DEV Community: johanna

Nevertheless, Johanna Coded

johanna — Sat, 07 Mar 2020 15:37:46 +0000

To be honest, I don’t know what equality in tech looks like. I’m far more interested in figuring out ways to craft equity.

My biggest piece of advice to allies is to call your friends of marginalised genders out when they have technical skills they don’t realize.

Tell them the types of careers they could go into.
Share that knowledge with them.
Illustrate how tech touches every industry.
You don't have to say it's easy to do, but you can showcase that it is a valid option for them to professionally pursue.
Be 👏 their 👏 cheerleader.👏

Anyways. So here’s my pre-developer journey highlighting times I wish that someone had told me sooner that I was capable of becoming a developer.

Like most middle-class millennials, I was told I could be anything I wanted to be when I grew up. Being a Software Developer was never my aspirational career choice, despite being surrounded by technical people my entire life. Primarily, because I didn’t even know it was an option for someone like me to do.

In middle school, I learned about how to write HTML from a female teacher in computer class in 8th grade. I loved being able to create something based on some ‘text’ I had typed out. I got my one-and-only detention from browsing hexadecimal colors for a beauty website I was creating during tech lab that same year. At this age, it felt like my time coding was directed to be kept to specific projects (didn't have resources in my home to work on coding at this point) and I wasn't encouraged to continue developing my skills despite a legitimate passion and curiosity.

In high school, I loved playing around in social playgrounds like MySpace and Tumblr where I was able to customize CSS to make my blog reflect my ever-changing persona. Despite my regular coding around this time, I didn't even stop to consider that majoring in Computer Science after high school was an option for me due to the fact that I wasn't particularly skilled at standardized testing, even though I was readily showing the ability to succeed in hands-on applications.

In college, I majored in Political Science and Marketing. I spent my time competing in speech and debate, participating in Student Government, as well as being an active sorority member. In my free time, I regularly helped with design and code composition of my friends who were majoring in Computer Science. And yet, at no point did it ever occur to me that my ability to code was something that meant I was capable of being a developer.

My first two career paths did not involve me coding, but I constantly found myself taking classes and trying to learn how to code and hoped that one day maybe I would be competent enough to take a Coding Bootcamp.

I ended up 'breaking into tech' after some close allies pointed out my already-existing competencies. Additionally, I continued taking classes online and building things while finding jobs that were able to trust my problem-solving skills and tenacity enough to give me the chance to work for them.

Today I am an active coder and leader within my local tech community, and now I'm even an open source contributor. I work to create equity in tech by giving marginalised genders in this field a space and community where they feel able and encouraged to stay in tech and keep coding.

What would an ideal onboarding situation look like?

johanna — Wed, 10 Jul 2019 22:32:00 +0000

It always fascinates me how much focus the recruitment process receives, while the actual onboarding process that employees go through sometimes ends up resembling a trial by fire event.

This discussion can be agnostic of experience level, remote/on-site, and specific role. (Or, you can segment it out by all these various aspects.)

Or here's some other prompts:

What's one area most companies fall short for onboarding new employees?
What's an experience that exceeded your expectations and made you feel part of the team from the beginning?
Do you know of any tools that have improved onboarding at your company?

My Experience With Treehouse's UX Track

johanna — Tue, 09 Jul 2019 22:35:41 +0000

I signed up for Treehouse a few months ago after I saw that they offered a UX Track as a part of their basic membership. As an aspiring UX Engineer, I realized one of the main things I lack is formal knowledge on the UX design process. I’m currently a self-directed Front End Engineer who builds UIs from the ground up with a decent background in marketing. I know a thing or two about A/B testing and reducing user pain points. My main goal was to close some of the gaps in design and how it plays into my day-to-day profession.

This was a self-directed series of small video courses that went over all things UX design in the form of designing, understanding information architecture, design patterns, and how to gain useful user feedback. There were small quizzes throughout each course, but no huge assignments to turn in. Here are my top three takeaways:

Start Low, go High (Fidelity)

This may sound obvious, but whenever possible, don’t skip the low fidelity wireframe stage of designing UIs and apps. I have been in time crunch scenarios where it seemed to be the best idea to get the highest level of fidelity (if not a functioning inVision prototype) out to my project manager before even asking a question outside of the ticket/user story. The problem with starting with a near-finished design is that your team members and other stakeholders can easily get distracted (and ultimately hung up) on small design features; this can cause you to need to start over from the beginning. One tip I learned was to avoid using color in your wireframes. After all, colors can cause emotional responses.

By starting with the general concept of the layout and how everything will work with the rest of your information architecture, you’re more likely to get actual feedback that will leave you with a next step instead of starting over from square one.

Bring the human aspect to user experience testing

Focusing on social studies and marketing in college gave me a pretty solid foundation on qualitative and quantitative studies as well as creating and analyzing user feedback in the form of surveys and guided interviews. This track featured a course that was especially helpful on how to craft a process for gaining user feedback on prototypes from early stages as well as ways to analyze trends found in production. Perhaps the most interesting takeaway for me was learning about Guerilla Usability Testing—which is a technique that includes doing a full out usability test out in the open, like a coffee shop setting. The idea that getting feedback doesn’t have to be super formal when not strictly results captured from analytics was an insight I’ll be sure to take away in the future.

