Microverse students put in thousands of hours of hard work and learning at Microverse. From making sacrifices to be able to support themselves throughout the program, to spending thousands of hours learning, they’re committed to improving their lives. Students have landed global job opportunities earning salaries up to 10x more than what they earned before — without paying Microverse anything until they’re employed.
Mohamed Abdellani, who goes by Abdellani, is a Microverse student from Algeria who is currently working remotely as a Full-stack Developer at US-based, HackerBay. He shared his experience at Microverse and how life has changed since he landed this amazing full-time web development job.
In 2015, Abdellani graduated with a master's degree in computer science from a university in Algeria. Shortly thereafter, he landed his first job as a system and network administrator. While working that job, Abdellani partook in courses related to computer networks and security, such as the Cisco Networking Academy and Offensive Security. Abdellani noted that it was a great learning experience and he enjoyed his time working and learning but after a few years, he felt a desire to move to a more exciting field. For Abdellani, that field was web development.
So, Abdellani left his job to start working on online web development courses from places like Freecodecamp, Odinproject, Udacity, and Edx in order to prepare for Microverse. He also joined the opensource community, Agileventures, which was the first place he was introduced to online standup meetings. He really enjoyed learning online and connecting with others, and a few months into learning web development online, he was ready to begin learning with Microverse.
When asked about what stood out during his time at Microverse, Abdellani said three things, in particular, stood out. Those were;
After finishing the program and starting the job search, Abdellani noted that he sometimes felt unmotivated, stressed, or discouraged during times when he wouldn’t hear back from companies he applied to. When he felt this way, his Microverse Career coach, Jennifer Best, took the time in their meetings to support him as well as share more information to help increase his chances of landing his first web development job. The career coaches are Microverse are truly outstanding, and there to support you well beyond your first job, but throughout your career - it’s one of the many things that makes Microverse so special.
At Microverse, students take part in daily standup meetings with their standup team throughout the program. Abdellani noted how important they were for the duration of the program and that the support from his standup team helped him never feel alone on his journey to becoming a web developer.
When Abdellani talked about his coding partner, Emir, he said, “He was the best partner I could imagine, an ambitious person, with whom I tackled the largest part of the program.” At Microverse, students learn through remote pair-programming and help motivate and keep each other accountable.
Abdellani also stressed the importance of the soft-skills, as much so as the technical skills that you learn. To get better at your soft skills, Abdellani said;
“Practice and hands-on experience are very important, you can prepare for everything, even the behavioral questions [in interviews]. But human interaction and thought sharing are very important.”
At Microverse, we know just how true this is. Working and interacting with others, from different countries and cultures, helps us better understand each other and prepare for a global career.
It goes beyond that though, as Microverse students spend 1,200+ hours working through the program and learning with others. During this time, they practice working remotely and interacting with others in English. Abdellani mentioned how his months of pair-programming at Microverse, helped him become comfortable working remotely with people who he must interact with entirely in English. He noted how crucial this is for him to land a job, as currently, he’s working with a team who can only communicate with him in English.
Abdellani didn’t have any previous professional experience in web development before Microverse, so he took that into account when starting his job search. His job search process took around 2 months, during which time, he started by only applying for Ruby on Rails jobs on platforms like LinkedIn and AngelList.
Over time though, Abdellani began to notice that there were a lot more Javascript offers, so he began to include those in his job search. Within weeks of doing so, he was offered a job opportunity as a Full Stack developer (MERN stack). He again mentioned the support of his career coach, being very helpful in keeping him driven and focused on his job search.
When asked about how his life has changed since going through Microverse and landing a new job, Abdellani said one of the biggest things was his ability to work remotely, doing something he’s interested in. In his previous job, Abdellani had to spend eight hours at his desk every day, from 8 am - 4 pm. With his new fully-remote web developer job, he can work whenever and wherever he wants. Abdellani says, “It gives me more freedom to organize my time and life”. He also now has the opportunity to interact with people from many different countries and cultures through his remote team.
In March 2020, Abdellani started working remotely for Boston-based HackerBay, as a Full-stack Web Developer. There, he helps them build world-class platforms and products. For his career growth, Abdellani plans to continue learning and working to improve the quality of the code he writes. He’s so far enjoying the experience and working remotely.
Abdellani encouraged Microverse students, “I highly recommend you make enough effort to build good portfolio projects.”
He also noted the importance of doing the work in the interview preparation part of our program - both for technical and behavioral questions - in order to perform well in job interviews.
To date, Microverse has enrolled full-time students from 100+ countries and helped over one thousand people around the world land life-changing jobs.
Microverse is an online school for remote software developers, where you pay nothing until you get hired. If you’re ready to change your life by becoming a global software developer, get started below!
Meesen is the Head of Marketing at Microverse. She enjoys exploring ideas around the future of work, education and sustainability.
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