Hello there,
Dev Journey #7
you are probably wondering about what do I have for this week.
Lucky you, this week’s topic is all about how to build your experience, even if you’re a senior 10x dev or some mastermind in programming.
If you’re interested, stick until the end of this article. I will start by saying that, I have never personally felt like we tackle this topic in our industry the correct way. Because when a junior dev asks the question of “How can I become more experienced?” The answer he gets almost every time is to build more projects and tackle issues in open source projects on GitHub.
Which is to some extent correct and sound, but while the junior dev is getting the same answer all time. His critical mind starts working on another answer that satisfies his needs for a straight route or an obvious answer. The other answer he concludes is the cursed loop of “need experience to get a job, needs job to get experience”, which is also true to some extent, but the puzzle never seems to be solved and the picture never seems to be complete.
Most people
deny the second answer because it’s not logical and go with the “go build stuff” answer. A lot of devs actually find no progress after making a couple of projects. And they start coming up with conspiracy theories around why they feel slow compared to their friend who found a job six months from the day she/he wrote her/his first line of code.
And I think that the problem with building projects to gain experience starts when the developer keeps on building the same project but under different disguises every time. And I can say it because I’ve been there before. I have built three games that are almost identical in mechanics.
Hoping to elevate my experience in game development. As you expect, it never happened. But that was a lesson for me, I’m not creating indie games any more, but when I switched to web development I took that lesson with me. Now whenever I take the decision to start a project, I ask myself, how is this one different from the previous one and how is it similar to it.
This problem
can happen when you tackle open source project’s issues, you start contributing to the same issue but just in different projects. And even if you got lucky and somehow ended up in the job you want, if you occupied the same position but hopped between companies you will end up in the same rabbit hole the same-project devs are in. So, what now?, should you collect your skills one after another throughout your projects?
I’m not here to give you half an answer, I’m an all-or-nothing person and the solution to the rabbit hole I mentioned earlier isn’t just to create different projects. But, to always keep an eye on the job market and the skills needed and to put whatever skill that is on-demand the most on your next project skill goal, and if you found yourself capable it’ll be better if you tried to apply it on the current project and explore its depth on the next one.
This way your path to gain experience will be the most efficient path. And, since there is no such thing as a set of technologies that will make you qualified to get your dream job and not even to get yourself a normal job, the best you can do is to always try to match your set with the standard of the industry.
As always
Thanks for reading!
P.S. I wanted to write about the project that I'm working on currently but unfortunately I slowed down while writing my unit tests so it's not finished yet.
maybe next week ^_^
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