When should you apply for a Software Engineer job?

Tech Job Insight — Sun, 19 Sep 2021 17:23:46 +0000

Now! You might as well. What’s the worst that could happen? You won’t end up getting the job? You didn’t have the job anyway, so nothings changed.

What if I flunk the interview? You will always mess up during your first few interviews. You will get better with practice.

You have no experience?, well, okay, that’s fair enough. If you don’t feel comfortable applying with no experience, then here is a checklist of stuff that helped me when I was applying for jobs.

Create a project.

I always hark on about this, in absence of experience, make your own experience. You can do this by creating your own project. If you want to be a web developer, create a website.

If you want to be a Software Developer, create an application/web-app. By doing this, you will have something to talk about during the job interview.

Pro-tip: Write any difficult things you encountered when creating your project and how you overcame them. You can then talk about your experiences during a job interview.

Learn Test Driven Development (TDD)

Most companies will incorporate Test Driven Development in their development processes. When you are starting out, practice test driven development when doing code challenges or when you are creating your project.

Learn about Object Oriented Design (OOD)

Most of you will deal with object-oriented programming languages, so understanding how to do OOD is important. Also, familiarising yourself with SOLID principles will help you write maintainable, flexible code.

Know your programming language

You don’t have to be an expert with the language, although it helps obviously. You should be comfortable to read up on the parts that you’re not familiar with and learn about them.

For example, my primary programming language is JavaScript. I rarely ever use Generators in JavaScript, but if I ever had to, I could read up on them and use them.

Conclusion

Expertise comes with time. When you are first starting out, employers are hiring you, hoping you can figure things out. You don’t have to know everything on this list, but doing so will definitively help you when you get your first job.

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How to become a better developer.

Tech Job Insight — Fri, 10 Sep 2021 18:28:20 +0000

Code a little every day

If you are starting out, it’s super important that you code a little every day. It doesn’t need to be in 5 hour-long sessions, even just 10–20 minutes a day. Doing a simple coding challenge is enough, ideally the longer the better.
Find code challenges on https://www.codewars.com/ or https://www.hackerrank.com/

When I was starting out, I created a repository on my Github account, which contained all of my solutions for various coding challenges. By doing this, I was getting experience with using version control in my projects. This came in handy when I eventually landed a job and had to know how to use git.

Read up on best practices

You can find lots of articles on Clean Code around the internet, but I would recommend getting a copy of clean code by Robert C. Martin. or just read someone’s notes on the book (https://github.com/JuanCrg90/Clean-Code-Notes)

Understanding what clean code is when you are first starting out will put you on the right track to develop good habits. This book will teach the best practices of variable naming conventions, when and when not to write comments, how big your functions should be and much, much more.

Put your code on Github

It’s a great way to share your code and collaborate with others. It also lets employers know you are familiar with version control and know at least some basic git operations.

Another cool thing about GitHub is that you can look at other people’s code. This comes in handy when you’re trying to use a library and you’re not sure how to use it. You can just look on GitHub to see how people are using it.

Create a project

This is really important, the project doesn’t have to be amazing, just have some degree of complexity i.e Frontend + Backend, and is hosted online. Ideally on some cloud platform (cloud is all the rage these days). The goal is to have something to talk about during a job interview.
The app can be something simple, like a weather app or film/music database. I had a simple app that displayed crypto coin prices; I hosted it on AWS. The goal here is to show your ability to figure out an array of different technologies and make them work together.

If you are stuck for ideas, there is a great website https://www.frontendmentor.io/ that allows you to solve real-world HTML, CSS and JavaScript challenges whilst working to professional designs.
Practice Test Driven Development (TDD)
It can seem like there is a lot of information to absorb when you are starting out, but remember you don’t need to be an expert, just understand enough to get going.

Testing Pyramid

When learning TDD, familiarising yourself with the Testing Pyramid will give you a head start. When I was first learning about TDD, I would practice writing tests after I had completed a coding challenge. Here is a great in-depth article on TDD.

Keep yourself updated

Technology is always changing, frameworks come and go, languages rise and fall in popularity, some quicker than others. Change is the only constant in tech. Keeping up to date with technology trends is important. I do this primarily through newsletters and podcasts. Here are some of my favourites:

Podcasts

https://stackoverflow.blog/podcast/
https://www.serverlesschats.com/
https://devchat.tv/show/javascript-jabber/

Newsletters

https://javascriptweekly.com/
https://webtoolsweekly.com/
https://react.statuscode.com/
https://www.techjobinsight.com/ (My own newsletter)

Conclusion

If any of this was helpful consider signing up to my newsletter for weekly insights on the tech industry, the latest tech trends, and advice on how to get into the industry

DEV Community: Tech Job Insight

When should you apply for a Software Engineer job?

Create a project.

Learn Test Driven Development (TDD)

Learn about Object Oriented Design (OOD)

Know your programming language

Conclusion

How to become a better developer.

Code a little every day

Read up on best practices

Put your code on Github

Create a project

Testing Pyramid

Keep yourself updated

Podcasts

Newsletters

Conclusion