DEV Community: Lara Martín 👩‍💻

A year as Android Engineer

Lara Martín 👩‍💻 — Mon, 21 May 2018 17:26:22 +0000

Two years ago I started my career in tech. I started as QA Tester and then transitioned into a developer role a year after. Not without a lot of effort and a lot of personal time invested.

You can find that part of the story in this post about how I switch careers from Biology to tech and how I learned Android for a year. Today I want to talk about how I started my first role as Android developer, how I switched companies and how my first year as Android Engineer has been overall.

My first role

My first role as Android developer started out just a year ago. The company I was working at provided me with the opportunity to transition from QA to Android developer by dedicating half of the time to each role.

This transition was thanks to the time I invested learning Android on evenings and weekends. I went through the Android Basics Nanodegree, the Android Developer Nanodegree and as well I got the Google Developers Certification. That part of the story is explained in more detail here.

After two months I switched to full time when they hired another QA. Here's were all the challenges began!

Transitioning someone into a developer role is a lot harder than just providing them with a laptop and a git account. And here I explain some of the roadblocks I got during that time.

Lack of expectations

The first problem I faced was not knowing the expectations that the company had on me. My thought was that they expected me to deliver since the very first day, probably not like my experienced colleagues, but deliver by doing small tasks. This feeling caused me a lot of pressure. By not having clear goals, I was constantly thinking I wasn't good enough and that I was an impostor.

Lack of mentorship

There was no concept of mentorship in the company and the environment didn’t allow us to work together. We barely did pair-programming, because there was always a deadline and the company wanted us to keep delivering. Luckily my colleagues were always willing to help! They sat with me to help me whenever I got stuck or asked for help.

Lack of feedback

I never got any feedback during that time. What was I doing well or bad? What could I improve? I didn't know since I didn’t have anyone whom to report.

Lack of learning culture

I think that in order to keep up to date we need to continue learning by reading blog posts, watching talks, attending conferences, trying new things, etc. The company didn’t offer learning hours during working time, which is unfortunately quite common as other devs told me. Without having learning time, I felt I wasn't entitled to spend even 10 minutes to read a blog post I found to be interesting and relevant for my job.

The problem was not only the lack of an explicit learning time allowance, but also that when I requested it, it got denied.

An example of that occurred when I finished my tasks for the sprint and we were already at the end of it, so I asked if I could spend the rest of the day learning Kotlin. This request got denied.

Another case was when I requested to attend an Android conference, and then I was asked to take days from my paid time off.

Impostor syndrome

The lack of expectations, the lack of feedback, and the lack of learning culture in the company made the first 9 months of my developer career even more challenging. I have the feeling that it contributed to increase my internal impostors syndrome.

One example of it was opening and reviewing pull requests. Sometimes I'd ask a colleague to check my code privately, rather than opening a pull request, to avoid showing my code to everyone.

Other times, when I was reviewing, I would spend minutes staring the "approve" button, worried of approving something that another colleague would have considered wrong.

And when I didn't agree on something, I was never speaking loud enough worried of a backslash due to my lack of knowledge.

Sometimes I’d ask a colleague to check my code privately […] to avoid showing my code to everyone.

New company, new challenges

Later on I got a new opportunity in my hands. I was invited to the hiring process for a Junior Android Engineer position at Babbel thanks to a friend who worked with me in the past.

I met the team while volunteering in a local meet-up that was hosted at their offices. That helped me a lot when deciding to apply. I loved the company's motto: learning for all. Also everyone was very friendly and looked happy working there! But I didn't apply straight away, because why would I apply if I though that I wasn't good enough?

Luckily my friend and my partner pushed me to do it. They gave me the strength I needed to send my CV. Shortly after I got into the interview process. It was fairly simple: I had to do a coding challenge in the form of a small app, and then later a technical interview with the team and team fit interview with the hiring manager.

Hiring process

I spent the weekend with the coding challenge and sent it right after on Monday. Soon after I got invited for an on-site interview.

The technical interview was about the coding challenge itself, we talked about good and bad things on Android, why did I implement things in a way, how could it be improved, etc. It followed a short team fit interview with the hiring manager, where we talked about challenges I faced, how I solved this problems, and so on.

They offered me the job and I accepted the offer!

