Tech Career Q&A with a Senior Developer

Key Takeaways

hey everyone [Applause] hello everyone indeed yes very special live stream today because I am joined bye um a self-taught coder and now a senior developer with five or is it now six years of experience property seven really yeah not bad um so yes Michael knows what it's like to learn to code on your own yes and to break into the tech industry as they say and he has hands-on experience of uh stuff that's going down in Tech at the moment which is why I've invited him on so you can answer your questions anything you want to know about starting a career in Tech learning to code finding a job chat GPT Tech layoffs whatever it may be yes the floor really is yours the viewers thank you all for joining look at you all in the chat yeah we'll keep an eye on the chat as much as possible uh to answer all your questions yeah and uh yeah if you haven't already said I've been working for a little while um yeah my position is currently called senior engineer and uh but I also have spent a very long time learning with scrimba teaching with screen book so and kind of yeah um we were Leon and I we even reviewed like the very early stages of the career path when it was about to be born we were kind of looking into it uh obviously had a lot of iterations since the very early uh stages so yeah we've been um kind of a lot of our experience have gone into work with scrimmer so and it's a great pleasure to me to be sharing constantly with the community as well so hopefully if you have any questions we'll be here to ask them yes quite so just put your questions into the chat so we know where things live yes the first question question on everybody's lips at the moment Michael Sammy up does chat GPT mean the end of software engineering yeah I think a lot of stuff is usually considered the end of software engineering uh I don't think so so like long story short no it's not I think it will make your job a lot easier yeah how so um you know the kind of like stock overflow has cut you know there used to be a lot of trivia that people would have to remember to code or if you don't remember something you have like to open the manual for the language look up a method or something can you imagine uh I've seen pictures of those manuals that are like this big yeah you just have to go through it I remember like when I my first ever experience well like first ever experience in coding was probably like at school or something Pascal turbo Turbo Pascal I think it was called I don't remember much about that at all uh but like more or less in adulthood it was like a university and we had Fortran 86 and there was no intellisense or anything you have to I don't know why they made us code in Emma's dos there was no like editors or anything probably but nobody has shown it to us we have like these computer science um just lessons where yeah you just coding txt it was all black and white and it's like 486 and we were doing like matrices multiplication because yeah I would think like uh engineering degree in mechanical engineering so are you saying then that the difference between software engineering now or six months ago and software engineering with chat GPT will be similar sort of grade of difference doing the manual boring yeah I remember when I was learning to code and somebody like showing me in in the tutorial where intellisense looks like I was like whoa so you don't have to remember method names uh it was modeling and then obviously they unstuck overflow and stuff so you have to remember less and less and less so you know it's mostly about uh adding value like you're thinking about business cases and you're thinking about how the company that you work for actually works and how to translate those processes into code and you're much less worried about uh you know minutiaes of the language and stuff like that although a lot of technical skills will still be useful in show GPT will never help you with that like and learn how databases work or uh you know knowing how to optimize certain things although I think tragic Equity can definitely help you answer a lot of these questions just like overflow so I tend to think about it hopefully less snarky than stuck over yes it's it's super freshly uh it's not super friendly because if people have managed to tweak it to be very friendly uh so yeah it's think about it that way hmm so it's taking out the kind of back breaking work and the boring bits bring you up to be more creative you reckon uh yeah I think I think so it you will you'll be able to focus on things that matter a little bit more uh rather than get booked down and you know bike shading so Dan asks maybe a reduction in the professionals needed for software development so do you think that's true there'll be fewer software Engineers I think I don't think there is anyone who can honestly answer this question to you uh if they if they speak about this with confidence they probably don't know what they thought what they're talking about from from GPT that we have so far um I don't think so uh so I think I think you'll be fine did you do you think the role will change from what it is now people are talking about prompted Engineers aren't they uh I think that's uh kind of I think prompt Engineers is more like you know professional googlers that kind of thing you know like people who can put queries correctly uh maybe at some point it would be very very important to do so but I don't think it's gonna last because a lot of these models want to make sure that you actually don't have to be very clever with prompting it uh so I'm pretty sure they'll try to reduce the barrier required for a quality result but in terms of needing fewer software engineers my feeling is yes you can ask Czech GPT how to make whatever but you do need to understand what it's doing for two reasons one in case it doesn't quite do exactly what you want and you need to change it and two so you know you're not doing something potentially dangerous you know if it gives you inner HTML you don't know the risk of you using hql in ahtml then that could be a