The reason I’m writing this article is to share with you my early experience as a jr. web developer into a full job. It is but a mere experience of almost one year and a half developer, not a rule that Universe sends it to you.
Hi, I am Luc, a junior web developer at his 43 years of age. If this is the first time you encounter my content, thank you for been here, perhaps you find my story encouraging on how I developed my career and why I decided to get into coding.
I’ve got a job! Yay…or not!?
In 2019 February I started my journey as a front-end developer and I was amazed at how many things you can do online, couldn’t imagine you can work from home and build so many things from scratch. So, after 6 months I’ve got my first freelance job to build a website from scratch. My passion drove me to job hunting as I wanted to improve my skills and receive mentoring.
After almost 14 months I had my first remote job as a full web developer.
Working “for” the job.?
I like to see myself as a collaborator with the company rather than an employee, so I developed an “I work with” not an “I work for” mentality. After two interviews with the company, they decided to hire me. No coded quizzes, just seeing my projects on codepen and the websites I built previously. Having a recommendation from one of my friends, I guess it helped a lot. So, I was excited to meet the crew and improve my skills in coding.
They started to give me small jobs with WordPress templates and CMS’s like PrestaShop. Editing small things like changing colors, uploading photos and content, but, 90 percent of the time I was on video-conferences with the team. I was the only frontend developer on the team and had no one to explain the struggle, and mentoring me. I needed to learn to implement JavaScript snippets on to WP websites, I needed to change Headers and Body and Footers on PHP and no one could be there, so I turned to Twitter dev community, and luckily some of my guardian angels helped me out. You can always find these magic humans being here: Chris and Jesus Abril.
I wasn’t actually coding at all, only my daily passion woke me up 3-4 hours before starting the job and I felt like I was working for the job, not “having” the job. That developed the impostor syndrome as I felt that I don’t deserve the money for the work that I was doing. Eventually, they didn’t pay me at all anyways…
Time to say goodbye.?
I was on the verge on burnt-out inside, my kids needed me, I wasn’t planning my day as I was waiting for the company day by day to give me small jobs. Lacking organizing drives me to fear. Having four kids, I need to work from a scheduled plan. Not having a “To-Do List” for at least the next day, freaks me up. So, I talked to the team supervisor and explain that situation, but human’s promises aren’t like those from JavaScript. Giving a project today, another one tomorrow, and another one the day after and wanting to finish them all on the 4th day it’s an impossible task to acquire, so I decided to let go.
Beware of sharks! ?
I love humans! I consider that to be my superpower, but I don’t like sharks! I am deeply grateful for the dev community I am part of Twitter, and I would love you to get the last part of this article in the correct way, as I try to deliver it in the most accurate way.
If you are a passionate coder, like me, that loves to wake up early in the morning to code when all the household is sleeping, you should as well benefit from it. But, unfortunately, that wasn’t the case for me. They made a promise at the beginning and didn’t fulfill it. I haven’t signed a contract as all was based on trust, haven’t been included on the Teams schedule to be accountable for the time spent on work, so that was my mistake, don’t do it as well. Some people have enough experience to exploit the imposter syndrome that maybe you are feeling, and start with promises only.
I would love to say that this story has a happy end but it doesn’t!
I QUIT! That’s the happy end!
Epilogue:
The company wanted me to create the front-end Landing Page of their website. Fortunately, I am building my own company of web agency and I sent them a message this morning (13th of July) that I explained to them the prices and conditions and I am waiting for their response. I still have faith in humanity!
Thank you for the reading, I really hope it helped you.
you can find me on Twitter here