3 Biggest Software Developer Portfolio MISTAKES! [Plus Advice and Tips To Avoid Them]

hey guys what's going on it's Andy here I'm a self-taught software developer and in today's video we're gonna talk about the biggest mistakes you're gonna want to avoid when creating your portfolio of applications right that's really designed to get your first software developer job so this idea of your portfolio is really important right like if you want to get your first job it's the one thing that you have that's truly concrete that you can give to a potential employer and say like hey this is what I can do like I can prove it to you this is what I built if you want to ask me any questions about it like here is my my my basically my everything I've got right so it's very important so you definitely wanna make sure that you get it right as they say you want to make sure that you're doing the right things and you're able to show off the right skills and so with that in mind I've seen a lot of people make a quite a few mistakes with their portfolios and just the general planning of it and implementations so I just kind of want to dive in and give you a basic overview of what I've seen people do in terms of mistakes so hopefully you can avoid it alright so the number one mistake that I see a lot of people make when they're designing what their portfolio of applications is gonna look like is not 100% buying in from the beginning right so when they throw out they're like hey I'm gonna make for JavaScript apps and they're gonna have angular and you know node and MongoDB and they're gonna have all these different aspects of it well when they lay out their their basic blueprint for what they want their portfolio to look like they kind of doubt themselves right they're like you know I put these out there but I don't really believe in it and so what happens is what I've seen consistently happen over time is that as they go to build their applications they quite quickly lose motivation because when things get hard your your emotions start to turn on you right like you start to doubt yourself you start to you start to look around and read more blog posts about what the hottest programming language is what the hottest framework is and and then you go man I don't know anything like if I don't know anything then how could I possibly design a portfolio of applications that is going to make sense so this is honestly one of the most common things I've seen from people I've talked to this far so there's no quick fix to this like true there's no quick fix but I can give you a strategy that I think works best for people and that is basically this one is when you do the requisite research to create your you know to really lay out the broop blueprint for your portfolio of applications just by in just by in 100% just trust that you have made the best decision based on what you could at the time right because you don't know anything at the time and look so that's what you're gonna do without any proper guidance without any more information that's what you can you know again a few maybe you can shoot out to people who you know maybe you shoot up to people who are software developers and they give you a little more guidance but once you've done that buy in 100% don't doubt the prot like the plan of the process okay now here's the caveat because you're all probably be like wait a minute you can't change your portfolio applications that's crazy no no of course you can here's how I'd recommend you make changes start with your first application it's gonna take you a while to build form use tetris that took a long time once you get done with that process you build a 95% or 100% to completion then you look up you look around and you really ate what the rest of your portfolio looks like and whether you should change things right so instead of changing every day look looking up be like is this right is this right is this right is this right you just you you complete your first app and then yuria fail you eight okay so that's the way around it trust in the process trust that you know you're making the best decision based on the knowledge you have at this moment you should be constantly looking for help from others whether they're mentors so look that's that's the basic gist of it there's no quick fix solution I'm sorry I'm so sorry maybe you know like some males can promise that to you but I this is the best way that I've found to deal with it is just a like trust in the process buy into what you're gonna do and just move on from there all right so the second mistake that I see a lot of people make when it comes to their portfolio is when they're actually building out their portfolio of applications they are focusing more on progress then they are on the process so what I mean by this is typically what I'll see is people who are really focused on the results aspect of their portfolio right so they let's say they have for portfolio applications and they look at it as if if I finish the first one fast and the second one fast and third one fast and the fourth one fast I will have you know completed the curriculum and I will become a software developer faster and that's you know I guess like logically I think that makes sense to a lot of people like if I can create four apps in a week or four apps in a month that somehow you will have learned everything you need to know to become a software developer right but the truth is that if you are looking to create portfolio as fast as possible then you're going to be missing out on a lot of the finer details that are necessary and required for you to really learn the nuts and bolts of being a software developer which to me has always been come down to problem-solving and learning how to best solve problems through code and so I've seen people rush through their portfolio of applications and get so worried about the time requirements but but by the time they're done they're actually not really that good of software developers they've taken shortcuts basically to get to the end and they go look I've got my for applications like let's go get a job when in the truth is what I've actually seen to work for people is taking as much time as you need you know within reason let's not get crazy here but take you know taking as much time as you need to work through your applications to complete them and really focusing on doing things correctly really what I mean by that is just focusing on problem solving and making sure you're working through all the issues in that application while you're there right because it's very tempting to get enticed by getting started on your second application or your third application as opposed to working what you have now a lot of times you're like knee-deep in a stupid bug in a stupid silly bug for like a week and man