Hi everyone,
After a lot of hard work, I’m glad to tell you that I finally got a Front-End Developer job!! 
Next month I will start at an IT-consultancy firm that specializes in web development. They will place me at arguably the biggest retailer in Belgium.
I am so glad that I can share my story here and tell you a little about my journey. Hopefully, this will encourage people to keep working hard and keep aiming at their goal of becoming a developer.
My background
Currently I am 28 years old and as far as education goes, I studied economics and hold a bachelor’s degree in SME management. I got former jobs as a purchaser and currently still work in supply chain.
Soon enough, I figured out I didn’t want to spend my entire life in this field and thought a lot about what I wanted to do professionally. I believe I developed an interest in IT because of my first full-time job purchasing IT-hardware and decided I wanted to go in that direction. I never had any real real programming education before. Funny fact is that until approximately 1.5 years ago, I wasn’t able to properly type with all fingers 
.
Point is that I really had to learn everything for scratch. But I believe when your passionate about something and you know your goal, you can make it work.
The road to becoming a Front-end Web Developer
I tried studying networking first but found it to theoretical. Web development seemed a better entry point to find a job in IT. I also found out that a lot of resources were available. I am glad to say that I eventually became passionate about web development and really enjoy learning it.
The learning process itself wasn’t specifically easy. Combining these studies with my hobbies (I play basketball as well) sure made it challenging. My girlfriend and I also had to sacrifice some time together due to long evening (and often late night) coding sessions. Thankfully she understands my goals and is very supportive of it all.
FreeCodeCamp wasn’t the only resource I used to learn everything I know today, but I really feel like it helped me the most to understand the basics. Furthermore, I really like the hands-on approach. This is why I feel like I owe it to the FreeCodeCamp community to write this post as a big thank you.
Of course I also used many other resources like books, other platforms, tutorials… you name it.
The most important thing for me was to keep learning and consult different resources until I really understood whatever I was learning at the time. I still take on this approach while learning new stuff.
Job search
I believe I could have started applying for jobs earlier, but never really had the confidence that I had enough knowledge.
It helped me when I got over the fact that I would never be able to master everything regarding web development. I also realized that I would learn much more on-the-job trough experience. This is why I actively started applying for jobs 2 months ago. After the 3rd job interview I was fortunate enough to find a company that believes in me and will give me a chance to start at their firm.
All in all, I must have written about 30+ job applications before I landed that long awaited development job.
My advice
Hopefully many of you can relate to my experience. My advice to you is to keep working hard and be patient. Hard work always pays off.
And most off all, find pleasure in what you do!
Happy coding!
Lucas