On my first year working as Android developer, I spent 9 months in a company and the next 3 with my current employer.

Learning environment

One big change for me is having 1:1 meetings with my Engineering Manager every two weeks. That way, it's clear for me what are our expectations.

We are getting constant feedback and ideas on what to improve and how to help and be helped. Beside the internal trainings they offer, I also have a weekly learning time allowance to learn anything I want. So far, I've been using it to improve my Kotlin and RxJava knowledge.

We also do pair-programming almost daily. There's always paper and pens nearby my desk to sketch ideas. And I keep a second chair by my side so my colleagues can sit with me :-)

However, I still struggle with the impostor syndrome.

Still the Impostor syndrome

I still struggle with it. For example, when doing pair-programming, if we reach a topic I don't quite understand, even when my colleagues have the patience to explain it to me many times, there are times I just can't get it.

After the second or third time I start feeling a big pressure on my chest. How come I don't get it? Why is it so difficult for me to understand? This situation creates me anxiety.

I realized I need to accept that I might not understand a given topic but that getting the idea is the first step! Sometimes we just require more time and practice so it finally "compiles in our brains" :-)

For example, I used to struggle with Java interfaces vs. abstract classes, I just couldn't understand them completely, no matter how many examples I saw. But then I started using them, and even if I could not explain how they worked, I knew how and when to use them.

Confidence

The learning environment in my current company helps me in building confidence. Even if I've been asking a lot of questions, there's always room for more!

Having less experience doesn't mean your opinions will be less valued. For example if a proposed solution seems too complex, I will challenge them to write it in a clearer way. Also, I provide a different set of experience and points of view, which has been helpful so far for polishing the app user experience.

To improve

The engineer role isn't just coding, but rather a broad range of skills. I am still at the beginning of the journey, and on my way of mastering it, I want to focus on the following ideas:

Communication: as English isn't my first language, sometimes I struggle to transmit an idea, which is essential for my job. I can work on that by writing, reading and talking more.
Give constructive feedback: I want to give meaningful feedback to my colleagues so they can grow with me as well. Be proud of my achievements: I need to create a list to track all kind of achievements, small or big, and my overall progress, so I can look back and feel good when I struggle.
Not being obsessed on what I don't know: hard to do when there's so many new things coming up, so keeping focused on the essentials, and what's required for my project in hand, is important.
Share more knowledge with my colleagues! That I'm a junior doesn't mean I don't have anything to share! I need to keep sharing articles and talks I find interesting. I know my colleagues appreciate that.
Be patient and constantly learn: keep learning as I am doing, but being more patient with myself.
Self-care: take breaks whenever needed and don't be hard with myself. Relaxing is also productive.

I am very happy at my new job, and I want to keep learning, improving and sharing. I hope that my experience can help you achieve your goals.

Originally posted in my medium blog.

Nevertheless, Lara Martín 👩‍💻 Continued Coding! 💚

Lara Martín 👩‍💻 — Tue, 06 Mar 2018 20:38:36 +0000

A year ago I wrote my first blog post ever. It was for International Women's Day celebration in Dev.to "Nevertheless, She Coded".

At that time I was working full-time as QA tester and learning Android development in my free time. Since then I got the Google Associate Android Developer certification, finished the Udacity Android Developer Nanodegree, switched to do professional Android development at work and even switched companies.

I continue to code because...

It has a mix of all things I like: creativity, analytical thinking, technology, interaction with people, learning and daily challenges. Keeping up with the tech community is more fun than what I expected. I attend monthly meetups, I go to conferences and most importantly I've made very good friends.

I recently overcame...

The fear of applying to a new company for a Junior Android Developer position. By the time I got into the interview process in a new company, I only had 3 months of professional experience in Android development. I was scared of not knowing enough for the open junior position, of the technical questions, of saying I didn't know something.

I even feared to present myself to people as an Android developer. I used to say "I'm a Junior Android Developer, but I started 1 month ago 😰". There was always a "but...".

I'll be honest with you. I'm glad I pushed myself to apply and had that interview, because I got the job!!! Now I proudly say out loud that I'm a Junior Android Engineer!!! 😎

I want to brag about...

All the effort I put on learning in my free time while having a full-time job. I worked full time as a tester, and on my evenings and weekends I kept learning. It really paid off.