if you could just get through this one bug you can move on your next app but it's like no that is the life of a software developer I cannot tell you how many times in my day job that I get stuck in some of the stupidest crap you'll ever imagine like things that you know I am a good software developer but man some of the issues that I have or run into you would think I'm just a kindergartner right like in terms of my skill level but no it's just that's the life of the software developers so when you want to skip that process and you want to move along faster you're only hurting yourself and you're learning really as I've said in another video the portfolio is all about you right so the portfolio is all about you it's not about what you're gonna show off to employers least it's not primarily right that's not the primary responsibility of it so that portfolio is for you to learn and if you only view it as a course that you have to take or some sort of module learning module that if I can just get through it I'll be done faster like no you need to sink your teeth into the learning we need to sink your teeth into the problems that you run into and really work through them instead of rushing it really goes back to my rushing video if you've not seen that it's a great video talking about like why are you in a rush all the time but this idea of prioritizing the process right so the every day to day process that you're going to execute on versus the amount of progress you're gonna make on a day to day basis if you can really really focus on the process I guarantee you that your results will get better you're actually will probably be faster in terms of your results because you're not coasting through things and you're really soaking up the fundamentals of you know forgetting programming problem solving the important stuff and an overall I think it's really honestly just try it for a little bit just try changing your frame of mind and I think you will get a lot out of it alright so the third mistake that I see people make when it comes to their portfolio is not completing all their applications 100% to completion right do you only hurt yourself by not completing your applications sure you could still get a job with you know an app that's 50% and other ones that's you know 90% in other ones a 75% but the truth is that you were only cheating yourself by not completing your applications and it's not big why you think it's not because you know you gotta brush your teeth every night it's just a good thing to do right goods everybody it's just a good thing to do right I don't I don't believe in that well it's more like this typically when you haven't finished your application 100% it's because you didn't want to work on the hard parts of the application sure the easy parts you've figured out now like maybe you're really good at sitting up at you I may be really good at setting up a database but maybe there's some part of that application that you really need to learn that you set out to learn but you don't want to learn it and that's really hard for you so what you said is look I got the I got the UI done like it looks good it has some functionality but this other part doesn't work and I know it's gonna take me a while it's gonna take like two weeks long just move on the next thing right okay so you move on the next thing and but the thing is you'll keep doing it and you get to the end you've got like four apps that are look like they're completed and you're like oh they're completed but each one it still has glaring problems with them and you've avoided the hard work to learn those things that you don't know that you need to know that there's skills that you're going to want to be able to talk about in a job interview or that you were going to want to be able to demonstrate in a job interview so you've skipped all of those things and now you're gonna go back and complete them all like good luck I have yet to see that many people who actually go back and work through all those things because it adds up it adds up it's to actually go through all of your applications one by one and complete them it's going to take you another couple weeks another couple months when you think you're all finished with your portfolio but you're really not so here's the thing here's what I say to people here's what I say to people who are even in my mastermind program get as close as you can to completion there should not be any glaring glaring bugs or glaring gaps in functionality if you're gonna move up in your next application it better be because you are in serious like emotional pain like this this app is calling you causing the emotional pain you're really losing enthusiasm then yes it's probably a good time to move on the next app because you do need to keep your enthusiasm up but you're playing a very tricky game and you need to know that because it is so rare that people actually do want to come back and do their portfolio applications when they are done with the whole thing like seriously go ahead go ahead and don't follow my advice on this but when you know when that when you run into this problem that I'm telling you about then let me know in the comments below okay second day yes I'm right or you can obviously rub it in my face maybe I'm totally wrong about this jack no I actually did finish my all my portfolio applications at the end so whatever it is here's what I'm saying it's just easier to make sure that you're doing each one to completion while you're doing it so that's really my three main mistakes that I've seen that people have made in their portfolios that have really led to a lot of lost time a lot of you know just general falling off losing a motivation losing enthusiasm so I really hope you avoid these three mistakes let me know what you think about them in the comments below do you agree do you disagree what have you found that you know you've made mistakes in the past as well other than that go ahead and like the video and subscribe and hit the bell icon to get notifications anytime I put out a new video and hey guys just let you know I've created a free report on the top programming languages to learn for 2019 if you 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Channel: Andy Sterkowitz

Views: 48,842

Rating: 4.9037151 out of 5

Keywords: software developer portfolio, programming portfolio, programmer portfolio, developer portfolio, self taught programmer portfolio, how to make a programming portfolio, how to create a programmer porftolio, software development portfolio, how to make a developer portfolio, front end portfolio, back end portfolio, full stack portfolio, full stack developer portfolio, front end developer portfolio, back end developer portfolio

Id: OkopoZGJ8ck

Length: 11min 30sec (690 seconds)

Published: Sun Jan 06 2019