DEV Community: Tyler 🏳️‍🌈

Follow-up Questions About Working In Industry

Tyler 🏳️‍🌈 — Fri, 08 Mar 2019 21:49:18 +0000

I recently spoke to computer science students at Washington State University's Everett campus about what it's like to work in industry. Here were some of the follow-up questions I got after the event.

Could you elaborate upon what kind of personal projects to do for portfolio work? Some more examples? For starting out, I am trying to tie in something related to my interests but also has to do with web development. My hobbies are game dev and composing music.

Your resume is usually a cut-and-dry telling of the facts of your professional and academic experiences. It's a well-structured format that everyone is familiar with. A personal website or portfolio should give some flavor and color to your resume. It's a great idea to showcase your passions on your personal site outside of your technical projects. You could practice your web development skills by building websites and applications for the things you care about.

My personal website (www.codertwalker.com) isn't the cleanest or best organized, but it documents a lot of the things I'm involved with. To a certain extent, it helps me document and remember the things I've done.

How much do I need to already have learned to get hired? I remember you saying you barely knew any and workplaces have a certain way of working and organizing code, but as someone really interested in learning to code and building websites, which languages and tools should I know how to use? In the beginning, should I just focus on one thing at a time?

Every company and every team does things differently. When you start working on a team you'll learn what standards and expectations they have for contributing to the codebase. I really enjoy using Facebook's React to build web applications, but at this stage in your career I'd recommend you try a bunch of different frameworks (Ruby on Rails, Vue.js, React.js, Ember, Angular, etc.) and learn a little bit about all of them. You'll have a much better idea of how each framework and tool works when you can compare them to others.

JavaScript has a pretty great ecosystem of tools, and I think that's a good place to start. Internships generally won't have as high of expectations as a position you apply for out of college, but generally speaking you should know the languages you claim to know fairly well. I've conducted plenty of interviews with folks who claim to know a language and can't demonstrate some of the basic fundamental skills. Studying and practicing the languages before your interviews is going to be crucial.

Could you elaborate upon what it is like working in your job at the workplace vs home?

One of my favorite parts about my company is the freedom to work from home. At this point in my life, I don't think I'd be successful in a full-time remote position. I enjoy working with my coworkers and seeing them in person. Most days I have the choice of working from home or going into the office, barring any important meetings or events. On the days I work from home I save time by not commuting in or out of the office (roughly an hour each way) and I'm able to use that time to get more sleep and get more done around the apartment. I've also been regularly working out on days I work from home, which I just don't have the energy or discipline to do after getting home from the office.

A typical day working from home involves me logging on in the morning and drudging through emails and setting my calendar for the day and then getting started on my development sprint work. Our daily standup meeting is at 11am and that's where we all talk about our progress and any blockers. Regardless of whether or not someone is working from home we always jump onto our Zoom video chat and that's where we do things like screen shares and whatnot. I enjoy working at my desk at work and at home, but the biggest difference is what I do with the time I'd otherwise spend commuting.

What kind of job positions are related with each "stack" of web development? What is it like working on each one and how difficult or complex are they?

Across the board these positions are usually referred to as "Software Engineering" and each job posting will hopefully give you a hint as to what you're working on. Technology itself is a fast-paced industry and every level has its intricacies. I think the conventional wisdom is that frontend development is easier than say APIs, databases, or infrastructure but I think that's bullshit to be quite honest. Smaller companies are more likely to have full-stack developers that service the entire application, and larger companies usually chunk that work out to larger teams so that they can focus on the details and the nuances at each layer.

If you're someone who's very visual and feels a sense of accomplishment when you can see and interact with your product visually, I'd say that UI engineering is a great place for you. Building web apps and native mobile apps (iOS, Android) require a lot of the same thinking and overlapping efforts in different contexts. If you're someone who enjoys working with data and large systems then you might find the more backend services like APIs, databases, and infrastructure more interesting.

They're all complex but like with anything, taking time to study and learn the domain is going to get you far. There are plenty of smart folks who can do amazing things writing operating systems that would feel out of their element writing user interfacing applications in the same way that I'd feel out of place writing an operating system.

My Goals for 2019

Tyler 🏳️‍🌈 — Tue, 01 Jan 2019 22:10:07 +0000

Shortly after I started my job at SAP Concur my manager and I sat down for a quarterly goal setting session. I highlighted places where I wanted to grow, assigned points to my skills and we came up with a list of goals that reflected that.

A few months later when it was time to review those goals and set new ones I was shocked to realize that what I'd set as goals before had become second nature.

That's the philosophy I'm applying to this post.

1. Meetup with more people

I have a core group of friends that I see multiple times each week or month but I really want to branch out and start meeting new people in the Seattle area. I've made a few friends by frequenting dog parks near my apartment; getting to know the people (and more importantly their dogs) that go there.

Last year, I started attending meetups and I'd like to take a few more steps out of my comfort zone and actually try to strike up conversations with the people there and get to know them better.

