An opinionated guide to getting the best job, for the best salary, fast. Python, django, development, programming, interviews, skills

1. Get Django, Get Hired
An opinionated guide to getting the
best job, for the best salary, fast.

2. Section 0: Why?
• Knowledge vs Experience
• Confidence
• Swagger
• Tool Chest

3. Section 1: Learning
Look through job boards
Create an outline of skills
Research tutorials and libraries for each skill
Create a personal project
Integrate each skill learned into your personal
project

4. Section 2: Preparation
Create a github repo for side project
Create a dev account on major social
networks
Create a dev account on amazon, heroku,
cloud providers
Keep notes

5. Section 3: LEARNING

6. Section 3: Learning
Basics
Language & Framework
Models/QuerySets
Views
Auth
Templates
Testing

7. Learning: Language & Framework
Python: basic modules, language
Django: basic framework features
Python: standard library, collections, itertools
Django: DRY, contrib, utils, features, docs
Python: internals
Django: deep knowledge of 3rd party lib ecosystem

8. Learning: Models/Querysets
Build basic models, relations
Query Performance, table structure, usage
patterns
Deep profiling, extra/raw SQL, alternative
ORM

9. Learning: Views
function views
specialized Class-Based Views(CBV), mixins &
generics, forms, uploads
exotic content-types, API views

10. Learning: Auth
local passwords
OAuth, JSON Web Tokens (JWT), API keys
exotic 3rd party providers/endpoints

11. Learning: Templates
basic syntax: blocks, tags, context, extends,
includes
building templatetags, filters, context
processors
incorporating 3rd party engines like jinja2

12. Learning: Testing
No tests (oh noooo)
Nose
Jenkins, Continuous Integration, git
integration, etc

13. Section 3: Learning
Basics
Language & Framework
Models/QuerySets
Views
Auth
Templates
Testing
Not-So-Basics
Databases
3rd party data sources/APIs
RESTful APIs
Tasks & Email
NoSQL and Alt. Backends
Hosting/Deployment/Assets
Search
Frontend

14. Learning: Databases
Basic setup (create, drop, auth, etc)
Query optimization, caching
Routing, replication

15. Learning: 3rd Party Data Sources/APIs
Basic requests using 3rd party libs
Deep site integration, error handling, tests
Streaming, high-performance and/or async
integration

16. Learning: RESTful APIs
returning JSON responses
using basic REST framework (Django-REST-
Framework, etc)
Advanced REST interface w/custom auth, api
keys, etc

17. Learning: Tasks & Email
synchronous
async w/RQ
async w/Celery or Amazon SQS

18. Learning: NoSQL & Alt. Backends
None
memcache, redis
MongoDB, Cassandra, PouchDB, DynamoDB,
Kinesis

19. Learning: Hosting/Deployment/Assets
Local only, or Heroku w/effortless setup
Production system, manual setup (gunicorn,
nginx, local storage, fabric)
Production system, scaled bigtime (uwsgi,
nginx, shared file storage, CDN, CI)

20. Learning: Search
Database queries
Whoosh (python solution)
Solr/Elasticsearch/Cloudsearch (externally-
hosted solution)

21. Learning: Frontend
Basic HTML/CSS/JS
Bootstrap or Foundation, jQuery
Sass, Angular/React/Ember/Backbone,
Grunt/Gulp

22. Section 4: Specialties

23. Section 4: Specialties
• DevOps
• Big Data
• Machine Learning
• Web Scraping
• GeoLocation
• AWS & Cloud
Providers
• Social Networks
• Real-time Apps

24. Section 5: Getting The Job

25. Section 5: Getting The Job
• Review job requirements
• Resume
• Interview
• Negotiation

26. Getting The Job: Job Requirements
• Ignore the BS filler requirements
• Focus on core technologies they use
• Come prepared to talk about their
requirements
• Prepare questions in advance. Their
business model, their tech, their goals,
their past employees

27. Getting The Job: Resume
• Focus on real-world, production usage of
your skills, technologies used, APIs
• (But doesn’t have to be commercial)
• Tune resume to highlight the exact things
they asked for, using the words/phrases they
used
• Update your LinkedIn

28. Getting The Job: Interview
• Ask what is most important to the, then
speak to those points
• Talk about overlap: needs/experience
• Familiarity with tech landscape as a whole
• Push back against riddles, quizzes, “gotcha”
questions, things that don’t reflect real-world
challenges

29. Getting The Job: Negotiation
• Don’t feel guilty about money. Companies
won’t feel guilty about asking for overtime.
• Research comparable job positions, then ask
for that much (at least). Bring examples.
• Research their funding beforehand, in case
they claim to be broke
• Slightly overcharge so they can negotiate
down.

30. @MarcelChastain
@LADjango
Questions?