This was also a strategic choice. If I were to get to a professional level, I knew I needed to narrow my focus down to fewer subjects, rather than spreading my efforts out on many different ones. React became a natural choice to double down on. This strategy certainly paid off, which I’ll tell you about further down.

The ninth project week involved building our own product, as FAC also wants to inspire the students to make their own stuff as well. My team built a small tool for analyzing you iOS app’s keyword called KeywordKing, which you can read about here.

Part 2 —Building MVP’s for clients

This week also prepped us for the second part of the course, which involved building MVP’s for external clients. Throughout the first eight weeks, we had been pitched weekly by clients who needed developers to prototype their ideas.

It works like this: for £500, a team of 3–5 students would build a prototype in a week. For us, this was a way to learn how to work with clients plus growing our coding skills further, while also making a little bit of money. For the client, it was a chance to get a cheap MVP built fast. And without risking any money, as they would only be invoiced if they were happy with the result, which most clients were (but not all).

During these weeks, I built the following projects together with various other students:

Sir Predictalot — a prototype for a Tinder’ish news predictions app

RateMyStuff — a social network based around image rating

Squish — a reinforced learning tool for students

I also did one week machine learning stunt, which I’ve written about here, in addition to making a couple of tutorial videos on the subject (sorry about the awful audio).

At this point, I had spend around four months in London, and it was about time to move back to Norway, where the rest of my life existed.

Back in Norway

Back home my plan was to get into professional coding as soon as possible, as I needed to practice my freshly acquired knowledge to make it stick.

I tried to get some consulting work, but it was tougher than I thought to get it up an running. I also suspected that my learning curve would be steeper if I got a job. Jumping into a foreign code base built by professionals seemed like a tough challenge.

So I sent out three job applications to companies who needed Javascript developers. Two of these invited me to an interview.

I didn’t get the first one. Not sure why, but I suspect they wanted a more senior developer. The next one sent me through two interview rounds and then gave me a coding task.

Finding the perfect job

About the same time though, I attended a startup event arranged by an entrepreneur I knew a little bit. He was the CTO of a well funded startup named Xeneta, which I had been a fan of for a couple of years. According to their website they were looking for front-end developers — and they actually mentioned React.js as one of the technologies they used.

During the evening he told me that they had just rewritten their entire front end in React.js and were looking for a new developer who knew the library; this seemed too good to be true. I told him I’d be interested in the job and we decided to chat up later on.

The following week I went to the first interview, and then two more interview rounds. Finally, they also sent me a React.js coding task.

On june 26th — exactly five months after my first day at Founders and Coders — we came to an agreement, and I was hired as a front end developer.

It’s truly an awesome job in a startup with extremely skilled people. We’re tackling a big problem in a huge marked and I’m challenged every single day. So I don’t regret a second that I did the career switch.

If you’re thinking about doing the same thing, I want you to know that it’s 100 percent doable. You’re not too old, and you don’t need to spend 10–15K USD on tuition. Just find an environment you can grow in, and self discipline will get you as far as any teacher will.

Now go ahead and press the heart button below and start coding :)