Ideally it'd be cool to find people who I could meet up with every once in awhile for coffee or dinner. Another sub-goal has been to try new cafes and restaurants in the area and this would be a great way to do it.

2. Be a mentor (cont.)

Throughout college I tried to do whatever I could to help mentor younger students in the program. I strongly believe that by teaching and mentoring others I go out of my way to learn new things or figure out better ways of teaching.

I'd like to continue this both in and out of the office. I've referred a few folks that have approached me at meetups and I'd like to keep in contact with them and see if there's anyway that I can help them advance their careers.

3. Speak at a conference

I've done a few talks for the Seattle area ReactJS meetup but I'd like to step my game up and actually do a conference talk this time. In college I did a lot of smaller talks and it's something I really enjoy doing.

The best way that I've been able to force myself to learn new things and learn them in-depth is to sign up for a talk about them. I think soon I'm going to try and give a "how to give a talk" talk but for the most part I want to work on developing my more technical presentations.

4. Better music discovery (more concerts)

I love music but I don't go out of my way often enough to find new stuff that I might like. I tend to build playlists 2-3 times a year and listen to those until I burn out and make another playlist.

I'm thinking about trying to use Pandora a little bit more and make my radio stations more friendly to less popular artists so I can get a greater mix of songs and moods. I'd also like to find smaller bands in the Seattle area that I'd be able to see more often (for a little bit cheaper).

There are a few things that didn't make the list (eating better, working out) that are part more aligned with where I want my life to go in general but these four areas are where I'm going to be putting the most of my energy this year.

A few other ones that just came to mind are:

Cook for myself a lot more
Explore new hikes and trails
Keep trying the casual dating thing

If any of these resonated with you feel free to reach out, I'd love to hear how you're starting out your year.

Introducing yourself at a new company

Tyler 🏳️‍🌈 — Fri, 21 Dec 2018 21:43:28 +0000

Day 1 at a new company is always a little awkward; especially if it's your first time. I myself usually clam up in new environments and stay really quiet (or, on occasion annoyingly loud). You're going to meet a lot of people and spend a lot of time trying to figure out how they all fit together.

One of the most important things I find myself telling students and recent graduates is: talk about your passions.

If there are aspects of your life or career that you think the people around you can help you further, tell them about it. If you're passionate about certain technologies or aspects of development talk to people about it.

If I know your name and your passions:
I can bring opportunities to you.

Introducing yourself to your team

You're going to work with your team on a daily basis, it's important to get off on the right foot with them. Many companies care more about cultural fit than technical competency. Managers don't want to hire people that will make their existing teams miserable, no matter how smart you are. So if you've made it through the interview process, they probably thought you'd be a good fit. Don't let them down.

When I first started my current position the first thing I realized was that my team is really quiet compared to what I'm used to. I'm a super social person who loves to talk and for the most part my team isn't. If I had decided to try and change that from day one, it could've really messed things up. In an effort to provide the opportunities to socialize, I've hosted a few social events including board game lunches and other team outings.

It'll take awhile to find your place on the team and find your fit, but it will happen. Gifs of cute dogs usually are a great place to start.

Introducing yourself to your mentor

If you're working at a decent size company there's a good chance you'll have someone assigned to help you get started. A lot of the time it's someone from your team but in some cases it could be someone within your organization.

If your assigned mentor is on your team: I'd recommend finding an additional mentor adjacent to your team. Sometimes issues arise and it's nice to have someone who is not directly involved with your team to talk things through.

Conversations with your mentor should be less formal but not necessarily unstructured. A lot of places have on-boarding checklists and if your company doesn't it doesn't hurt to ask for one. It's good to have a mutual understanding of the things you should be doing to get ramped up.

Honesty is also an important aspect of your relationship with your mentor. If you're struggling to find documentation or having other difficulties it's important to communicate that upstream. I don't know a single company who thinks it's perfected the on-boarding process, there's always room for improvement and that improvement relies on honest feedback.

Mentors are a great resource because they can give you the guidance that will help you be successful. Sponsors are a special type of mentor. Mentors are mostly there to answer your questions and give guidance, sponsors will do all of that and lobby for you while you're not there. They bring opportunities to you without you necessarily asking. Not every mentor is going to take it upon themselves to be a sponsor, but if you can successfully identify those people they will take you far.

Introducing yourself to your manager

Your manager is one of the few people where your success is a written part of their job description. You should have regularly scheduled meetings with your manager and it's important to utilize this time well.

If you're having concerns about joining a team and your manager doesn't know, they can't do anything about it. At the same time, if there are things you're interested and your manager doesn't know... they can't do anything about that either.

Having a good relationship with your manager will make it easier to address concerns when they arise. In previous jobs I've seen situations pop up where staff complain amongst themselves and just assume the manager ignores situations out of spite (rather than ignorance).

Be friendly and honest, and hope for the same in return.