Wow. The shortest and longest year of my life is finally over.
Here's my late year in review.
Full-Time Job
2020 was my first year in a full-time role, I started as a contractor, which now seems pretty weird. 🤔
I'm a senior developer for a leading credit reference agency.
I've loved working in credit, I've gained a lot of industry knowledge, and the team is great.
I'm leading a huge project that delivered its first product in my first few months and is going to have a big year in 2021.
Due to unfortunate circumstances, I was given the opportunity to lead development on an important government project, it was very fast-paced and I worked every day of the month to get it done, but it was incredibly fun. I was rewarded greatly, I had a small article written about me for a paper, and I was gifted a generous box of wine.
Freelancing
Midway through the year, I started to feel like my work life was a little mundane. I took a pay cut being in a permanent role and wasn't used to having a lower income. So I wanted to start freelancing, I had recently started using Twitter and paid attention to the growing tech side of it, which led me to follow find Kyle Prinsloo of Study Web Development. I invested in 'The Complete Freelancing Bundle' which launched my freelancing career a lot faster than I expected.
I was quite sceptical of 'get rich quick' books and bundles but I saw 'The Complete Freelancing Bundle' and it fitted my needs perfectly, it had everything I need to start freelancing. I started to take note of other professionals on Twitter and invested in Tom Hirst's book 'Pricing Freelance Projects' and read his other book '10 Steps To Becoming A Better Freelancer', it was an area I struggled with and Tom broke it all down perfectly.
I'm not an affiliate of these guys, they just really helped me grow in 2020, and I'm not sure I'd still be freelancing without them.
What Have I Learned?
In the start of 2020 working for a company I had to learn a lot about the credit industry, as well as a foreign workspace, dotnet wasn't my strong suit, but I knew C# from Unity game development. I picked it up the company standards pretty quick, and put on my a project with just 2 devs, me and a junior to mentor.
Early in the year, I attended AWS Serverless Days in Cardiff which opened my eyes to how powerful serverless architecture can be and quickly sparked my interest.
Once I was comfortable at work, I got back into development in the evenings and began to learn Amplify, Graphql, Next.js and TailwindCSS. This is my current stack that I plan on learning a lot more about this year.
Most of this I learned from just playing around and reading the docs, but I learned a lot of Amplify from Nader Dabit, who I admire for the effort he puts into getting content out and engaging with everyone!
Conferences
I attended three conferences this year, although all but 1 were virtual.
Serverless Days Cardiff
NextJs Virtual
AWS re:Invent
AWS Dev Day
Mentoring
My partner loved watching me build websites and decided she wanted to try, I gave her some resources and pointed her in the right direction, after completing freecodecamp HTML, CSS, and javascript she started building a few websites. 3 months later she landed her first client at £1,500.
Dropshipping
I tried out dropshipping using Shopify, I built 2 stores and they are currently both doing quite well, I'm not sure what to expect, but it's been fun using Shopify.
I only started using Twitter properly in 2020, I've met a bunch of great people and seen a lot of awesome content from people, I'm hoping to engage more and connect with more like-minded people this year!
Reading
I've enjoyed reading this year, blog posts, articles, newsletters and books. Most of them are related to freelancing, web development or personal development, and they've all helped me in some way or another.
The Complete Freelancing Bundle - Kyle Prinsloo - Study Web Development
This bundle propelled my freelancing career a lot quicker than I expected, already having a strong skillset, I was looking for how to get clients, web design principles that matter to the client, how to find clients, and how to provide quality results, along with so much more. If you're considering freelancing, this bundle is the best investment you can make.
10 Steps To Becoming A Better Freelancer - Tom Hirst
This book is everything you didn't know you needed to up your freelancing game. Tom takes you through positioning, accountability, profiling clients, negotiating, and a lot more!
Tom also talked about balance, which is one of the most important things about being a freelancer to get that flexibility.
This book is also optionally free!
Pricing Freelance Projects - Tom Hirst
Tom's book on pricing really put everything into perspective for me, and educated me on the value I offer and what it's worth. It teaches you about multiple pricing methods, what's good and what's not. Tom is a professional freelancer with years of experience and I recommend anyone interested in freelancing to check his content on Twitter and invest in some of his digital products.
Move Things With CSS - Jhey Tompkins
You may have heard of Jhey Tompkins, he's an incredible developer who is known best for his CSS skills, but don't be fooled, he can't "only do CSS". I've watched a few of Jhey's streams, and his process of developing was fascinating, his research and note-taking before planning and implementing. He's a super down to earth guy.
I'm not the best designer, but I know my way around CSS. (or so I thought) After reading Jhey's book I was shocked to find so many properties and cool things you could do with CSS, it stepped up my animation skills and made me feel like a CSS god!
Level-Up Your Career Today: Develop Edition - Jack Domleo
Jack's book on levelling up your career was awesome, it doesn't do what it says on the tin, it does more! This book took taught me to see the bigger picture and focus properly. This book is for absolutely anyone, it really helps solidify your processes and organise your professional life.
From Identifying your path, being professional, having a strong mindset, being productive and to your portfolio, being online and getting a job!
For someone so young Jack is extremely talented in many areas and is where I wish I was 8 years ago. I recommend everyone read this book.
80/20 Freelancing - Kyle Prinsloo - Study Web Development
This book is compact full of valuable tips, tricks, methods and explanations. It's concise and actionable and is definitely worth getting!
If you're looking for short, sweet and to the point, this book will prove it's worth.
Start Freelancing Today - Kelly Vaughn
Kelly is a great writer and broadened my knowledge in project management, finding a client, and then onboarding them.
Kelly is a successful industry professional who explains how to handle difficult situations, working with other freelancers and outsourcing/scaling your business and more!
Virtual Beer Club
I contacted all my favourite people on Twitter and invited them for a virtual festive drink that was extremely fun, it was great hanging out with actual people, not just tweets.
We had, Tom Hirst, Simon Hoiberg, Francesco Ciulla, Stefan Natter, Scott Spence & Jenny Potts, all amazing people who I'm glad to have had the pleasure meeting!
I hope to do this again in 2021, and hopefully, if covid ever ends, I'll be seeing these great people in person!
This is my first ever published post, and if you've made it this far, thanks for reading, hopefully, I will improve my writing, stop rambling, and consistently post at least 1 blog post a month!
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