All the things I learnt as a junior developer (so you don't have to)

foreign for the day before lightning talks our final speaker is Terence Hoon and the title of this talk will be all the things I learned as a junior developer so you don't have to take it away cheers thank you thank you yeah I noticed the last Talk of the day before lightning talk so I'll try and be as energetic as I can but you know it's Sunday I'm already hyped up with coffee as it is so I don't need to give any more excitement but yes let's do this so before I begin just want to say thank you to pycon for letting me speak here especially on a topic that does kind of seem at first glance out of place in a conference like this but I'm a big believer that conferences should do more career related talks especially so they can be more accessible and less scary to Juniors and new starters in our industry the reason why I'm so passionate about talking about this topic is because I want our industry to do better and care more about training the next generation of developers and software engineers and the generation after and the generation after our industry keeps wanting more people to join but we do a terrible job in training them to be better Developers and part of the reason why I'm doing this talk is largely because of the conversations I've had with University students graduates students Junior developers and all the like in addition to being a software engineer at atlassian I'm one of the organizers of uni Hawk which is Australia's largest student hackathon and I was formerly one of the organizers of the now sadly gone uh Julia developer Melbourne Meetup Group So based on those like you're hearing the same old questions the same old issues so hence why we're doing this there's an old adage in speaking speak on what you know I kind of know this but I should address the elephant in the room what happens if I'm not a junior this talk is designed for everyone the lessons I have picked I've selected should be Evergreen in that you should at least hopefully resonate with one of them and if my little talk does resonate and help address an issue that you have great excellent I've done my job but I'm also hoping that you take what you've learned here and share that knowledge with any other Junior developers you may be training up yourselves and pay that forward so without further ado lesson one it's very easy to burn yourself out I feel like this is important to State because as an industry we are really terrible in talking about burnout this might be because companies kind of have an incentive not to discuss it or talk it at a very surface level now I should acknowledge that up front that regardless of job at any company you'll face some level it's stress and some level of pressure everyone's tolerance is difference but we can all agree that everyone has a Breaking Point and there will be days where you feel emotionally drained there'll be days where you just don't want to get to work there'll be even days where you just want to hide in a toilet to get away from reading logs before putting a fake smile and dealing with the next issue along the way it's temporary it can last a day it can last weeks but that's a sign of burnout there are plenty of definitions and think pieces on the internet but I prefer this one from the Mayo Clinic that burnout is a state of physical or emotional exhaustion that also involves a sense of reduce accomplishment and a loss of personal identity I like this one because it incorporates something that gets overlooked when we discuss burnout that it doesn't have to be a toxic situation or toxic workplace to reach a Breaking Point and suffer burnout you can simply suffer it by being stuck in a constant repetitive cycle with no end in sight an easy example is something we've all faced a constant state of firefighting and Bug fixing with very little of your backlog progressing because of said firefighting and I personally can remember just being exhausted after a three-month period working at some different company which I won't name where I was constantly firefighting because we'll get reports from our clients about something going wrong with our react native app we'll get a bug report is sure fix release the build and then something goes wrong and the cycle continues again and again and again something has regressed we have to do this we have to do that it also didn't help that this particular client was high value and as you can expect there were nights where I would often work late there were compromises to me made compromises to be made to make sure that it would just work L to minimize loss in employer's reputation and Revenue now side note before I continue if you're working a startup or in a large corporation invest in QA please invest in QA these the people working in QA I would say are personally the unsung heroes of our industry they're worth the effort to prevent your developers from spiraling so what can you do there really isn't an easy answer outside of you have to look out for the signs sorry but I will say this if you need a break take a break even if it's just for a few minutes for example go to your nearest cafe and get a cup of coffee tea hot chocolate or whatever beverage you want especially if you're working from home otherwise if it's a bit too far your kitchen suffices as well but personally I enjoy these small moments of Peace because it means that I don't have to worry about anything anything related to work I don't have to worry about logs I don't have to worry about bugs I can just breathe