2 Months in: How’s the New Life as a Developer
Fresh out of the bootcamp and 40 applications later: I landed my first developer job! After sharing some writings on what my journey looked like as a programming student, now’s time to reflect on what it feels like from the other side…
The time came for me to update my LinkedIn profile: Vanessa Sue Smith, Fullstack Developer, Consultant at Axakon. Proud moment, I could not believe I was now able to write that down.
I was already in Axakon’s recruitment pipeline around a month before my graduation from the Technigo coding bootcamp. A couple of weeks after a nerve-wracking technical interview and a meeting with their Talent Manager and CEO, I got that very much awaited phone call: “We’d like to offer you a position”.
Axakon had been so open and welcoming throughout the whole interview process, that this was not a tough choice to make.
I was more than ready to accept my first developer job!
More than focusing on what it took to land the job (might be writing more in detail about that in the future), I would like to reflect on how it feels 2 months in: the contrast between being a student vs a real-deal developer.
I happen to be working on a project where I’m using the same tech stack I learned during the bootcamp: JavaScript all the way, baby!
Luckily, this helped me feel oriented enough since the beginning: I could follow what’s going on to a good extent, and not fully lost.
I work in a small team, where I was paired with an amazing mentor, and so the learning started (and continues!… actually the learning has never stopped). There’s so much to learn from him, which I guess is the same feeling between Junior devs and their first mentor.
Everything looks the same, but 10 times bigger!
My first shock was to see how big “real life” projects are. So far I’ve only been working on hobby or school projects, with a good structure yet small scale.
After getting the environment to run in my brand new-sparkling-computer friend, it was a bit overwhelming to see how much is going on: one definitely needs to dedicate some time to get familiar with the codebase, all the files and where is what.
On that same note, one needs to become really good at understanding what’s been done before, so reading and grasping other people’s code is key.
This is a big contrast — until now I have been working on projects that I created myself from scratch, but now I work more on maintaining a project or building upon what’s already there.
Which brings me to the next point: refactoring code.
A big task for my team right now is to re-write, where necessary, the code we have taken over and where my mentor’s approach is teaching me a lot:
Take the time to research and make sure this new logic we implement is up to date, scalable, maintainable and effective.
There’s some beauty to having the time (which almost feels like a luxury) to come up with solutions, test and compare them and make sure what you deliver is on point. The time we invest on this today, might save us a couple of hours in the future.
Coming from a fast-paced bootcamp, where the priority was to make things work and deliver on time, I welcome the mindset switch. There’s still a schedule to follow and things need to be completed timely, but the “speedrace” feeling does seem to have calmed down.
Building your very own “Bag of Solutions”…
I’ve been slowly trying to take on more complex tasks when I sense I have a good chance at solving them by myself but, good reminder: I’ve just started, I’m quite Junior, so when I get stuck I need to ask for help and there’s nothing wrong with that.
That bug I had been looking at for the last 3 hours, is something that my mentor helped solve in a couple of minutes. I’m still amazed every time that happens and I think it’s genius, while my mentor prefers to credit it to experience and a concept I called the “bag of solutions”.
Experienced devs have seen similar problems come up over and over, to which they already have a set of solutions collected under their sleeves.
Experienced is the key word here. What I think of as genius (not to bring the process down, fast problem-solving is still brilliant), is the result of working in this field for a decent amount of time, as in any field.
I know soon enough I will have put together a bag of my own (where JS’ preventDefault() will have a very special place).
Practice makes perfect, and I do see myself getting better at it. I feel more confident about trying things out and working on my own. I’ve started to not shy away from the more complex tasks, knowing that if I don’t sort it out 100%, it is okay to reach out for backup. The best you can do is try, good or bad, this is when I learn the most~
As any beginner would, I obviously started with the mindset of performing to the max and demonstrating I am a worthy hire. But there is one thing I keep in mind, that I hope helps all fellow Juniors out there: this company is not out to get you; both parts want this to succeed, so all the effort you put in, the company will also invest into supporting you and making sure this relationship works out.
The challenge is still on as I keep diving deeper into this new role. I’m still enjoying myself and digging this whole being a developer thing.
The other day we learned about MongoDB’s aggregate pipeline and, boy oh boy was that exciting! But material for a future, more techy post!… stay tuned~
