Passing the halfway mark studying at Maker’s has brought about weekly careers sessions. There has been a keen curiosity to take a glimpse and prepare for what life will be like after Maker’s i.e. job hunting for what I assume will be our first developer job. For me, my first ‘proper’ job to start off my career.

Having being graduated for almost a year now, I am more than ready to jump knee deep into work — and doing work I enjoy with fun, likeminded people around me. The question is, where? At what company? The careers team at Maker’s are super supportive and passionate about helping each of us to get a job that suits our own interests. We will soon have one to one chats with a member of the team to discuss further our preferences in what we are looking for in a job. I have a vague idea looking at the job destinations of previous Maker’s graduates, but I realise that there are many more opportunities available to me that I am not aware of.

Jess shared a very useful ‘web developer roadmap’ on Slack a while ago which helped me visualise the different paths one could potentially take as a developer.

Being a Maker’s student, I have been familiarised with the front and back-end-side of being a web developer — over twelve weeks we would have practised technologies of the ‘full stack’. Front end technologies such as Javascript, jQuery, CSS and HTML and back-end technologies such as Ruby, Ruby on Rails and Javascript. Developer jobs in this field may include software programming, mobile programming with Android and ioS systems to video game and VR programming.

I’m not too sure about the third path though. After scanning the internet a bit more on DevOps, a DevOp engineer is someone who oversees the work of other developers and ‘system operators’ (SysOps). There is also a so called ‘DevOps culture’ which involves agile operation practices such as test driven development and pair programming — something that Maker’s have drummed into our practices from the very start. To read more about the roles of DevOps, I found this blog particularly helpful:

Roles and Responsibilities for DevOps and Agile Teams

Looking at past occupations of students in the March cohort, it ranges massively. From engineers to bankers to nurses to project managers, all keen to change their career paths to become a developer. Having so much experience between us has made it easy for each of us to pick each others brains about previous experiences in contrasting working environments. The careers sessions so far have brought up some important aspects to consider when job hunting… this will be in just under a month!

What Company?

This has been an important topic of discussion. Knowing what you want and which company to apply for can be a minefield due to the spectrum of companies that need developers.

Aspects to consider:

• Size of the company
• Office location
• What technologies you will be working with — front end, back end
• Project or product based
• Company values
• Agile practices such as OOP, TTD, mentoring and pairing
• Investment in up-skilling

Common assumptions:

Start ups

• ‘Risky’?
• Do not have enough funds to invest in your learning?
• Smaller dev teams and therefore not as much mentoring?
• More freedom for creativity?

Corporate establishments

• Able to invest in skills and development?
• Limitations of red tape?
• Too ‘stuffy’?
• Better chance of career progression in a large team?

During our careers sessions, we came across some assumptions that we had about certain industries and different work environments. However, we were opened up to question these due to the fact that each individual company is different and perhaps researching more into their core values and speaking to someone who worked there would be more valuable to our decision making.

How to get a job

Seems pretty straight forward right? Naaat. I’ve come to realise that job hunting is an actual job in itself. There is a bulk of prep work that comes to the lead up of making an application and how this is executed may be indicative of the success later.

Some top tips so far

Aside from curating an enticing Github C.V and profile (the Linkedin of the tech world) — applying to jobs the box standard way i.e. sending a C.V and cover letter, or perhaps going through a recruiter — we have lately been inspired to think ‘out of the box’ in the way we approach job hunting and making applications.

This brings me to Seth Godin’s analogy of the ‘purple cow’ in his book ‘Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable’. A purple cow is a cow that stands out from the rest of them. Like so:

• We were given the statistic that 15% of jobs are advertised… SO to increase the likelihood of getting a job, and one that you want — one must get out there. Researching companies is key to this.
• Conversations, conversations, conversations. Having many conversations. Whether directly messaging on Linkedin, Twitter or even going to the company office, there is really nothing to lose. You will be able to find out more about the company, show interest to the potential employer and perhaps your name will stand out in applications. We have been given the challenge to try and have a conversation with one person from the company before applying to them.
• Attending meet ups and workshops to continually grow your network as well as keeping engaged with the industry. There are so many happening across London, it would be really rude not to.
• Side projects — also known as ‘pet projects’. The chance to show off your personal interests in a small project, whether creating your very own snakes game or translating an existing project using a new language.

Last but not least, demonstrating passion — in any way possible (tips just above^^). This comes first before anything.

These career sessions have highlighted to me that I really need to get down and research the potential companies I would like to work for. Who knew that once choosing the path of becoming a developer, you then have to narrow that down again! I aim to keep an open mind as no way have I had enough time using each front and back end technology to know what I would like to specialise in doing. Perhaps this is not necessarily a bad thing as this means there would be many roles I apply for?

Attending codebar’s workshop gave me a little insight into mobile development and the Android system — I hope to attend an ioS soon to be able to compare one another. I have also created a twitter account named @chaicodes — for all my codey shenanigans.

Wow this week has been non-stop. I somehow convinced myself at the beginning that I would be able to write daily posts but look where we are now.. Sunday evening and almost bed time again!

I would just like to say there have been so many ‘firsts’ of many this week. Not only that it has been Week 1 of starting Maker’s… but actually pairing in person (rather than via screenhero), getting through the first challenge — I will never look at a Borris Bike the same, first retrospective, first workshop with Roi (debugging), first stand up, first meditation… the list could go on.