so but if that's not enough if you do feel drained take some time off even if it's just for a day if none of you have heard of a mental health day congratulations I'm going to introduce you to you now but for those who don't know what a mental health day is that's effectively a day where you just take off from work to do some self-care it can be just catching up on sleep doing some exercise visiting a friend cooking baking whatever you want the idea is you just do not do any work you might want to tell your higher ups why you're doing it and why you're taking that time off but you don't have to and it's important to stress you do not have to I do because I have a good working relationship with my manager but not everyone has that luxury and I fully acknowledge that and there are many valid reasons why you do not want to tell you tell that to your boss so don't be pressured into revealing anything all intents and purposes it's just another annual leave day and if you're wondering why I'm showing this ABC article that's the reason why I found out about mental health days turns out Public Service broadcasting actually works and lastly you should never feel guilty about taking some time off put your well-being first So speaking about putting yourself first leads us to lesson two it goes both ways what do I mean by that I mean when you go out and interview for positions you should always make sure it's a two-way conversation yes obviously make sure you meet the job requirements for the position and yes make sure you get fair and reasonable compensation for the work you are doing however you should make it clear what your goals are is this a place where you can Thrive as such you should always make sure the company knows what you want and has plans to achieve that for example just on top of my head if you're looking to reach that next career Milestone like being a senior developer make sure they actually have mechanisms to help you get to that point but as Junior developers what should you be looking out for at a bare minimum and I would say bare minimum because surprisingly this is hard to do you should have a plan in place to make sure they help you grow they should have a working environment that is nurturing and supportive and you should have access to a corporate body or Mentor that can help you navigate through anything technical or even within the company because we all know companies are complex hierarchies of management I say all of this because I basically learned this the hard way turns out when I did my graduate placement can't even the opposite of all that there wasn't a plan in place to support me at all or help me grow I was literally dumped into a project three weeks in and was initially I was initially made to feel like I was some burden I mean how else would you explain being told to be in a corner to do dashboards I will say though I made the best dashboards out of all the team but I did end up finding my way somewhat I was able to for lack of a better phrase quote prove my worth to the team I was also able to make a lot of friends at the company who are also very supportive and what the one in what I wanted to do but there was still no plan so after 18 months I found myself not really liking what I wanted to do and after some pushing and prodding it was kind of clear that they weren't interested in giving me the support they were more focused on the company line so I left in hindsight and yes hindsight is 2020. I should have asked this very simple question how can you help me achieve what I want to do I should have asked this question in The Graduate interview process because it would have given me an Insight in how they treated their Juniors instead I got a company that treats their Juniors like another way to make some money so if there's only one key takeaway there's plenty but if one of them hopefully sticks consider what is that what you consider what is consider what you want to do ask that question to your manager or recruiters and see how they respond and how they can help you to achieve this because and I'm putting it out there being stuck in a position that you don't like absolutely sucks but with even the most supportive company in the world without experience sadly you will not get far in this industry experience matters in this industry it's sort of like our currency whether it is joining a company or even getting promoted within a company some make a requirement you have to demonstrate this for a year before even being considered for a promotion so it's critical that it's critical because it provides the evidence you've demonstrated what they're looking for but obviously not everyone is going to get the opportunity to learn and if you don't does that mean you're stuck not necessarily lesson three sometimes you have to make your own experience now to clarify I don't actually mean make it up as in line your resume or fake it to make it please don't do that that is not illegal but immoral but what I am saying is that you have to kind of be a bit more proactive in trying to get that experience and often you will have to do this outside of work hours unfortunately don't expect to be given every opportunity especially if your manager is trying to be fair to train up other to train up more Junior developers in your team as well so how do you go about it how can you demonstrate experience outside of a corporate environment well often the best way to show something technical is but just by doing it and what I mean technical let's say like a framework or programming language let's say