🚀 First JobSoftware Developer / Architect1 min read

No GitHub, No Portfolio, Commerce Degree: How I Landed My First Dev Job

A self-taught developer who coded since age 12 landed their first full-time developer role at the University of Toronto just before graduating with a Bachelor of Commerce in Finance. They had no GitHub account, no portfolio, and no formal CS background, but aced a 12-question technical test in the interview. Five years later they had progressed from developer to Architect.

Key takeaways

  • →A timed technical test can get you in the door even without a portfolio or GitHub presence
  • →Building real things people actually use, even hobbyist projects, counts as experience
  • →A non-CS degree is not a blocker if you can demonstrate practical coding ability
  • →Early informal projects (BBS plugins, game bots) build transferable skills worth mentioning in interviews
  • →Career progression compounds quickly once you have that first role, even without conventional credentials

I didn't actually know how to use git when I landed my first full-time dev job. No GitHub account, no portfolio site. I'd been coding since I was 12 though, picking up HTML/CSS, jQuery, VBScript, C#, and SQL while running a BBS and writing bot scripts for MMORPGs. The code quality sucked, but people actually used what I built, and the feedback kept me hooked. Sadly that was all in middle school and I never kept backups.

A few weeks after exams ended, a few months before graduating with a Bachelor of Commerce (Finance Specialist), I went to my first developer interview at my university. After talking with the manager and team lead, they handed me a sheet of 12 questions covering logic, sorting, jQuery, and databases, and gave me 30 minutes. I aced most of it, stumbled a bit on sorting, and got the job.

My first project was a ground-up SPA rewrite of the University of Toronto's mobile map site. That was five years ago. Since then I've worked on projects for Facebook and Google through agency vendors, moved through Intermediate Developer, Developer, and Senior Developer, and I'm now an Architect at a cancer research institution. Still no portfolio.

Adapted from a public post by cheapsteak on Hacker News. Read the original →

More journeys

Self-Taught at 13, First Job at CollegeHumor, Now an Engineering Leader

A self-taught developer traces his path from learning Visual Basic at 13 to building ASP websites for local businesses at 17, then landing his first professional role at CollegeHumor after college. He eventually moved into engineering management at startups, having never finished a CS degree. The post reflects honestly on what he wishes he had done differently and what actually mattered.

Bad Grades, Cold Emails, and Landing at a Toronto Startup in 2011

A new grad with zero experience and poor grades spent 2-3 months targeting startups with looser HR filters so he could reach developers before transcripts came up. He cold-emailed every company on a 'Canada's Top 100 Start-Ups' list and landed at one where he still works years later. Now a hiring manager himself, he shares what actually moves the needle when evaluating new grads.