It wasn't an easy journey finding the energy to finish all the projects as the content was getting more and more difficult.

When I decided to switch jobs, I wanted to give my best so I put an extra effort on the coding challenge and on the interview.

I keep working hard. I try to learn from everyone, I read every pull-request that my colleagues open and when I don't know something, I ask.

I know that this is just the beginning of the journey. But I'll keep working hard, learning and improving to help creating apps that people love.

My advice for allies to support women and non-binary folks who code is....

Having a happy work environment is important for everyone but specially for all underrepresented folks. Details like praising the good job and celebrating every success, to important things like having good follow-up meetings and one-on-one with your managers also help us.

It's important that everyone has a voice, and that the company work on having an inclusive environment where everyone is listened to.

My advice for you is to make sure that everyone has their voice listened on a friendly environment 💖

Why I added licenses to my Udacity projects

Lara Martín 👩‍💻 — Wed, 08 Nov 2017 15:35:12 +0000

I use GitHub to host my repositories including all the projects I did for the Udacity Android Nanodegrees. This helps me to organise them, check in the future how I implemented things and most importantly personal visibility.

I used GitHub as my Android portfolio. In each repository I added a README file describing the project, the Android goodies it contained and also added some screenshots of the final app.

The problem

One of the most popular repos I have is a project I did for Udacity's Android Basics Nanodegree, that consisted in building an Inventory App. This project required creating a simple app using a local SQLite Database, cursors, a ListView and some permissions.

Since I uploaded it to GitHub it started to get forked frequently (even got some stars! â). I realised that most of the people that forked it, deleted it afterwards. This means that maybe it wasn't what they expected, right? Well, I noticed that some people forked it and later deleted my name, uploading my same project (sometimes without even changing the name!) on a new repo. This is the same as downloading the repo to your local machine and uploading it to your GitHub, removing all git history and any trace of my authorship.

[…] some people forked it and later deleted my name, uploading my same project […] on a new repo.

At this point I was curious about this fact and started checking periodically the traffic of my repositories. Unfortunately GitHub only displays analytics for the last 14 days, but as far as I've seen, the average number of unique visitors is 150 every 2 weeks. I find it a lot for a project like this!

However I’m not getting only visitors, but also clones. An average of 5 clones every 2 weeks.

The real problem comes when people just copy-paste all the project content or just change my name to submit it to Udacity as their own work. When you enroll in a Udacity Nanodegree you have to agree on the Udacity Honor Code, that states that you are submitting your own work. Therefore breaking this can end in getting you expelled from a program without refund.

So why use GitHub for your Udacity projects then?

First of all, Udacity encourages you to upload your projects to GitHub, as this will help you to build your portfolio. During the Android Nanodegrees I took, Udacity suggested to use GitHub, also referring to their course "How to Use Git and GitHub". There are two ways of submitting a project, either linking your GitHub repository or uploading a ZIP file.

Secondly, uploading my Udacity projects to GitHub is my portfolio and gives me visibility to potential employers. If you google "Udacity inventory app" you will probably see my project as one of the first results.

Furthermore it helps students: Having a guidance helps them to get unstuck. And how do I know? I got some messages from students thanking me for my repos as they helped them. Only a few, but it always makes my day! ðŸ˜

Today someone wrote me to thank me for my GitHub projects from the Android Nanodegree. Made my day! ðŸ˜â¤ï¸ pic.twitter.com/VImYK2PaXq
— Lara MartÃn (@lariki ) July 27, 2017

The license

As I want to keep these repos public to showcase my work and potentially help others, I figured out that adding a license could help to warn about the plagiarism issue.

The license I add is the MIT license plus some personal words about Udacity Honor Code:

PROJECT LICENSE

This project was submitted by Lara MartÃn as part of the Nanodegree At Udacity.

As part of Udacity Honor code, your submissions must be your own work, hence
submitting this project as yours will cause you to break the Udacity Honor Code
and the suspension of your account.

Me, the author of the project, allow you to check the code as a reference, but if
you submit it, it's your own responsibility if you get expelled.

Copyright (c) 2017 Lara MartÃn

Besides the above notice, the following license applies and this license notice
must be included in all works derived from this project.

