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Ask HN: How to acquire professional experience in the age of AI as junior dev?

1 points by stefanos82 ↗ HN
For quite a while now I read all these disheartening articles about newcomers to programming field feeling completely incompetent for being unable to acquire professional experience.

If it helps to make things a bit more comforting for them, I feel the same and I am a person with some form of experience.

How can anyone acquire professional experience nowadays, even if it means to start from near zero?

Any suggestions or thoughts on this topic?

2 comments

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BMc2020
RPA - robotic process automation - basically automating manual computer processes. There's a big need for it, and every company has unique procedures.

It's basically scripting for legacy software, not glamorous or exciting.

In a similar vein there's a shipload of excel VBA (VBA hasn't been supported for years) out there that needs updating. MS is pushing office scripts but there's been very little uptake so far.

First step is to get a job, any job. Then learn their processes.

intercalaris
This is what I'm currently doing, and can confirm it helps quite a bit with learning the necessary skills. I did a full-time full-stack development apprenticeship program alongside it (yes, 80 hours a week of work) for 7 months and came out with tons of knowledge and projects I didn't do before.

And now I'm doing a Master's in CS and focusing on courses that are relevant to the career I envision for myself.

Is it work immediately? No, I can ignored in most applications. But does it give me the confidence that I eventually will get the regular software engineering job I'm searching for? Yes.