My Story continued...

Firstly, if you intend on reading the whole thing, get yourself a Redbull and some migraine tablets.

My internship is slowly coming to an end, which means it's time to start looking for the next step in my journey to becoming a developer.

What's been happening over the last month since my last post?

Well, I have lost count of the number of applications I have submitted for front end/full stack positions, I'm guessing it's in the region of 30 applications.

In response, I got 4 leads.

Company A -(large bank) invited me to a face to face interview, this went really well and was then given a project to do at home over the space of a week.

The project was to build a fuel management application. So this entailed a front end of course, where the user can enter the fuel type, cost per litre, total litres, total cost etc... On the back-end, I had to put together a MySQL database, create an API and tie them all together.

Not going to lie, it was a bit of a challenge but was given positive feedback. Currently waiting to hear about the next stage. Ideally, they want someone that also knows JAVA and Kotlin but they are still considering me without these.

Company B - Medium sized software dev company. Now, these guys gave me a very vague project... They wanted me to 'copy' the landing page to a site they gave me. The idea was to see how I handle animations which they new in hindsight I had less experience with. They gave me a couple of SVG images on Sketch and said to focus on the main couple of animations.

I did exactly that, I acquired the HTML and CSS from the site (no framework was used by them) and spent most of my time trying to copy the animations. I got the loading image, hover animations and the fade-ins 'on-scroll' but sadly couldn't replicate the 2 key animations that were some kind of path animations that I couldn't get my head around.

I submitted the project, unfortunately not only did I not proceed in the process but also got quite disappointing feedback. I was told that they expected me to re-write the CSS and HTML in 'my own way', to use a front end framework and experiment with different animation tools like 'Lottie'. Apparently, me using bootstrap 4 was a no-no because it's too common.

The only positive was that I used 'parcel' to compile the files. I still think of it a positive in a way as it has taught me to think outside of the box and challenge a companies expectations to get more details.

Company C - Small website development company that uses mainly WordPress.
The owner invited me for a face to face in a coffee shop. It was a very relaxed interview, where we exchanged knowledge and ideas. All seemed very positive but after a week I am still waiting for feedback.

Company D - Now these guys are the gold nugget! 5 small offices globally. They specialise in websites using Drupal or Wordpress but also take on smaller software dev projects. They are expanding their 3 man operation here in Tallinn (Their smallest office) and they are looking for 2 full-stack devs. My face to face interview with their HR rep and the manager based in Tallinn went extremely well. I loved the sound and feel of the company. They appear to focus on really developing their staff and feel strongly about having a good company culture.

I left the interview feeling confident and energised. I was told that they would get back to me within a week but actually got a call at the end of the same day inviting me to stage 2, which would be a 2 hour written exam (old school pencil and paper).

Upon arrival, I was greeted with a big smile and shown to the room where I would sit the test under 'exam conditions'. Having not been given any info beforehand to prepare, it's needless to say I was nervous. I sat down to find 3 sheets of paper with questions.

On each sheet of paper, I would find 4 questions, from each of which I would need to complete 1 question. I took my time to read through my options and decide which I would choose (bearing in mind I was being assessed on my choice as well).

I sat there having flashbacks of final year exams at Uni and the feeling like I was drowning. Nonetheless, I picked my 3 questions and gave it my best shot.

I chose a question where I had to replicate a landing page, writing the appropriate HTML and CSS by hand and focusing on the page layout (flexbox and grid). This was torture without an IDE but of the 3 the easiest question by far.

Number 2 required me to explain my definition of a list of words, things like what's a mime type, CORS, HTTPS and around another 7 items.

Finally, I got to number 3 and wow... So I had to choose a database type and language then draw up the schema for their use case.

It was essentially a travel agency booking site (think Expedia, booking.com etc).

It was along the lines of:

There are cities, countries, airports in cities, airlines, days of week and flight times.

Put together a schema where queries could be made to select the earliest possible flight, list of flights that go from a to b and possibly c.

Drew a lot of tables and wrote a lot of things, which now seems like psychobabble but hey, it's all a learning curve.

This was only 2 days ago and I was told it would take a week to hear back. Fingers crossed I guess.

We'll soon see what the future hold for a newbie trying to get on the ladder as a developer in Tallinn.