MIT License

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy
of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal
in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights
to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell
copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is
furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:
[...]

https://gist.github.com/laramartin/7796d730bba8cf689f628d9b011e91d8

I added this license to the README files and in all project files. Thankfully Android Studio helps you with it, let me explain how to achieve this.

Adding a license to all files with Android Studio

To add a license to your project, first you need to create a template with the text. Go to Preferences -> Editor -> Copyright -> Copyright Profiles. Here add a new profile, give it a name and paste your license.

Once you have a copyright profile you want to use, you can add it to a specific file you want or to all:

Add it as your default project copyright: Preferences -> Editor -> Copyright -> select the desired copyright file
Update the copyright: select the file(s) you want to add the license to -> right click -> Update copyright. There is also a shortcut when adding a copyright in a single file, just use cmd + N in mac or Alt + Insert for Windows.

and done!

Now with these licenses I feel I have warned the students enough about the dangers of plagiarism. Nevertheless, I hope my repos help you to progress in your learning! ðŸ’š

Originally posted in my medium blog.

Clean your status bar like a pro!

Lara Martín 👩‍💻 — Sat, 19 Aug 2017 10:05:59 +0000

We developers need to take screenshots of our apps sometimes: either for the Google Play Store or to show off on our open source projects. Like everyone else, the status bar of our devices may be crammed with notifications, low battery indicator and not so healthy hours 😉.

Your potential user can be distracted by the icons in the status bar and in the worst case it will give the impression you're not careful about your product and not professional.

Until now, every time I needed to take screenshots I used an app called Clean Status Bar that draws a fake status bar on top of the real one. That allowed me to hide my notifications to show a neutral time and a fully charged phone. I only had to open the app, choose the icons I wanted to display, give it a background color, and that was it! My status bar looked nice for the screenshots!

But I faced a problem. At work we have a script to generate screenshots in different emulators, but we didn't have a way to make the status bar look good automatically every time we needed.

I found the Demo Mode for Android, which forces the status bar to look on a given way with the aim of taking screenshots. So here I explain how I use it.

How to use Demo Mode

You need to run these commands from the terminal, so you need adb access to the device.

First you enable the Demo Mode:

adb shell settings put global sysui_demo_allowed 1

Second you enter the commands to display or hide icons on the status bar. The ones I like to use are:

// display time 12:00
adb shell am broadcast -a com.android.systemui.demo -e command clock -e hhmm 1200

// Display full mobile data without type
adb shell am broadcast -a com.android.systemui.demo -e command network -e mobile show -e level 4 -e datatype false

// Hide notifications
adb shell am broadcast -a com.android.systemui.demo -e command notifications -e visible false

// Show full battery but not in charging state
adb shell am broadcast -a com.android.systemui.demo -e command battery -e plugged false -e level 100

This is how it looks like after running the commands:

Now you can take the screenshots you need, but do not forget to exit the Demo Mode at the end:

adb shell am broadcast -a com.android.systemui.demo -e command exit

The list of available commands can be found here:

https://android.googlesource.com/platform/frameworks/base/+/master/packages/SystemUI/docs/demo_mode.md

You now have no excuse to not have nicer screenshots! I continue using Emma’s app for my personal projects, but if you need to automate your screenshots, this is a must do.

Originally posted in my medium blog.

A year of Android

Lara Martín 👩‍💻 — Wed, 28 Jun 2017 20:36:54 +0000

My name is Lara Martin, and I’m writing this series to chronicle my learning journey with Android. In my first article, I wrote about how I switched careers from Biology into tech, took my first steps in programming, and how I got my first job as a QA tester.

And here, I’m going to continue the story by highlighting how I started learning Android, what I did to improve my skills, and how I became an Android developer.

In this article you’ll find a guide to everything I did to learn Android development during my first year of trying to master this technology. Hopefully it will help you achieve your goals!

Note that everything I worked on to learn Android had to be done outside work hours, as I already had a full-time job to manage. I was spending many weekends and evenings learning, and I still I can’t say I am done. But during the time this article covers, I was just transitioning from QA to the Android developer role.

Android Study Jam

It all began in March 2016 when I started attending the Android Study Jam organized by Women Techmakers Berlin and the Berlindroid Android Developers Group.

