Post Grad Curriculum

A curriculum for additional learning for those graduating from the university-based coding programs. End goal is to help graduates get their first jobs via skills increase and guide them towards the path of Junior Developer -> Mid-level Developer -> Senior Developer

Table of Contents

• Getting Started
• Post Grad Learning Path
• Contributing

Getting Started

Please note that this is entirely built on the efforts of developers voluntarily putting their own time in. We hope you enjoy our efforts! That said, we are very receptive to feedback! Please submit issues if there are any problems or improvements to be made.

Where do I start?

Before we start determining what step you should work on next, here are some bits of advice that are universal after graduating:

1. Always have a side project - This can always count towards your coding experience, even if you are working another job.
2. Practice small coding challenges - This is a good practice you can do daily and will keep your skills fresh.
3. Programming is like a foreign language, if you don’t use it and practice it normally, it will be harder to get back into it.

MOST IMPORTANT: NEVER STOP CODING

To help you get comfortable with doing the above you can start with:

Post Grad Learning Path

• Becoming Employer Ready
• Base Materials
• Expanding from the Fundamentals

Becoming Employer Ready

If you haven't become Employer Ready, do that first!

Time should first be spent on finishing career assets before applying to jobs.

Go through the milestones from the Career Services Page to find all the resources related to becoming Employer Ready.

Base Materials

If you have become Employer Ready, but feel you don’t have a base understanding of the material.

1. Go through the material you feel behind on by checking the topics you still don’t grasp

2. In order to get practice with the concepts you feel behind on, do the following:

   1. Redo in-class exercises without looking at the answers
   2. Complete the Code Drills from this set of Code Drills
      • Credit to Jerome Chennette(@jeromechenette)!

3. Apply to positions that are more in line with the concepts that fit your strengths. If you feel strong in front end development, apply to jobs in front end development.

4. Practice for interviewing by completing algorithms on the whiteboard

   • Here is a resource we've developed for whiteboard and interview prep (make sure to have the key-value pair in the query params or it won't work!)

Time breakdown

• Applying to jobs that you do feel comfortable with: 30%
• Interview prep: 20%
• Practicing code (code drills and redoing in-class exercises): 50%

Expanding from the Fundamentals

If you feel at least OK with the fundamentals, but not sure what to do next

1. If you feel that you have the fundamentals of the program down, it's now time to start learning more advanced topics and adding those concepts to the applications you build.

   • Why are we doing this?

     • Increasing your skill level at an existing job.
     • Employers want to know if you can build applications with some level of complexity.
     • As you learn these newer technologies and concepts, be sure to implement them into an application and add them into your portfolio for employers to see.

   • Where to start?

     If you don't have a specific topic in mind that you want to take a deep dive on start at Level 1.

     • Front End Dev
     • Back End Dev
     • Dev Ops

     We structured this curriculum to leave off where the previous curriculum ended, so we prefer taking the same step-by-step approach for learning. However, if you wanted to learn other topics, go ahead! The structure is there for those who want it, but you can hop around different topics if you want to (for instance, if you already know certain topics or if your work has you working on a particular topic or set of topics).

   • What is the roadmap? i.e. where am I going?

     • We'll generally be following this roadmap, but making our own tweaks to it as we see fit.

2. Practice for interviewing by completing algorithms on the whiteboard

   • Here is a resource we've developed for whiteboard and interview prep (make sure to have the key-value pair in the query params or it won't work!)

Time breakdown

• Applying to jobs that more or less match your skill level: 30%
• Interview prep: 20%
• Practicing code (leveling up!): 50%

Contributing

Project management is done on Zenhub board, with tracking done via Github issues.

1. Fork the repo
2. Open a pull request to submit your contribution
3. That's it!