big I think it's kind of like with self-driving cars you know a lot of people say it's tomorrow is tomorrow and it's been very just like that for tomorrow uh I don't think at this moment in time I don't think we're there okay so as Joshua says does it mean the end of writing syntax and more system design I think so yeah I think you will need to be able to focus on understanding systems more and probably kind of generally within Tech Career people focus on system design a little bit later on the career so like maybe even mid-level developers aren't that expected to understand these kind of things but from Seniors it is kind of expected uh but I think it's moving closing closer to you know Juniors and stuff like that with because syntax and less is less and less of a barrier so you will be focusing more and more on maintaining systems creating systems and stuff like that yeah that sounds exciting exactly it's much more interesting than you know debating push and pop or whatever yeah well spending hours finding a bug which ends up being something really stupid yeah yeah good stuff on to another topic Paul oh how important is LinkedIn for finding a tech job I think is pretty important um I found my first ever job on LinkedIn and maybe I think it's like half and a half I found half of my jobs on LinkedIn half of my jobs on Twitter uh so it's uh yeah it depends so to me personally I would say yeah it's 50 important how did it work finding a job on Twitter then because obviously LinkedIn you know yeah it's partly built for that but with Twitter that's interesting yeah so with Twitter it's uh well for example uh iPhone scramber through Twitter uh and then I met pair through Twitter and I've you know the the way I'm doing this right now is basically through Twitter uh but I would say like my current role right here is I was following uh one person who was then recommending the current company and I looked into it I had to chat to him about it in DMS and then decided to apply for a job so uh and I definitely did not see it maybe it was advertised on LinkedIn but I'm not sure I don't think I have seen it interesting yeah because I found my job through well through you through Twitter so and that wasn't really ever advertised so that is yeah a bit of a hack really of how you might be able to get jobs and yeah competition the thing is that with companies like scrimber uh it's very tricky to advertise jobs as well but unless it's uh development and stuff like that but like what we do or like a lot of our teachers and stuff uh they were not really advertised it's mostly like we got to know each other uh and we did some bits and Bobs and and then kind of it grew into a more uh collaborative thing to do so a lot of these roles are kind of the similar as well you might do a little bit of work for somebody but then they don't have enough capacity or opportunity to give you something full time so you might as well you know kind of like Consulting freelancing for somebody until it grows into something a little bit larger very interesting so whichever route you take LinkedIn or Twitter or anything else yeah I think social media is definitely very helpful there um I can definitely see people getting involved like that on Tech talk or whatever but I'm not on Tick Tock I don't really understand the Dynamics I don't understand the app so it's hard to say but if it works for you it worked for you yeah interesting lots of ways to engage with companies that you you want to work with I guess that's the main takeaway engage yeah or you know people call it with like slimy word networking uh and that's kind of all it is you know to talk to people and we eventually you know something comes up to it how about networking puts people off because it sounds like you have to corporate and difficult and likely you have to have some kind of skill to it whereas really it is just talking to people yeah that's all it is well you know go to meetups and stuff like that so well one of the jobs I found is basically I was following a couple of people on Twitter and they recommended a conference and then I went to that conference and one of the talks was uh my future manager uh I call I was quite interested in what he had to say so then it kind of like went into uh look into like what the company is about think they had the job advertised and uh basically yeah I applied and then we had a conversation I mentioned that I was in one of his talks we had a chat about it and that was kind of like one of the things that convinced them to hire me as well yeah that's kind of like puts your name on top of the pile if they recognize you yeah exactly because like I asked a couple of questions during the talk and uh it seems like you know it became a little bit memorable so um it helps yeah okay on to another question I want to know about remote work and open source projects what's the future in the coming years well uh well what's the future into it in the coming years I think it's kind of the here like remote work is probably as prominent as in office work or do you think that people are moving towards getting people to go back into the office or is remote work still happening I think big companies uh do want people back in the office but there is like some of the conspiracy theory I suppose but it's kind of it's just a very sneaky way to try people to leave jobs because they don't want to fire you they just want you to leave before and they know that people don't want to come out to any office yeah and they kind of say everyone goes back to the office so there is a natural instead of to pay off their redundancy yeah there is a natural amount of people that will just say it now I'm okay I'm not doing this um so there is a little bit of that but I'm pretty sure that if um you know once once we are back into somewhat more somewhat better economical conditions uh this will be a massive playback and people will undoubtedly let go of a lot of these hiccups but then again like you know big corporations they um there is always an argument that offices is an expense and big corporations they kind of