For 4 months, we students did the free online Android Development For Beginners course from Udacity, while we were meeting twice a month to have Q&A sessions with volunteering coaches from the local Android community.

At the end, we built a small app and we presented it to the rest of the group. Mine was awarded as one of the best apps and I won an Android Basics Nanodegree scholarship. I didn’t know this was an option until the end–it was a nice surprise!

Android meetups

Soon after beginning the Android Study Jam, I started attending the monthly Android meetup organized by GDG Android Berlin.

I knew it would take time to start understanding the topics presented. The first time I barely got anything, the second time I got a bit more and so on.

Attending events is something that helps me keep updated with current trends while also learning new things I wouldn’t have otherwise explored. Plus, being part of the community is fun and allows me to meet lots of nice people.

Android Basics Nanodegree

I continued with the Udacity content, doing the Android Basics Nanodegree program that I won through the Android Study Jam.

In the first course I learned about basic Views, how to arrange them on a Layout, and some simple user interaction. The next course in the Nanodegree program taught me how to manage different screens, Fragments, and app navigation. Two more courses followed, one that explained the basics of networking and another on SQLite databases.

I had to prepare different projects that I had to submit, and which were evaluated by the Udacity reviewers. The major challenge was always to get the requirements right. It helped to have the projects reviewed by other developers, as I could learn a lot from their suggestions.

I finished the Nanodegree program around October.

Conferences

I went to my first tech conference in October 2016, thanks to a ticket I got, but I didn’t enjoy it too much, because I went alone and wasn’t much interested in the topics. I think it is OK if something doesn’t work out as expected, that shouldn’t discourage you to try other things.

However, I enjoyed the next conference a lot. I went to DevFest Hamburg, a conference organized by GDG Hamburg. There was a dedicated Android track and I saw talks about MVVM, Realm, Firebase, VR, Google Maps, and more, many of which were topics that I wouldn’t have checked out otherwise. Going to conferences is a great way to learn about current trends and new things.

Obviously I couldn’t miss DevFest Berlin! I volunteered during the event to give back to the community for all the hard work they put into these events. Again, DevFest was so much fun!

I’m looking forward to attend more DevFest events and other conferences like droidcon! Hopefully one day I’ll attend Google I/O… ðŸ˜

Pet project: Weather App

I wanted to practice my new skills, and something that everyone recommended to me was to have a pet project where I could try new things.

So, I created a small weather app with the aim of trying new libraries, architecture patterns and design ideas.

Here’s a link to the GitHub repo: laramartin/android_weather

Google Growth Engine

Shortly after, I was contacted by Udacity Berlin to be one of the success stories featured on their new European Scholarships campaign. This experience was important for my journey and inspired me to continue learning.

Being part of the campaign included a professional photo-shoot, and answering questions for the Google Public Relations department–this was later published in the Google Growth Engine website. Moreover, the day of the scholarships launch, I spoke at a press-release with Udacity in Berlin, and at an event with a hundred attendees together with two other Udacity students and managers.

Member of @WomenTechmakers @lariki is sharing how she got into Android development through @udacity - great story to listen to! pic.twitter.com/dg27mLXR8M
— Tim Messerschmidt (@SeraAndroid) November 28, 2016

Android Fast Track and the Associate Developer Certificate

Being part of the campaign earned me one of the Android Fast Track scholarships, so I could prepare for the Associate Android Developer Certificate exam.

I got three months to prepare, and this included the opportunity to complete two of the first courses of the Android Developer Nanodegree program.

The contents of the course included more advanced topics like ContentProvider and Service.

In April 2017 I took a week off to do the exam and the interview. They first give you 48 hours to fix and add features to a broken Android project, and then after that, you have to pass a short online interview. I didn’t have to prepare too much for this, because I still had the contents of the course fresh in my mind.

I passed the test on my first try and got my developer certification. ðŸ˜„

Android Developer Nanodegree

After getting the certification I continued with the Android Developer Nanodegree program. This program differs from the Basic one through having more advanced content, and by finishing with a final project. It requires some background in Android development and familiarity with Java, and it prepares you to start working as an Android Developer.

At the time of this article, I am 70% of the way through this Nanodegree program.