Things I learnt this week and am (fairly) happy about

• Using Pry
• Understanding the TDD cycle
• Creating classes and understand uses of attr_reader, attr_writer, attr_accessor — although I need more practice!
• Diagramming more
• Translating user stories to messages and methods
• More confident with using git functions when pairing i.e. forking + cloning

Some pretty cool shortcuts to use on Atom make life that much easier

• command + p
• command + l — highlights selected line
• CTRL, command, g — selects all
• CTRL, command, up arrow — moves selected

I’m sure there are lots more!!

Things I struggled with

• Writing rspec feature and unit tests from scratch — figuring out exactly what I wanted to test and knowing what matcher to use
• Didn’t have enough time to understand doubles
• Feeling confident about being creative with writing code

Weekend challenge

Having paired all week, the weekend challenge really was a test to see what we understood during school hours as we were left with just our own brains on the weekend. I have to say that I struggled with this more than expected as there was no validation from someone else that I was so used to throughout the week. Although I did have google and my own resources, I don’t think that I optimised this as much as I could have. I also found that I questioned myself when translating user stories and panicked halfway when I realised that I had misinterpreted them — thinking that the plane would instruct itself to fly rather than the airport instructing the plane to fly!

Working on my own highlighted to me the areas and topics which I need to consolidate on. I didn’t manage to complete the challenge however I am quite proud with what I’ve did – this will probably get shred to pieces tomorrow when we do a ‘code review’ tomorrow! But I really don’t mind, this is a learning curve and I am interested to see the different approaches and ideas. Bring on week 2!

Today was fun! Back home and feeling content but a little drained from waking up at a time I have not quite adjusted to yet (7.30am)! As it was the first day of school, we were eased in with a couple of introductory talks by some of the Maker’s team Roi, Dana, Sam and co-founder of Maker’s, Evgeny. There was also time spent mingling with the rest of the cohort that we will be spending the next 12 weeks with.

I won’t bore you with all the details of the day, but instead, here are a few things that I found out and thought were interesting to part with you!

“Teal”

Dana spoke about ‘self management’, ‘organic’ and ‘wholeness’, a few buzzwords to describe the core values of the teal paradigm. This has been considered an ‘evolutionary step’ for organisations moving towards a higher level of consciousness and new sense of purpose. In the case of Maker’s, I can see the elements of ‘teal’ reflected in the structure of its curriculum. Firstly, ‘self management’ through the way of learning that goes on, encouraging 100% independence (zero spoon feeding) and no assessment in the sense of a passing / failing grade – probably unlike any education we have come across before. Secondly, the emphasis on feedback and communication between cohort members and staff to ensure a certain ‘wholeness’. I found this structure refreshing compared to my previous experiences in ‘education’ and something could definitely embrace.

Core values of teal:

• evolutionary purpose vs executing a set strategy
• self management vs executing orders from above
• wholeness and authenticity vs separating ‘work’ and ‘life’ self

‘Coding’

Contrary to what most people assume, I got to understand that the ‘coding’ we do is just a minute part of our role as the ‘knowledge worker’. For the most part, we will spend around 60% of our time researching online to solve problems and find solutions. We shall be google ninjas by the end of these 12 weeks!

Meditation & yoga

The positive benefits of mindfulness was emphasised by Dana which I was happy to learn more about. Although I practice yoga regularly, I have not had the time to try meditation — my concentration span is awful. We got to meditate after lunch however I was not able to gain the full benefits as I accidentally nodded off.. I blame the early start and burrito food coma!

Anyway, I am looking forward to exploring meditation as this will become a daily ritual at Maker’s. The students from the previous cohorts mentioned how it was a great way to reset the mind after a morning of coding. With two yoga classes a week as well, I can tell that Maker’s care about keeping our mental and physical health on tip top form as the demands of coding may be stressful and overwhelming at times.

Women in tech

Evgeny revealed to us in detail the reason why Maker’s give female students a small discount off the course fees — to send a provoking message regarding the serious lack of females represented in tech roles. I was surprised by some of the stats where women currently make up:

“22.5% of UK computer science students”

“17.5% of UK IT professionals”

It was interesting to see that age old marketing tactics are still being used to subconsciously influence gender divided interests of children at a young age; girls being identified to collect pink, princess dolls and boys engrossed in their video games. I can sort of compare this with my younger brother as a moody teenager, being glued in front of the computer playing endless hours of COD, whilst I would rather make my MySpace look pretty. It seems that the societal creation of stereotypes and expectations of the ‘computer nerd’ may have influenced a lack of female interest in taking up computer science degrees. This being ingrained right at the very start of school. Admittedly, I never considered computer science when deciding what course to study at university.

Since applying for Maker’s, I have noticed the growing online presence of females in the tech industry with websites such as ‘Women Who Code’, ‘Girls Who Code’, and ‘Rail Girls’ directed to creating a hub of female coders. Even Victoria’s Secret model, Karlie Kloss, launched the initiative ‘Kode with Klossy’ to fashionably market programming courses to young girls. Evgeny emphasised the importance of a represented digital world as the tech sphere is currently dominated by the white male developer.

Although so much more progress needs to be made in regards of this issue, it was great to hear that Maker’s reached its first 50:50 cohort in November cohort.. Baby steps at a time! I would love to ramble on a tangent more about this topic as there is much more to be said, but perhaps for another post.

And the day ended in much needed… PIZZA!!!!