have to have an office regardless so they have to bear their experts like apple is not going to abandon their London offices or Google you know they have it they might abandon their less prominent offices in other countries but you know New York LA or San Francisco they'll not leave there well Twitter has hasn't it uh well Twitter is very separated that said about that what about open source then uh and open source is kind of I think open source is all remote I um I can't think of a single project that is like in the office open source project uh everyone is working constantly remote and and the future into that it's I don't know I I don't think I'm the most knowledgeable person on the open source Dynamics so I'll probably just leave that part because I don't know thank you for the question Pele is looking for a change of career from football I guess uh what has been your most challenging project to date how did you navigate through any obstacles that arrives interesting why has been your most challenging project today and how did you navigate through obstacles Narrows um I don't know I don't particularly think I had like I had a lot of very interesting projects but I can't really say one of them was the most challenging because most projects are challenging in their own way and it's very hard to rank it's like saying like which experience was the most painful you know um and sometimes it's very hard to compare because pain is very different uh depending on circumstances well any of that spring to mind and I guess really the question is asking how do you tackle have difficulty arise when you're coding yeah so it depends obviously on uh on various like some projects you kind of work on your own project and the difficulty there is you know you don't have anyone else to have as a sounding board to double check your thinking um some projects are just really large and there are too many people involved and it's hard to coordinate you know so all the different pain points are very different uh but never getting through those obstacles I think it's kind of the North Star is the way you want to be you know what what is the project trying to achieve and make sure that maybe not daily but weekly you are checking in to ensure that you're moving in that direction and I think that kind of helped me to kind of stay insane throughout whatever happens to the project I always try to keep an eye on what needs to be achieved and uh get there eventually one of my colleagues has a very good phrase which sounds apt for this which is does it make sense that we're doing this because you know sometimes they yeah you get yourself wrapped up into doing something and then after about three days you suddenly realized it was a complete Rabbit Hole to fall down and you shouldn't have done it yeah stop and ask yourself that on a regular basis if something's taking a long time yeah it saves me a lot of time I think Pele or Pele or uh sorry I'm not entire job but uh I think it would be nice if you clarify like what what do you mean by challenging like hardest most difficult most moving parts uh most annoying you know uh like trying to Define challenging that I read it as a getting stuck you know when you don't know how to do something yeah yeah you've got to do it how do you approach that um yeah I sometimes try to reach out to other people and just uh you know rubber duck uh the problem for it and just see where where we end up because sometimes you are stuck not because you really don't know what to do but because you have a lot of options but none of them seem that appealing so it helps you to narrow down on the least unappealing option I think also explaining the problem especially if you're writing it down can help you to think through the steps of what you need to do and sometimes even just doing that solves it yeah correct Joshua do you think the current tech industry environment will have an impact on the hiring of Junior Developers um Karen taking the screen bar well yeah there is like a lot of um I would say there's a very interesting part to the tech industry where we have seen a lot of layoffs obviously in big Tech and small companies feel uh much more pinched to you because like people raise money and then they need to ensure that that money they have in the bank lost them until um well until basic interest rates go back to zero well that's kind of the Hub uh and how long it takes we don't really know but a lot of tech companies um you know like middle size tech companies and to be honest every company is a kind of tech company everyone hires software Engineers you know your car company or higher soft Engineers you're you know or walk around the house have a look into what you have it's quite likely you know your fridge uh a manufacturer or your washing machine manufacturer everyone hires software engineers and um some companies might not be that particularly impacted like for example your local government job you know your local Council their higher software engineers and all of those could be uh decent to be decent first places to to be hired to you know as a junior role so look into that and to be honest I don't think our local Council has noticed any difference in software engineering hiring because to them you know they had like three or five developers and they still have three or five developers um you know and if somebody goes somewhere or retires they'll just hire someone else so do you think there's another question about this actually allow me to find it yeah we're basically what I'm trying to say is like there is a lot of these Notions of like really attractive tech jobs uh and yes there are less of them uh but there are a lot of very very lucrative and you know boring sounding tech jobs that are still out there and there are plenty of them that I have not really felt any difference in the market whatsoever because they're kind of not impacted by the same um Dynamics as most traditional tech jobs hmm yes so we'll go to another one Andre yeah how important is having a good commit history on GitHub or GitHub if you prefer um when applying for