Having a mentor

A mentor is someone that will guide you. A mentor is not supposed to solve your problems, nor teach you; but rather, guide you through your learning.

Your mentor doesn’t need to be a loved one or an expert. Your mentor is simply someone who will hold you accountable for your progress, and provide motivation and support when you need it.

I was lucky I had a mentor at home. My husband coached me when I got stuck and pushed me to continue learning when I wanted to give up.

What remains left

My team has made it official that they want me as an Android Developer. So I am currently transitioning from my QA role to Android Developer, and doing my first programming tasks.

My current focus is getting used to this new role. I also want to complete the Android Developer Nanodegree program, and there’s a large list of other things I’d like to learn as well:

Kotlin
Java
Clean Code/Architecture and best practices
RxJava
Animations, transitions, etc.
Dagger (and Dependency Injection in general)
Computer Science in general

I feel that I will never be done with learning. There’s no final moment when you will say you are done. It’s not because I think I am still a newbie, but because it’s what I see in my friends, even when they have years of experience, they continue tinkering with new things. The software developer profession requires you to constantly learn new things and keep up to date with technologies–this also helps you be more competitive and achieve continuous improvement.

Final word

I’d like to thank Women Techmakers Berlin for all the work they’re doing to give more opportunities to women in tech; Udacity and Google for having created all the amazing course content; the Android community in Berlin for being so welcoming; and also my team for giving me the opportunity to progress into my developer role following my efforts to learn Android, and finally becoming an Android developer.

Originally posted in my medium blog.

How I took my first step in tech

Lara Martín 👩‍💻 — Mon, 12 Jun 2017 18:52:53 +0000

Here I share my story: How I redefined my professional career, going from being a biology graduate to work as an Android developer.

In this article I explain why I decided to switch careers and how I applied to my first job in tech.

In the second part, I’ll explain how I’ve been learning Android development, the resources I used and the different options that there are.

In the third part, I'll explain how it is to work as a developer after these years of preparation, how I did the jump and what were the obstacles I found.

After graduation

Five years ago, my husband got a job offer in Berlin and we moved there. I was recently graduated with a bachelors in biology and was uncertain about my employment possibilities, but I was sure that they might be better anywhere else than in Spain.

While we were getting used to living in another country, I focused on learning German full time. For 10 months I attended a language school where I took 3 hours of intensive German lessons for five days a week. I went from knowing nothing to a theoretical C1 level.

I have to say that my English was also pretty limited at that time, so I also tried to improve it by taking online Skype lessons.

During that year I also had my first contact with programming. I was curious about my husband’s job, and thanks to Coursera I took a bunch of lightweight programming courses in Python. It was fun but it never motivated me to continue studying past the course graduation.

Masters in Biotechnology

My recent interest in programming and my background in biology motivated me to reshape my career into a more technical path. After a bit of research I’ve decided to pursue a masters in biotechnology that was offered by an online university in Spain.

For two years I learned some of the tools data scientist use and also did a lot of statistics. These tools included: the R language, a bit of PHP, a bit of Linux command line tools and a bit of SQL databases.

But it wasn’t for me. I didn’t like studying statistics and I went through a lot of stress just to pass the last parts of the program. After graduation I didn’t feel job ready. Plus, most of the job offers I could find, required a PhD or even a Post-Doc. The few job interviews I was able to get didn’t go well.

In the last interview I had for a statistician position, I had to explain my master thesis. It consisted of a web application using the R language to display statistical analysis of proteomic data. I was excited to talk about how I built it and how it worked, but the hiring managers didn’t care about that, they only cared about the statistical part of it. That was when I realized that I like building things and wanted to continue learning programming.

Working from home on crowd-sourced testing

I knew I wanted to work in tech, just not in data science or biotechnology. And while I was getting ready for that, I needed some cash.

I learned about two crowd-testing companies. You work from home testing software products and you get paid depending on the amount of bugs you are able to find.

Here my German skills helped me. Almost all the products I was asked to test were in German. Being able to communicate in a different language was a big competitive advantage. I tested roughly 20 different products, from e-commerce websites to mobile video streaming apps.

There’s no need to say that the pay was bad. You cannot do a living from this and I am even sure it’s illegal to work under those conditions in Germany.

