What I learned my first 6 months as a jr. developer
Last Monday marked 6 months to the date of when I was hired as a jr. frontend developer at Code and Theory.
I know this date not solely because of this gem of a saved instagram story: first day of new job ahhhh. But also because, as a Grace Hopper, Fullstack Academy Alumnus, I pay a portion of my deferred tuition every 10th of the month.
Every 10th I am reminded: remember this pipe dream you had in April of 2019. Here you are… you’re doing it!!!
I titled this article “what I learned”, and while I do not even know where to start, I can tell you right off the bat… it is a whole lot.
I could start at the very very beginning when the things I learned were how to tell the circular floor entrances apart from the use of the aptly placed Danny DeVito and Ryan Gosling cardboard cutouts.
(Pre-Covid, my desk was on the Danny side)
But then we also might have to get into the nitty gritty of when I took the wrong staircase and there was no re-entry to the floor… and then you would be here all day.
It would be an interesting exercise to make a literal diagram of my learning curve since starting at Code… it would have inclines, starting steeply in the beginning; once upon a time when BEM naming conventions (and really any coding conventions) were a foreign concept to me. And then there would be some flatter areas that involved me scratching my head until I learned when and how to ask for guidance. Then even more inclines and then sudden graceful (and usually shortly lived) pauses when things got into a more predictable swing… that is until a new project — with a new set of rules and conventions and logic (oh my) would begin.
After my first month, I wrote a blog article and made a parallax site for it, which can be viewed here: https://cfilipek.github.io/Scrolling-Blog/. Guess what that article was named? Click on the link to find out… hint I’m very creative when it comes to article titles *sarcasm*.
Now, I made that article for 2 reasons:
- I made it to learn. And that is a pursuit that has helped me and saved me throughout these 6 months. Some days learning can be more fun than others. On the days where you are making a parallax GSAP and Scroll Magic site (like the above link)… oh boy hold on to your knickers. And then some days you have a head scratcher… like a major head scratcher… and you’re redoing a carousel that has an embedded video that makes a call to the YouTube Iframe API and that isn’t working because simultaneously your page is making it’s own API call… I’m sure you’ve been there!
- I made the parallax site because… and I’m not ashamed to admit… I wanted to have something to show at our weekly Friday Engineering 5pm meetings. Here I am, even 6 months in, and sometimes I have to take a pause in disbelief that I have a seat at this table. Just sometimes. I no longer feel, most of the time that I have to prove my seat… except when I propose the addition of a new component the night before a big demo and basically bet my life that it will not break everything we’ve worked so hard on upon its merger… you know those not at all stressful life moments.
I could make a laundry list of things I have learned. I could list out all of my triumphs, because in the end, as sappy as it sounds, as long as I keep going until I figure something out: I have succeeded. This job has proven to me that if you can’t get something, like a dropdown navigation animation the first or even third time, if you keep trying, and put in the work, and get it on the 17th time… that feels good. Great. Maybe even better? Because you know where you started. And look where you are now.
I’ve also learned, re: above picture, that outfitting your computer with corny coding stickers like “You are the CSS to my HTML” and “ERROR 404: Girlfriend not found” is actually what makes you a programmer. FYI. Just kidding. What being a programmer at Code and Theory is is being an active and diligent team member.
Here I am 6 months in and I cannot wait to <take my career to the next level/>.