jobs uh I think for your first Junior role I think it would be pretty important I think it's gonna be I think it would be useful yeah yeah um I know that a lot of people especially on Twitter there is like you know don't judge a person by commits and stuff like that and I agree with it personally I would not really look that much into it uh but it would definitely help if you had a busy looking GitHub yeah because it's like you have been coding before I have seen your CV so that gives me some expectation that you are practicing that kind of stuff and not um you know this is not an accidental application for you I think further into your career it makes a little it makes less and less and less sense because people the more senior they get the more um glue work they kind of do so it might not track as well but for a junior role I think it's important so what does a good commit history look like then because you can get the green squares every day just by you know changing one word yeah you're working on something it's like yeah obviously I would I would look at the green squares first and it's very empty uh then that kind of tells everything you need to know well not I like everything but it tells you it tells you that you were not particularly coding that much maybe so I would need to dig further uh and find someone like do you have a portfolio do you have this do you have that a while on your GitHub you know I see a lot of squares so now I just need to verify have you rigged those squares or have you actually got it and with that I'll just scroll through the history of your commits and stuff and see where you have contributed what you have contributed that kind of stuff it doesn't really matter like if you were contributing to your portfolio every day uh that would be great yeah I would say fair enough awesome you work early sounds good programming for years without a job should I quit it oh interesting um I would say that it probably it probably really depends uh you need to look I I don't think you would quit quit as such um like what's when you say for years without the job does that mean like you were applying but were unsuccessful if so how many applications you did when did you do them how long have you been applying for it also depends in your location you know um because like if like we for example live on Rural Wales if somebody from rural Wales applies to a job in San Francisco or something yeah they can be making hundreds of thousands of applications and probably not really succeed because there are too many barriers that you have to go through like the time zones are very different um yeah it's not always the problem but they kind of all add up you know like the time zones the uh like not being able to easily go into into the job office if what if needed uh that kind of stuff so like looking close to your locality for junior job usually more helpful but then also if you're looking like we live in rural Wales how many tech jobs are there in rural Wales um so there is also that so I would probably look into those things and if you were applying maybe look into this CV is that is that the best optimized TV that you can have are you showcasing where you can do the best way possible or is it like just a blank page CV no link to anything so it's very hard for hiring manager they're determine if you were coding or not and because they have a lot of CDs probably people don't spend enough time to actually do the investigation and it's kind of on you to save them time from doing that investigation yeah I think the thing is before you quit have a look at where it is in the hiring process that you're falling off so are you not getting any callbacks to begin with in that case perhaps it's your CV or your LinkedIn or yeah cover letters if you're writing them that's the problem if you are getting callbacks and going to interviews but then not getting the job is a interview skills you need to improve or maybe technical skills if you've had a technical interview so find out what's going wrong and tweak the process that I would say yeah definitely or maybe it's just that you're not doing enough applications if you get if you for example get rejected at an interview stage like for example you were given a take-home test and you didn't complete it then yeah just ask why not like maybe maybe the test needs to be done a little bit better maybe you need to brush up on your Basics that kind of stuff it all depends yeah always ask for feedback I would say you might not get it because people are busy but sometimes you will get feedback and it might be really useful and tell you what you need to focus on to get further the next time but anyway best of luck to you quacky Blake yeah I want to switch careers I've got 15 years of experience in automotive manufacturing oh that's a bit similar to you I think a lot of the skills like problem solving will transfer how can I best show that on my resume oh interesting uh I'll probably say on your resume you can just list uh impact that you have had in your job so like just normal CV stuff and then try to link how it would be transferable to software engineering for example you know debugging improving processes um you know creating something I think all of that will be transferable experience working on large projects delivering on time that kind of stuff uh so in your case I think a lot of these skills are very easily transferable uh so it's mostly about you know can you can you code at least a little bit and if you can then you can find your first job yeah good stuff I'm going to um speed up a bit um to ask the next question yeah where do you see the line between experienced senior engineer versus staff slash principal oh wow okay uh I think line uh I'll probably step even further back the line for all of these job titles is simply how much more responsibility you get so you know Junior code you're responsible for your little patch mid-level developer you're responsible for a little bit for the Junior and for yourself senior you're responsible for you know project level or product level and then staff and