FreeCodeCamp

Meanwhile, I continued learning programming. I found FreeCodeCamp and it was a breath of fresh air. It’s completely free and has a very nice curriculum. I completed their Front-End Development Certification, learning a bit of JavaScript and web development.

A full time position in QA

As the QA freelancing was not as fruitful as expected, I tried to find full time positions elsewhere. After applying to a dozen of tester positions, I got one as QA for the mobile apps at my current employer. Having worked as freelancer, even without a proper job contract, gave me the necessary skills to get the position.

It took me four years and a lot of trial and error, but I got a stable income and a job in tech. Still, I didn’t want to stop there, so I continued learning programming on the little free time I had left, because I knew testing was just a temporal job and I wanted to be a professional software developer.

How I did it and why Android is explained in the next article.

My advice:

Studying is never a waste of time. Even if I did not end working as biotechnologist, being in contact with the tools and being challenged helped me to become a better developer in the long run.
It’s perfectly fine, even encouraged, to try different languages and platforms before specializing. I did Python, R, JavaScript and even PHP during these years. And Android development is the only one that really caught my attention. You need to have a lot of passion to spend hundreds of hours studying on your free time, better do it with something you actually like.
Soft skills are very important. Knowing German helped me getting into a lot of job offers. Sounds obvious but a lot of people think that you don’t need German to get a job in Berlin, it is true to a certain level but only if you have a very demanded skill set.
Testing is a good first step to become a developer. You will be part of the tech teams, you will get to know how the products work from the inside and what are the processes involved in product development. You can bring that experience to your first developer gig.

Originally posted in my medium blog.

Lara Martín 👩‍💻 — Wed, 08 Mar 2017 15:36:16 +0000

I began coding because...

My husband is software developer and I always wanted to know what did he do at work. One day he tried to explain to me some concepts but I didn't get it. Later he suggested I could take an online course to learn basic programming. I loved it so much I knew I wanted to learn more.

I don't have a background in IT, in fact I studied Biology. In 2013 I took some very basic introductory courses to programming in Python. That motivated me to start a masters in Biotechnology, which I did remotely. Once I finished the masters I didn't know what to do because I didn't like it, it was too focused on statistics and very little in programming. That was when I started doing Android.

First I joined the local Android Study Jam organized by Women Techmakers, where I did my first app and learned java for the first time. After that I did the Android Basics Nanodegree which I finished last October.

I'm currently hacking on...

I continue learning Android. I got a scholarship from Udacity to do the Associate Android Developer Fast Track, a program design to pass the Associate Android Developer Certification Exam from Google.

I'm excited about...

I’m excited about Android and Mobile development. I love attending local meetups to learn more and meeting other Androids.

I’m excited about bringing diversity in tech.

But more excited about working as Android developer very soon! :)

My advice for other women who code is...

Code. Never let anyone to discourage you. If you’re a beginner, find a mentor. Having support will boost your learning. When you know enough, be a mentor and help others.

DEV Community: Lara Martín 👩‍💻

A year as Android Engineer

My first role

Lack of expectations

Lack of mentorship

Lack of feedback

Lack of learning culture

Impostor syndrome

New company, new challenges

Hiring process

Learning environment

Still the Impostor syndrome

Confidence

To improve

Nevertheless, Lara Martín 👩‍💻 Continued Coding! 💚

I continue to code because...

I recently overcame...

I want to brag about...

My advice for allies to support women and non-binary folks who code is....

Why I added licenses to my Udacity projects

The problem

So why use GitHub for your Udacity projects then?

The license

Adding a license to all files with Android Studio

Clean your status bar like a pro!

How to use Demo Mode

A year of Android

Android Study Jam

Android meetups

Android Basics Nanodegree

Conferences

Pet project: Weather App

Google Growth Engine

Android Fast Track and the Associate Developer Certificate

Android Developer Nanodegree

Having a mentor

What remains left

Final word

How I took my first step in tech

After graduation

Masters in Biotechnology

Working from home on crowd-sourced testing

FreeCodeCamp

A full time position in QA

My advice:

Nevertheless, Lara MartÃ n ðŸ‘©”ðŸ’» Coded

I began coding because...

I'm currently hacking on...

I'm excited about...

My advice for other women who code is...