Survey crafting is something almost everyone will encounter at some point. I’ll admit, beyond general intuition, I sometimes miss the mark on what collective groups of people need in their lives. Surveys are a great way of receiving feedback from groups of people and can often get you great demographic information paired with helpful information on your product. Having a course to brush up on how to effectively mix closed and open-ended questions was great to understand how to get wider swaths of feedback other than simply organizing a usability test group.

Feedback is a critical part of each stage of the design process

This should really be a feedback is critical at every stage of a decision process headline, but we’re talking design here. Often times projects start out with big, high-level ideas. It’s no surprise that one person’s (or a team’s) illustration on those ideas need massaging from all parties to actualize a business idea that fits the user’s needs. Getting feedback at each step will minimize big surprises that lead to poorly delivered feedback and huge design overhauls.

Final Review: 4/5 Stars

Overall, I found this track easy to consume and useful to my career goals. Without a doubt, my most eye-opening takeaway was how many basic steps I was previously skipping by assuming something was obvious. This UX Track was a great option for me to learn more about UX Design without signing up for an actual degree program or boot camp as I don’t particularly have the time available during traditional class hours. If you’re a design novice looking for a self-guided online set of courses, this track may be right for you!

My First Year as a "Real Dev"

johanna — Sat, 06 Jul 2019 00:44:52 +0000

About 360-some days ago, I started my first front end engineer role. It has been a year packed with a bunch of learning, challenges, and a crazy amount of personal and professional growth.

While I will never say, "Coding is for everyone", I can truthfully say that I believe for anyone looking to enter a career with stability and the ability to make an impact on a regular basis, development just might be it.

I still consciously make sure to not downplay the effort and self-motivation needed to be a self-directed learner—or even to go to a boot camp or get a college degree—but I don’t think things like not loving math or never having coded before should be a reason not to consider a career in technology. Below I will break down some of my main findings of the past year.

You’re a developer whether you’re employed or not

I refuse to accept any notions that you aren’t a developer if you aren’t being paid for it. You don’t have to be an expert to be one, either. Each of these mindsets creates barriers to entry in a field that needs a huge influx of talent.

The perspective a non-senior developer has is essential to any open source team or workplace. If documentation doesn’t make sense to just about anyone, then it might as well be a poorly written diary entry.

The impact you can make from the beginning is profound. Technology should make life easier, and it’s time for the entire industry* to stop pretending coding is inaccessible to people who can’t spend upwards of four years in a classroom learning about algorithmic theory when so much of my day-to-day is hands-on learning and implementation.

Some of the best developer skills aren’t technical

I’ve read a lot of great blog posts over the last year on how some of the best skills you can have as a developer, really aren’t technical at all.

Empathy, for example, is without a doubt a trait that can be learned just by putting your end users' needs in mind when designing and coding applications. But this also extends to people you interact with on a regular basis while discussing coding, the tech industry, and your day-to-day job in general.

Communication skills such as active listening, writing, as well being able to teach through a variety of formats (videos, blog posts, tweets) are important to making sure the tech industry is more welcoming to all people of different backgrounds.

Being a well-rounded person with an open mind and willingness to elevate others, in my opinion, is far more valuable than being super talented at writing complex code in low-level programming languages.

Breaks are healthy

I’m definitely one of the people who find purpose in being perpetually busy. One thing I’ve come to learn and love about my journey within the past year is that taking a break—whether it’s from getting the green little squares on GitHub, or even from taking a rest week from physical activity— breaks are one of the best ways to improve your life. Your mind and body need meaningful rest.

It’s easy to get caught up in the day-to-day grind of our capitalistic society. I’d encourage everyone to rebel from time to time and catch up on ‘you time’. You’ll come away with some previously hidden self truths, and maybe even a renewed passion for what you do!

The Rest Is Still Unwritten

Nastha Bedingfield had something right within those iconic lyrics. I can’t even fathom what this field is going to be like in five years time. The only certainty is change and navigating that change means having an openness to being proven wrong and adapting accordingly. I’m looking forward to the change ahead and all the new JavaScript frameworks that’ll break my projects for years to come.

*Some progress is being made in regard to four-year CS degrees not being a main qualification at top programming companies.

Nevertheless, Johanna Coded

johanna — Fri, 08 Mar 2019 13:32:50 +0000

I continued to code in 2019 because I have found an amazing community through Women Who Code that constantly motivates me to learn more and share my time and experience with the group.

I deserve credit for becoming a developer in under a year without going to a bootcamp or getting a CS degree. It's been a lot of work, and it will always be more work learning, but it has been worth it.

I hope to see my developer/tech community continue to work to be better and more inclusive to developers all over the world! You can do it. :)