principal you're more responsible for the whole you know for the whole section or maybe even entire company depending depending on the side on the size of the company so it is the area of responsibility for technical Excellence you can call it that's right and in that way it's basically like how can you optimize for things that your business cares about like as a junior it would be a little bit tricky because you don't really know how to leverage a lot of things and your skills and the more and more senior you become the more and more you know uh how you can do very little to have as much impact as possible uh on a bottom line for the company and it could be anything it could be like bringing more money or saving a lot of money um yeah hiring the best Engineers that kind of stuff it it it's all you know throughout the whole variety of different things that you can be doing okay thank you but yeah I think like staff principle once I get to staff at principal level I'll definitely tell you I'll give you the answer he'll come back yeah they'll be like uh you know interview screenbe interview with the staff engineer [Laughter] Brick's TV why use HTML5 when you have for react and others like it uh oh I mean react you I interviewed this channel five though well you have jsx which is yeah but that is kind of yeah okay it's not pure HTML5 but it's no real HTML file definitely helps I think that's the thing if you've been pretty tricky to understand react yeah you need JS first before you learn react because otherwise it's just the complete nightmare to figure out what's going on yeah it's like you know that I think it's a Pokemon meme when you know like somebody is joining like this way in this way or something uh I think it's like HTML JavaScript and then you get react I think you need to know both to make the next step to react or maybe Brick's TV is asking why would you build something with HTML and JS instead of react how would you actually do that uh yeah yeah oh it's a simple page why overcomplicate it you know um if you can just write I mean you see the problem with reactors that you do it react but it's not you know you don't ship react into your browser right it's so when you load the page is HTML CSS JavaScript still so you know if it's a relatively small and simple project or you know super high speed is incredibly important you know like sub milliseconds then you actually have just HTML Jesse says gesture outcrypt and just you know just put it out there struggling to imagine a project that would need to be that fast but could run on only HTML CSS and Js uh yeah or or okay look at the rears uh for example you work for some really obscure uh defense company that still runs Intel Explorer 6. they get done you'll have to write stuff in HTML5 Dave Carson hello to you says react compiles to HTML it's a JavaScript framework not an HTML Library yes did you call it an HTML Library no I think it's like you know combination of HTML and JavaScript at the same time yeah well again it's like is it a library as a framework oh this question again I don't know um I don't know and yes you can basically a lot like for example you can have like Gatsby Frameworks like adsby what they do is they pre-compile all of that react into HTML CSS JavaScript so when you're actually requesting stuff it's already pre-compiled uh again a lot of the solutions have their Pros have their cons uh it and it all depends you know if I have to think of a theoretical example when I would use HTML5 yeah yeah kind of like as I said oh actually email templates yeah there's nothing but HTML5 I don't think you can yeah I don't think you can code yeah I don't think you can code that in react yet uh so there you go that's why lovely keep the questions coming we still have around 25 minutes left to answer as many questions as possible under it could you explain the difference between front-end developer roles versus web developer roles I see that the skills from the front end path could be applicable to buy yeah exactly um you can be a front-end developer you can be social engineer you know a lot of companies hire for example they hire full stack or the higher just software engineer that's it actually most of the jobs I've been hired for which are software engineer and sometimes you have to do front end sometimes you have to do back end sometimes yeah you basically do you write code that's all there is um this is the career path yes teaches you everything you need to know to become so front-end developer or a web developer but it's the main difference not just that the web developer builds websites front-end development kind of does that as well I'm not sure there is a huge difference I don't think there is a huge difference I do prefer like if you have to also put the difference between a web developer software engineer um again there probably wouldn't be that much of a difference because I feel like if somebody says web developer it would also presume that you will have to do a little bit of backhand hmm yeah true like write apis and stuff like that so it's worth when you're looking for jobs to search for both terms I think yes uh but if the job says front end or back end you know that the focus will just be on that uh while with web or software engineer you don't know which is why for example if you look for a job like full stack they are very upfront that you will do both yes staying on the topic because front end development developer yeah food Tech life so you think it's worth reading eloquent JavaScript very famous book if you've gone through the JS modules on scrimber you've got this book elephant JavaScript yes I do very good is it worth reading that additionally to during the um yeah I would say that a book kind of goes into a little bit more detail um I think there's you will learn internals about JavaScript a little bit more um a while the screen friends of career path will give you a lot of experience of like building stuff and doing much more applicably uh a book you know there's always a difference between learning about something and doing it uh and obviously