavaScript, TypeScript, Go, Rust, etc. But at some point, I realized I was skimming the surface of everything and mastering none.

So I switched gears. I chose a few languages (JavaScript/TypeScript for frontend, Node.js for backend), and went deep. I learned the ins and outs, wrote unit tests, explored frameworks, and even contributed to open source.

It’s better to be solid in a few things than shallow in many.

Teaching Is Learning (Being a PA Helped a Lot)

As a Program Assistant helping first-year students, I got better at breaking down problems and explaining concepts clearly. To teach something well, you have to understand it deeply. So I spent more time reading code, preparing examples, and anticipating questions.

This unexpectedly boosted my own learning, especially when I had to debug someone else’s work or guide them through logic step-by-step.

Final Thoughts

If you're trying to land your first dev job, my biggest advice is: don’t just study code—live in it. Build things. Break things. Read code that’s not yours. Teach someone if you can.

And remember, even the best developers started where you are now—curious, confused, and coding one weekend at a time.

Good luck, and happy coding! 🚀