What do front end developers *actually* do?

hi everybody welcome back to my channel so in today's video I'm gonna be explaining what software engineers actually do so I realized in my day in the lives I show a lot of just more lifestyle and how my day goes and flows but a lot of you guys asked like hey what do you actually do like what is your actual flow and what are you working on and things like that so I'm here to explain what I specifically do as a software engineer okay so my specialty is in front-end engineering so I am a front-end developer also if you don't know what a front-end developer is because when I first heard of it way back in college I had no idea what it was and basically what it is is just that user interaction when you go on a website just how the user interacts so let's say that you are clicking on a button or a link just that type of interaction with the user that is all front-end development and then back-end development is about the servers and how to get the data so that's kind of the distinction so as a friend developer I work with product managers as well as designers and we all kind of cross collaborate in order to create an awesome website so product managers basically are like the business people they talk to the customers or the stakeholders and see what the business need is so they kind of come up with the requirements of what is needed in order to drive the business forward so once the product managers have those requirements let's say that they want to add in a new feature to the website then they go to the designers and they work together to come up with the design and how it's actually going to look like so these are called UX designers and the prototype way of how they want the new feature to look like picking it user friendly and accessible to everyone after they have a design it comes to us which we just implement that design and the language at codon is actually in JavaScript but I also use a range of libraries including react and backbone but again if you need to front-end development the main things I use is HTML CSS JavaScript and a front-end framework and I also use git a lot and I feel like a lot of people don't or don't know how to use it but I use that on the daily basis and it's actually super helpful to know anyways I always start my day with a scrum meeting we run an agile environment so if you don't know what that is it is basically that every two weeks we have to have deliverables so basically we are assigned tasks in order to get these features or small bug fixes done in order to move the business forward and just be productive and keep each other accountable so these daily scrum meetings are basically just having like a daily stand-up where you talk about what you did yesterday what you're gonna do today and if you're blocked so really like having these because they really keep me accountable and I also feel like I have to stay sharp with the company because every day everyone's asking you what you're doing so there is no room for slacking part program meetings I actually also do a lot of cross collaboration with product managers and designers just so we are on the same page because if you do something but the designers or the PM's do not approve it there's conflict so I'm always communicating with them just to make sure that we're on the same page and that we're all just like working together so a lot of my time is spent in that and also we do a lot of demos so we're always constantly internally learning from each other especially since we all kind of work in the same things so we are always consistently doing demos I do a demo around once a week but I'm always hearing other people's demos and what they're doing with the company or what projects are working on so that is also just like a big part of what I do and on top of that I also have one-on-ones with and both my manager and my lead this is also weekly so I just talk about anything that I am working on curious about just any concerns questions that I have I think it's always nice to just keep in touch with both your lead and your manager just so you're on the same page and you can tell them what you're working on so all of that including and demos scrum meetings and one-on-ones with my managers I would say that that would total up to around 20 percent of my time then a big portion obviously goes to you guessed it coding and just building stuff in general this involves creating your own branch in order to make your changes and then pushing back into the main branch and just getting all that approval from other people and also just testing it and just making sure that it all works all of that takes around 70% of your time because that is my main job so as a software engineer one which is what I personally am and what you start off with what you usually do is fix either bugs or do small features that's kind of how you get started so that's exactly what I am doing and I am specifically working with the Disney sites so right now I'm working with Disney comm and I also work with charmers calm but my team is really cool because we get to rotate around platforms so I've worked with ABC Fox Disney now and I am also set to rotate into ESPN ABC News and I think that's it but yeah I'm always constantly shifting and working with new people just because that's how my specific team works but the great thing is that we all use the same tech stack except for one other team that uses backbone that's why I mention backbone but the rest of us or the rest of the teams use react so those are the two main libraries that go back and forth with and just in general I'm really trying to improve just being able to pick up any type of library or framework or language up just because I feel like I know one really well so I'm able to shift into other ones and pick them up as I go and also a lot of it is just learning as I do so that is a big part of it so yeah I would say around 70% of my time is just spent on coding which is really fun and I personally really enjoy it then the last 10% goes into more like random things that are going on with the company so I personally like to attend little webinars of other teams of what they're doing so I find that really interesting like right now I'm kind of into data science machine learning so I attend some of those or also attending other demos that other people are doing and other teams as well as like management meetings and stuff like that so yeah I think the other 10% is just kind of those like random things that you do within the or work that you're just interested in one to learn more about lastly I wanted to touch on the topic that yes my work is all in the computer especially now during these times I really only need my laptop and how I personally communicate with others is just through a video called so I just call them up and I actually find this way easier to communicate with other people because I can show them my code through my screen and they can also like highlight or some circle things in through the screen that's a feature that our video chat uses so I really enjoy that and that's kind of how we communicate with each other and also all our meetings are obviously online so I'm also just really thankful to have a job during these times especially since a lot of people I know have been furloughed and all that hover now since technology's always needed and I do work in digital media and streaming I feel that my job is especially needed during these times so I am so so thankful so yeah that is pretty much it of what I do and the breakdown so here it goes again and a 70% of me just coding and building 20% of cross-collaboration and 10% of random interesting work things that I want to do so I really hope that you enjoyed this video and that this was a better explanation and let me know in the comments down below if you have any other questions I would love to answer them and thank you so much for joining in if you made it this far please make sure to LIKE and subscribe it really means so so much to me so yeah thank you so much for watching and I will see you next time bye guys [Music]

Channel: Alexandra Sophia

Views: 111,563

Keywords: what software engineers actually do, software, programming, day in the life, software developer, computers, women in tech, career advice, tech career, what do software developers do, what do programmers do, software engineering, front end, developer, job, engineer, education, computer science, web development

Id: MCy5zXmlrfc

Length: 8min 12sec (492 seconds)

Published: Sun May 24 2020