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Discussion on: Sloan's Inbox: What Skills Do I Need to Land a Jr. Position?

 
woodtoyz profile image
Ken

I'm using the list as a learning guide now. At this point I have made the rounds of online coding videos and worked along side the instructor building their mini projects. Thing is, without putting it all together and continually using the concepts, it is easy to forget a lot of things. I would like to seriously apply for a jr. dev position but a lot of those require 1-2 years or "expertise"! Guess I will have to incubate and keep doing projects on the side. Perhaps look at opensource work?

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alais29dev profile image
Alfonsina Lizardo

It's normal that you forget about things, It's impossible to remember everything, the important thing is that you know what can be done and how to look for it.

For example, I might not remember exactly how to convert a date to a human readable format in Javascript, but I know there's away to do that so I just google it, that's a pretty basic example but I hope you get the point.

The junior market is pretty rough right now, that's true, but you can start building up experience by working on open source projects as you say, building personal projects or even taking on some freelance work.

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woodtoyz profile image
Ken

I appreciate your taking time to respond. I hope others can benefit as well. What you said about looking things up is very true and hits home. Some of the 1 hour online videos takes me many days to get through.

My concern is being able to meet the expectations of a Jr. Dev. A scenario would be to start a position where the company uses a few concepts you learned and a bunch where you burn time struggling through. I am hoping that doing some projects will provide enough experience where new On-The-Job concepts will not be a fail point.

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alais29dev profile image
Alfonsina Lizardo

No problem, and yes you should keep doing projects, that's the best way to practice and get some experience.

And when you do get your first job, don't fret about not knowing something (I know, easier said than done), if you're honest about your knowledge, and a company hires you knowing you're a junior developer, they won't expect you to know everything, they'll expect you to make mistakes, I mean, try not make them, but it is normal to make them, we all do :)

I wish you the best! Good luck on finding that first opportunity!