Ask HN: Self-Taught Programmer Looking for a Unpaid Tech Internship | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Self-Taught Programmer Looking for a Unpaid Tech Internship

2 pointsalexander20021 comment

Hi,I am looking for a tech internship for a company to improve and enhance my skills. I have some experience in marketing and business as well.I am currently working at an AI company in the business development role. I am really at a tech beginner level so for context,I can only solve some easy problems at leetcode like palindrome validator etc.I have some experience in C++ , Java-script and Python. If you guys feel like you need someone like me,I am happy to interview and submit my resume. Edit: I know this might be weird posting here so please do let me know if there are good platforms for posting these sort of requests since i am not aware of them currently

Maybe you have your reasons for not looking to expand/change your responsibilities within your current company, but that's often the easiest avenue. Especially if you can get colleagues in Engineering within your company on board.

Sometimes Software Developers will get folks in the same organisation coming to them asking "can you teach me programming?". This is not what you want to do because it doesn't show much commitment on your part.

What you want to do is take what you've learned so far and apply it to a project, perhaps one to improve something in your current business development workflow. When you hit a roadblock and try a few things to solve it, THEN you can approach someone and ask for advice on moving forward.

Folks are more likely to spend time helping you if they see you're on a path and are putting the work in. So take their advice, follow through, implement, come back to them and let them know how it went.

Then they'll probably help you more as they know it's not a waste of their time. You've also then unwittingly derisked yourself as a Junior/Intern Software hire for them when a position opens up as you've demonstrated you try things before asking for help (but you also know not to spend too much time blocked).

Hopefully that helps as a blueprint to show that getting paid and getting trained are not mutually exclusive.

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