Roughly one year ago I started my career at Jobber as an L1 Software Developer. During this time I've learned the excitement of continuous learning and what it means to develop within a career. One of the first lessons I learned was that I was very critical of my experience when it came to the pace of my growth. Being kind to yourself and patient with your growth will be key to avoiding burnout and feelings of imposter syndrome. Now, one year later I have grown into a new role and taken on more responsibility. All while meeting engineers from across Canada and learning from them.
One of the contributors to my success has been the culture at Jobber. Our values are words we as Jobberinos live by. We are humble, supportive and we give a shit. That means boosting each other up, amplifying others' success, and helping each other in any way we can. That atmosphere creates something special. A place where any question is answered with a smile, and help is always there.
Like many other people, I experience imposter syndrome. Imposter syndrome is the feeling that you don’t have the talent that others see in you. When imposter syndrome is magnified, having Jobber's supportive culture has allowed me to take leaps. I have learned to not be afraid to ask questions to any Jobberino. Questions help develop your understanding of concepts and build strong bonds with others.
Building a Brand
Companies use brands to grow and maintain their customer base and attract new talent. Similarly, a personal brand can help individuals progress within their careers. Here are some things you can do to help build your personal brand:
- Contribute to open-source libraries
- Network within your company and beyond
- Ask questions in public forums. Others can then learn and supply their own knowledge
- Take on presentations, explanations and complicated tasks for your team
These tasks will help develop skills you will use throughout your career. Making contributions outside your daily tasks will attract the attention of other engineers and stakeholders alike. Supplying or asking for knowledge might help kickstart or accelerate another individuals journey. Communicating with other engineers will allow you to learn new skills and new perspectives to gain inspiration. Being open to these opportunities is a sign of growth.
Openness to new Opportunities
A Jobberino's aim is to help others grow. This shared mentality is contagious! Everyone that I’ve worked with has grown to pay it forward to the next engineer. I have seen engineers of all levels lend their expertise to ensure growth for all team members. The best advice I can give is to take those pushes and opportunities and do your best at the task ahead.
A quote that is often referenced here at Jobber is “Growth and comfort do not coexist”, American Business Executive Ginni Rometty. This quote was shared with the team years ago by a fellow engineer and it resonates with me. Looking back, I’ve seen the most growth in myself when things were uncertain or during change. It is a good reminder when imposter syndrome creeps in, or change is imminent, that you are in transition. It is time to embrace the change. Within the tech industry, there is a constant need to learn or evaluate the latest technology. Developers adapt to revolving teams and handle technical debt, among other changes. Changing your perspective to acknowledge that these pushes are an avenue for growth will assist in levelling up.
An Example of Growth
My team used to have a concept of ticket drivers. The driver would be responsible for the outcome of the ticket and ensure that tasks kept moving. One of the tickets our team was responsible for was an upgrade to an internal service. This service sends timely push notifications to our mobile users. I volunteered to be the ticket driver, a task I had done many times before. The difference was that the service was not well understood by the team.
After updating the npm packages, push notifications stopped working locally. An important lesson that comes in handy when debugging is to make assumptions and validate them. If your assumption is incorrect, that is when you should look into why. Running through the code with breakpoints in place, I uncovered that the connection to the database was not established. This was due to a breaking change in one of npm modules updated.
This issue was resolved and push notifications were again triggering locally. We prepared to deploy to production by understanding performance metrics in New Relic and Firebase. We also determined it would be beneficial to deploy to a staging environment before releasing to production. This helped us uncover another issue that could not be replicated locally. It had to be debugged using the staging environment’s logs. Debugging involved communicating with higher levelled engineers and devising a plan. Once resolved, the upgrade was deployed to production.
Throughout this work, I was the communicator for the task. I was involved in debugging. I also took a lead role in understanding the issues faced within the staging environment.
While driving this ticket:
- I worked on my brand by volunteering to take on tasks that helped get my name known
- I gained knowledge in an area not understood by many
- I voiced my concerns about burnout with my team and was encouraged to avoid over-committing myself
The key takeaway for me was that I could be involved in the process and continue my growth, without taking the lead on everything. I could have developed my brand and gained knowledge by being present in those conversations, without being the one to share my screen when debugging staging. I could have let others take on initiatives to advance their career, while making sure I did not take on too much. Overall, learn to delegate; we work in teams for a reason.
Conclusion
As always, it’s easier to write words on a page, but harder to apply them. The act of starting to grow outside your comfort zone can be daunting. It can lead to individuals not knowing where to start. To help focus your time what is one thing that you can start doing right now. Set it as a goal for yourself and work your way up. I encourage you to take leaps to become a better version of yourself. Look for ways to delegate and help others to build their own success, as it will help you too. If nothing else, remember to be kind to yourself. Growth is a lifelong process and the pace at which you grow does not matter. We all get there in our own time.
About Jobber
We're hiring for remote positions across Canada at all software engineering levels!
Our awesome Jobber technology teams span across Payments, Infrastructure, AI/ML, Business Workflows & Communications. We work on cutting edge & modern tech stacks using React, React Native, Ruby on Rails, & GraphQL.
If you want to be a part of a collaborative work culture, help small home service businesses scale and create a positive impact on our communities, then visit our careers site to learn more!
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