DEV Community: Jeniffer Carvalho

Am I a good dev?

Jeniffer Carvalho — Fri, 13 Aug 2021 17:23:09 +0000

Probably not.

If you are a Senior dev, perhaps you are failing on the basics because you don’t care about them anymore. That sounds "too basic," and that's why you fail. You probably do not know the new basics.

If you are a Junior dev, perhaps you are failing because you don’t know enough about your tech, get stuck with easy errors, and probably fail to ask for help.

Let me be clear: no one is awesome on the job, and that’s completely ok.

Technology changes fast, and it means that it is impossible to be awesome.
Tomorrow you will receive another e-mail with a big update on your favorite framework.
In a few days, someone fucking awesome will create a better approach to writing code. And you know what? You do not need to know all of this.

I'm a very anxious person. I mean. I'M VERY ANXIOUS. At my first job in a big tech company, I felt bad every time that I needed to open a Pull Request for someone review my code.

Fear, shame, every bad feeling came to me. I didn't want to be judged. Or be discovered as a fraud.

That was real. I felt bad. I needed to see a doctor and took medication to treat myself with more compassion.
It took a while to realize that IT IS OK NOT TO BE AWESOME.

I discovered that even my heroes have fear.

Do you know that fucking awesome guy that has created a new approach that I mentioned before? He very likely felt the same as you. He had fears and anxiety. He had felt like a fraud before, so why wouldn't you?

I don't know about you, but even now, I have doubts about my technical skills if I'm really good at what I do. But one thing that's different now is that I have learned how to deal with this fear.

It is normal to feel that way in a world with so many changes.

It is normal to fear criticism, fear a code review. Everybody feels or has felt that way.

You are not alone, please, know that.

Do not let anxiety and fear control you. If it gets worse, look for help. Talk to someone. Take care of yourself. Do not give up on this beautiful career because you think this is hard for you. It was hard for most of us.

Tip for the seniors devs: be the senior that your junior self wanted to meet. Be kind to others.

Tip for the juniors devs: fear is normal. Ask for help if you need it.
Be kind to yourself.

Is my career my life?

Jeniffer Carvalho — Sat, 24 Jul 2021 01:58:09 +0000

When someone asks you "who are you?", the first thing that you might think to say is your title, like "I'm a doctor" or "I'm an engineer." But, is that really you? Are you your title and is your career your life?

I mean, I'm not judging. I just want to put the cards on the table. Try to think about that.

In my case, probably the answer would be YES.

I built my life around my career. I'm not sure if it's bad or not. But I did.

I made a lot of sacrifices to be where I am now. I changed everything and almost everyone around me in favor of my career. Most of these changes I did and not realized them.

My life dream was to get a degree. So when I was at university I put this goal in front of any other. No matter how hard I needed to study. I did not relax til I realized this goal. At that time, my degree was my life.

I was really focused on finishing my studies. So I stopped to going out at night, stopped seeing some friends, stopped talking with loved ones and I did not realize that.

I changed myself and my lifestyle in favor of this goal.

I really don't miss most of those things. Go to parties at night and expend my sleeping hours on that? Thanks, but not anymore.

My degree was just one step toward the main goal: my dev career.

After I got that, I had another goal: work with a hot tech and be better paid. So I started to focus on this goal, staying at home most of time and not caring about anything else.

I spent a lot of weekends building projects just to practice and getting better at that. Hang with friends? Not really. Nothing was more important than showing Captain Marvel comics using React. (I loved that project)

So I changed my weekends to achieve this, and I did.

Next goal: talk in english with confidence.

So, I changed everything around me to English: smartphone, MacBook, TV shows. If something could be in English, it is now.

I never liked to watch TV series, I always saw that as a waste of time. But I changed my mind just to study English and practice my listening skills. So again, I changed myself in favor of a goal.

It is clear for me that my career is my life, because I built and shaped it around me. Of course I had a lot of losses on that. But most were wins.

Is it dangerous to think this way? Maybe. I'm not a workaholic and no one should be. But of course to achieve some goals in life, I think you have to change yourself. In my case it has been worth it.

Now I just can't see myself only as Jeniffer.

I'm a happy and proud software engineer, and by the way my name is Jeniffer.

Which skills you need to be a developer

Jeniffer Carvalho — Thu, 25 Mar 2021 14:18:03 +0000

I'm in this industry for almost seven years now, and I have seen many successful developers. But I have also seen many people quit.

Besides the developer's life, I'm also a tutor, and have taught over 50 people how to be a developer.

I could see what the successful students did and what the unsuccessful students did.

This is not a guess. This is what I witnessed.

Be self-motivated

It's not easy to make a career transition. It's not easy to start coding and learn all of these terms in record time. Maybe you are doing a Bootcamp. Maybe you bought dozens of courses on udemy. But you did not finish any of them. This is because you do not have the real motivation to do so.

What is your main goal?

Know yourself better to answer this question, and when you start to be lazy remember your goal. It should be greater than anything else in your life, and if it's not enough, perhaps code is not your thing.

People that succeed in dev career are truly motivated. They know their limits and always try to be motivated when a big challenge comes to them.

Be Focused

Which tech do you want to work with? React? Node? Flutter? Man, you need to choose one! Be focused, don't let others decide it for you. Watch the market and choose what you like most, and what is in demand. Focus on something and stick with this tech.