you want to demonstrate your proficiency or competency in a front-end language like react or view or angular or insert Vibe here uh you can do this by maybe volunteering sometime at a charity sporting club non-for-profit to help them with their website otherwise also include contributing to open source projects or even doing your own side project heck even doing a hackathon accounts as experience I also want to emphasize this point as well because you can do this for non-technical interpersonal soft or I think someone actually mentioned to me on on the height on the hallway track sorry calling it core skills because yes interpersonal soft core non-technical whatever you want to call it uh while they're often forgotten I feel they're also very important because they demonstrate they're very important to demonstrate because software isn't built in isolation or most software isn't most software isn't built in isolation it's often a team effort so if you want to emphasize any of these non-technical softcore interpersonal skills let's say project management consider being a volunteer organizer I wanted community events or Meetup Group in your local Tech Community osip icons an option as well not that I'm promoting this but there are many options you can do python is just one example of many we're going a bit meta but what I'm doing right now this presentation is crazy is me creating my own experience to hone and demonstrate my public speaking skills so if you're struggling and still can't think of anything I would also recommend doing this too why well because communication skills are often undervalued and overlooked despite arguably being more necessary in what we actually do we think that these skills are largely used during presentations at conferences like here but you still use those public speaking skills in smaller meetings Zoom calls and the like for example what if you need to pitch an idea to your manager or the rest of your team and to be quite Frank it's kind of the easiest way to stand out because everyone has kind of a sort of expectation that is super low the bio to speak is very low and I guess everyone has sort of a bad example they will compare your presentation against so if you're possible and I'm hoping today I'm possible please uh and then it's all right as long as you're honest as long as your audience understands what the hell you're talking about now do I recommend you stand up here and do a 25 30 minute slot on a presentation to hone your public speaking skills no that's a bit too much um I would recommend you start small there are plenty of meetup groups out there that will love to take you on board for like even five or ten minutes we had lightning talks which will be next so if you missed out the opportunity at this pycon the next pycon you can do something like that unfortunately and I say this with loving with love public speaking is one of those things where you kind of have to keep doing again and again and again to actually hone your craft so don't be disappointed don't be discouraged if something goes wrong or you screw up I definitely did once or twice or 15 times already so and I'm sure every other speaker has had that example as well but all you need to do is just learn from it brush it off and try try again now on to my final lesson and I absolutely chose this because this last chooses to be the last one because in essence it sort of sums up pretty much the other three so yeah but also I do find that it's first thing comes with something more greater than what I've spoken about previously so if you need if you absolutely only remember one thing from this presentation I hope this is the one you take out of it Lesson Four do something not nothing so for me there's a perfect quote in Leo tolstoy's Anna cranera I know it's sort of a hard rate and to be frank I've actually never read the book I've only watched a TV show adaptation of it so I don't know why I've chosen this quote but oh well I'll stick with it but essentially this sums up my feeling for it that I rather end up wishing I hadn't than end up wishing I had essentially it's better to do something that it flop even if it flops than looking back and regretting or regretting that you didn't do anything what you could have done so if you find yourself stuck stagnating or just feeling negative about coming to work try and find a way to change that situation it can be very easy to Simply ignore it and push through gritted teeth don't do that please don't do that of course I would note there is a caveat with this this may not apply to every situation obviously and I'm not saying that you should do you shouldn't do something blindly and I also don't recommend you resign and respite and flip your boss in a public spectacle despite how tempting it might be uh and but sometimes the easiest way is just talking talk to your peers talk to your friends talk to your manager if you have a good relationship like I said I do some don't but you might find you might be surprised on what the answer may be and I say all this because of what happened to my graduate program that same graduate program I end up leaving 18 months later yes they didn't support me but it wasn't really the full story it's slightly worse um in addition to not providing a supportive environment for a graduates they pushed me to change my field from being a full stack software engineer to being in devops I'm now stressed I should stress that I don't hate devops I like it it's just not for me as a full-time career I must prefer building websites and maintaining CI