This is my first post. Thank you.
I am currently studying at Tokyo Institute of Technology (not information system) and am currently taking a leave of absence. At first, I was studying for the University of Tokyo's graduate exam next year to change my major to machine learning, but first I shifted my career direction to gain practical work as a back-end engineer. The reason is that to become a machine learning engineer, I decided that it was better to practice the back end rather than the theory. Also, if I acquire the skills in practice first, I will be able to work at a high unit price, so I thought that it would be mentally easier if I went to graduate school to study machine learning academically.
First of all, I applied for Yakumo without a portfolio to do a long-term internship. As a result, I had to pay in advance because there was no portfolio even if I went to the interview because there were only companies that could not even be interviewed. I thought I could push through with my educational background and motivation, but the reality was not that sweet. After that, when I searched online for 22-year-old engineer recruitment, I saw information such as "Engineer recruitment ends early" and "Levatec rookie is recommended", and I found that Levatech rookie (employment agent for IT engineers) ). At that interview, he said, "It's better to create a portfolio early and get a job," and "The internship is late from this time."
At university, I took computer science classes and data analysis classes using Python, so I considered using Django to create a portfolio because I'm used to using Python. However, since there is little information on Django in Japanese and rails was recommended in the streets, I immediately shifted to rails. Also, there are still few Django jobs, and in many cases Django is looking for excellent engineers, and it was a big judgment that it is extremely unlikely that you will gain experience with Django from inexperienced work. First, I laid the foundations with Rails tutorials, dot installation, etc., and gradually started to create a portfolio. As for the learning method, I referred to Kenta Katsumata's Youtube and note, and was inspired by seeing the portfolios of various people at the omnivorous online salon.
I built CircleCI, Docker, etc. into the infrastructure and wrote unit tests and integration tests with Rspec. In addition, all N + 1 problems have been resolved with practical awareness. Ajaxized as many features as possible. UI and UX are also in place, so I entered several companies as new graduates. However, although I had a good response, I was often hit by the first interview, which was quite painful. Taking this opportunity, I thought that new graduates would not be too sweet, so I reconsidered it. Since I still have a leave of absence, I gained experience as a long-term intern, and I thought it would be safe to join a new graduate or an intern at a company that is hiring all year from next year, so I switched to a long-term internship.
The selection of long-term internships based on inexperienced work was also tougher than I had imagined. Even if I applied for Wantedly, I received almost no reply, and it was a day when my mental health was scooped out. Even so, at a company that managed to reach an interview, as a result of talking about this difficult situation, I was asked to sympathize and hire me because I was sorry. The portfolio was clearly seen up to the contents of the code, and it was pretty bad, such as "It's pretty tough at this level, this data design is bad, this variable name is bad". Probably, it was too clumsy to adopt, and I think it was quite awkward, but I think that it was quite big that the motivation was highly evaluated. The internship company is a contracted company using Rails + a self-developed company that uses fairly modern technology, and it seems that there are many excellent engineers, so I am very satisfied. I would like to do my best so that I can give back as much as possible to the intern who picked up the inexperienced ponkotsu like me.
I often see stories about changing jobs as an engineer from inexperienced work, but I got the impression that internships from inexperienced work are rarely seen, so I wrote it. I hope it will be helpful to as many students as possible. In recent years, the number of people who want to become engineers has increased rapidly due to the influence of programming schools and influencers, so I think that the hurdle to become an engineer has risen considerably from inexperienced work. The cost of training inexperienced people is very high, and the hurdles for hiring are rising even further from the current situation while the economy is in recession, so I get the impression that the experiences of a while ago cannot be trusted very much. Perhaps we will gradually shift to a society like the United States where you cannot become an engineer unless you major in computer science at a university. In the coming era, I think it will be quite difficult to find an engineer from inexperienced workers, but I hope this will give you some encouragement.