Hello 👋🏿, I'm a Software Developer specializing in Javascript (JS) mainly the MERN Stack (Mongo DB, Express.js, React.js, Node.js). I just hit my 1-year junior dev anniversary and thought of sharing my experience in the industry.
Here is what I learned after 1 good year junior deving at a startup:
1. 📖 Continuous learning
The startup was mainly a Javascript house, which I had very little experience with since I worked with PHP in my final year internship. However, I was up for the challenge to learn Javascript from the ground up. After a month, I slowly fell in love with the MERN Stack and with how it works and became pretty good after 3 months. It used to take me a day (6 - 8 hours) just to spin up an API with CRUD (Create, Read, Update and Delete) functionality, now it takes me less than an hour depending on the functionality.
The key takeaway was to be hungry and willing to learn a new tech stack and get obsessed with it so much that you become a beast 💪 at it.
MERN Stack - is a javascript web development framework consisting of MongoDB, ExpressJS, ReactJS, and NodeJS for building web apps.
2. 🏎️💨 High-velocity
Being in a start-up, I carried so many responsibilities. One day I could be doing customer service, the other consulting or software deving. I found this challenging at first since all I wanted to do was be a software dev. I soon realized that's the nature of startups they "pivot" a lot and your skills pivot along with it, especially to keep clients happy and engaged.
3. 🤝 Expectation management
Managing expectations was probably the hardest part for me since I thought I could code the shit out of anything. I later realized that when working on a project the easiest part is actually coding/building the feature or app service, the hardest part was accounting and managing all the unforeseen hurdles like changing business priorities, external factors, etc.
The best way we got around this as a team was through using Trello, daily stand up meetings and bi-weekly sprint planning sessions to visualize all the projects in progress and manage priorities accordingly.
4. 👨👨👦 Dev Team
The dev team was probably the best part, everyone was always willing to help and share their knowledge. I learned so much from everyone and we all had a good time pair programming which was amazing in sharing skills and hyper-productive. We also went to dev meetups and events around Melbourne mostly the Junior Dev Melbourne events.
Overall, it was a great first year as a software developer and I feel more confident in taking on larger, challenging projects and working with great devs to make better software for all.
Top comments (1)
Congrats!