infrastructure and I also understand that's a gross over simplification of what devops is they said it was temporary just a few weeks but a few weeks became a month then three months then six months then indefinitely so in essence in effect I was stuck in a role that I did not want to do during work that I didn't want to be doing but I took that frustration and bottled it up I thought if I just wait hopefully something will come that is better I would be reassigned to something even greater so well it didn't I won't dwell into the details much all you need to know is I try to get promoted and got rejected yay um yes obviously emotion I'm allowed you're allowed to feel sad you're allowed to feel angry but I would also say use that energy and harness that for something a bit more productive and what I did was use it to reflect on the 18 months they learned why did I get rejected and it was evident that the 18 months later I did of work was not and I frankly admit this was not up to scratched from being a software engineer I ended up learning stuff for a developers engineer not a software engineer so that's what I've tried to I found my voice to do something about it and looking back I should have raised my voice even earlier to avoid being placed in that situation maybe if I have Community maybe if I communicated like intent clearly or maybe if I pushed hard on my manager to be pushed onto the right track but at least I was doing something to change that situation I wanted to be a software engineer not a devops engineer and it was clear based on my conversation with them that they want they did not want to change that so I was left with two options continue the path that was going down or leave leaving did not mean that there was no consequence there was without there was no there was some consequence I should say it meant that I would be effectively restarting the clock on my developer Journey not many people leave a junior role for another relatively more Junior role but given my work experience was pretty much useless for what I wanted to do it's an easy decision for me so I jumped I jumped shipped the new company I ended up working for a startup took me on board knowing that I would be a junior however they knew what I wanted to do and where I wanted to be in the next few years and they helped during the three years I worked with them they gave me opportunities where I could skill up and grow in a wide variety of areas both Technical and non-technical for example speaking in addition I learned so much for about react native that I effectively became the subject matter expert in the company and was able to do conference talks like that that's me in Dev World 2019 I think yeah talking about react native to a bunch of iOS developers not a good site but yes but in but it also allowed me to continue and work upwards as well to now getting a job of where I am currently atlassium so it all worked out in the end look at me so this is the last thing I'm going to show this is the obligatory summary of everything you are allowed to take pictures if you want feel free I will be posting stuff on Discord as well on Twitter or whatever uh but yeah but in summary one it's never easy it's very easy to burn yourself out so take a mental health break never feel guilty about taking that off number two it goes both ways make sure it's a two-way conversation ask what your company can do for you three sometimes you have to make your own opportunities so seek alternative Pathways and number four always do something never nothing stay staying quiet never works so yeah it's my presentation thank you so much [Applause] thank you so much for your time no worries we have some space for questions depending on in the audience someone stories their hands do so now foreign hi thanks for the talk I'm wondering what kind of experiences you gained early on that set you aside from other students when you were initially looking for a junior employment uh so the so to clarify what sort of things I did as a to put myself in front yeah so you did the graduate program yes outside of University we're continuing from University uh what other things did you do in terms of talks and what what do you think made you stand out in particular from other people who didn't get those opportunities oh yeah so so yeah so I think mainly because I was an organized ideological Tech Community work as well that ended up in helping me a bit so being able to demonstrate that yes I can project manage because yes it's not like a software project but organizing an event organizing a meet-up organizing um a conference track or even like a small bit of it that end up starting like yes I can hand I can handle what's been thrown at me it's not going to phase me um but as well like I think as well ultimate and I probably should have mentioned this as well in this talk of realizing it now but networking networking is very important I think that's essential in our industry so because of the community stuff that I did I was able to network and that sort of helped me when I needed to jump ship thank you no worries sure are there any other questions in the audience can't see anyone else thank you so much for your time no worries thank you so much for having me that's one more thing before you leave we've also got a gift and a card oh yeah thank you so much cheers nice thank you so much [Applause]

Channel: PyCon AU

Views: 2,168

Keywords: TerenceHuynh, pyconau, pyconau_2023

Id: F2s7QLolsyQ

Length: 25min 31sec (1531 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 24 2023