I say "watch the market" because if you prefer to work with Fortran, maybe it'll be hard to find a job. Really. So, choose something in demand which you like to work with every day.

There is no problem at all to be a full-stack and know other techs, but if you are starting a career in tech, choose just one.

Be Resilient

You're gonna hear a lot of "no's" before you get your "yes, welcome to the company". You'll hear a lot of things about your non-existent experience, and even maybe about your code.

These things happen and you must be strong enough to handle them.

Again, remember why you are trying to enter this industry. Do not give up on your first "no". Learn with your failures and try to improve for the next time.

Believe in yourself

To get a first dev job is not easy. The market is good but not that good for juniors developers. It was hard for everyone. You need to continue studying, improving your portfolio, and showing your job to the world.

Learn about how to make a nice resume and a good LinkedIn profile. Believe me, if you work hard and really understand what you are doing on your projects, it is just a matter of time.

Have fun

Most devs that I know started to code because they find it fun. It was a challenge, a nice thing to do on the computer.

Find your fun in it.

Create nice projects and have joy in the process.

Maybe a new youtube only for kitties and puppies, why not? Create. Learn. Have fun doing this. Studying should not be a boring thing to do.

Conclusion

I wrote here five skills that I have seen in successful devs that I've met, but my favorite is: "have fun".

If you can have fun while you are doing something, you're already ahead of the game. Things can be really easy when you enjoy what you are doing. Find what makes you happy and invest time in it.

When I started I had bad times on MySQL and I decided that I did not want to do that for my whole life. So every time that I got pissed off with that I switched to CSS, because it made me happy. At that time I noticed that I should work with CSS and forget about MySQL.

Years later I'm a front-end architect and I still loving CSS.

Should I become a developer?

Jeniffer Carvalho — Fri, 12 Mar 2021 20:36:49 +0000

If you are asking yourself about that you should think about these topics.

Probably you know there is a large lack of developers in the world. In just the United States alone there will be a shortage of 1 million developers in a couple of years.

Besides that, it's a very lucrative career, making an average of $ 100,000 in the USA.

Seems amazing, right? But it is not only about the good things.

Stay up to date

What do you think about studying for the rest of your life? Or at least for your entire career. When I say studying, it is not only taking some courses in a couple of years. It is an active and almost daily studying. You should be up to date on the newest techs, frameworks, languages, and terms.

Sometimes you have to switch from one technology to another because it becomes obsolete, and you just can't fight against that.

It's so normal in a developer's life that we started to make memes about that.

Technology changes so fast that sometimes we just can't follow. It makes you be afraid of falling behind in your career. To lose your job, and not be able to get another. To be seen as a fraud.

These feelings can turn into a disease called impostor syndrome. You can see more about it here.

Sometimes we are so hard on ourselves. We need to be updated as much as we can, but we are not machines. We can't handle all the techs at the same time, we don't know all the new frameworks. But it's very difficult to balance that. To know when its time to stop, when to have a life outside the job.

Love what you do

Now you know that you'll be studying all the time. But how can you do that? I have a tip: you should see coding as a fun thing.

When I started to learn React I made some cool projects to practice on.

My first project was a webpage that communicates with Marvel's API showing some comics. I spent an entire weekend doing this. It was a useless project. But the possibilities that the Marvel's API gave me were so cool. I was handling with comic information. What can be cooler than that? Well, maybe cats.

I built another project, but this time using an API that gave me gifs of cats. It was just one image and one button, when you click on the button the gif changes. It was one of the coolest projects that I ever built. I learned A LOT of things with these projects and I did it having fun.

Conclusion

To handle this career you need to love it. Because when you are not at a job working, you'll be at home coding. You'll be spending a lot of weekends coding. I don't think someone is capable of doing something for most of their life if they don't love it. Money is not capable of making you love coding. How much fun you have with it will.

Should you become a developer?
Ask yourself this first: are you able to love it?

How to plan your dev career

Jeniffer Carvalho — Wed, 25 Nov 2020 13:52:28 +0000

Everybody wants a good career: to work on amazing projects and be recognized for your job. Working at a nice place that can provide that for you is not so easy. It requires planning, effort, and a bit of cunning to leave your current job when the time comes.

Decide your path

So first of all, decide what you want. Is that Front end, back end, mobile, or full-stack? Focusing on a specific path will be the fastest way for you to become highly qualified.

Did you decide on your path? Great. Now, focus on a language or framework and become really good at that. Create side projects using that language, work at a company that uses that language, study it as much as you can.

Stay open

Always stay open to new job opportunities. I know sometimes you like your job, but maybe it is no longer a nice place to work. Let me explain: try to answer these questions for yourself.

Are you ok with your salary?
Are your projects challenging?
Do you still learn?

When the answer to any of these questions is no, you should start to think about looking for a better place to be.

Follow tech trends

Don't start to code on a language just because you like it. Choose a tech by its users. Are there a lot of big companies using it? Is it well paid? Are there a lot of jobs for it? Make sure to consider all of these questions before spending time and effort studying something.

Stay on LinkedIn and use it regularly. LinkedIn jobs are a good market barometer. There you can see the most in-demand tech jobs, how much they are paying and of course you can get a brand new job.

I got my past three jobs using LinkedIn, so I'm proof that it really works.

Repeat!

One more important thing: repeat all these items regularly. If you just moved from one job to another, make sure in a couple of years to start asking yourself those questions again. Make sure to follow the market and always stay open to learning new things.