the book does give you examples of things you can do uh but you know like when you when you read the book and they give you an exercise to do you're like oh I have to do so much work to set it all up to make sure that I can start doing the exercise that most people just kind of abandon exercises kind of sounds like you're saying it's not worth reading it then no I would say it's worth reading for the knowledge uh that's in the book rather than the exercise you can you can do you can apply the knowledge and lots of other in lots of other cases okay match Plunkett would you say software developer apprenticeships or perhaps internships all worth it or is it better to carry on self-teaching and applying for junior roles so I would say it depends where you are personally so are you a high school student or are you at University and you hurt and this is your first internship or apprenticeship if that is the case then I think it is worth it if you have already worked you know your switching careers I don't think it's worth it because apprenticeships at least in the UK they mean a very specific thing you know so you will not be paid very much uh and it's there to teach people job skills so you can onboard to a job but if you have already had a career then you don't really need to learn that you've already done it so I would suggest yeah if your career switch I definitely do look for junior jobs don't don't spend your time on apprenticeships but if you're like 16 17 or 18 or you're like still at Uni early 20s yeah sure go for it you know because with that apprenticeship internship will give you some time maybe during the summer or something you can study up or you can work and get that job experience yeah it will be helpful thank you ah any courses or resources to dive deeper into system design asks Prince uh yes so oh actually very easily it's called bite bite um wrong bite bye bye go yes okay uh so there you go oh bubbago is the really good resource um it could be a little bit intimidating you because I don't know I don't think it would be very intimidating um but it will it's somewhat on a deep end um so you will go straight into system design and actually you know on very applicable things like here is this product or here is that product uh like for example C there is if you click on like YouTube so how do you design YouTube and then they basically walk you through chapter by chapter of like what do you need to do how to go for it and also what is really good is that it's also formulated in a way of system designer interview so these are all the things that you would need to take off during that interview so you would say you know what what's the demand for this service like what can we build uh you know if there is only one user then you know putting on a server and that's it be done with it uh if it's a lot of users you will be learning like yeah load balances cues all sorts of different tools maybe rate limiting uh yeah there you go so yeah and it goes like from design fundamentals of like you know the building blocks of different systems and then it will say okay now we can put all of those different building blocks into how do we design products that we already familiar with uh so yeah I would highly recommend and there is a book as well uh that goes with the resource uh there is also a newsletter that I would say weekly you receive um really good packed ideas about how different products uh work how different things work in general site go newsletter yes there we go I hope that helps you out Prince good question there you go yeah enjoy I would say that this is probably the only thing that you'll need good today earlier what do you think sets successful tech companies apart from those that struggle and how can individuals contribute to that success uh so to the first part if I knew that I would probably be the best angel investor in the world uh so I I don't think I know that I I don't know I can't answer that question yeah and I don't think I mean a lot of investment companies uh probably know the answer to a question or like for example why combinator kind of tells that they might have a better idea what it means uh but again I'm not experienced enough or yeah to be able to do some of these things so I'll pass on the first part of straight up how can individuals contribute to the success of the company uh I think that's when we spoke earlier sometimes you have very limited visibility to your part and where it fits in within a larger picture so striving to learn how to understand the bigger picture of where you operate it's very important so you as an individual should probably try to again like maybe as a junior it would be far above your pay grade to worry about that kind of thing but as you progress through a career I think it's very important to learn this thing early on so like maybe it would be a bit of an Overkill as a junior like when somebody gives you a ticket and you ask does this make my department my function my company be better at whatever we think as the company um and maybe that will help you stay on track like for example your CEO might say you know we need to increase sales uh so like increase sales should be the priority for our company so then you can be saying like so maybe you're fixing this bug will help sales team to like maybe they will put an edge over a competitor or something and you can say okay I think fixing this bug is more important than fixing this bug that is not as impactful so once you keep in mind your focus on the things that matter to your company as well I think that will set you apart as well this goes back to the thing about asking does it make sense that we're doing this yeah yeah you don't know well what what does my company actually evaluate um well it's quite likely that during the interview process your company had something like company values that everyone thinks is a lot of trash um and in big companies it might be but a lot of companies are quite famous for trying to uphold these standards so maybe that can be a very easy way but also you know what does your manager say because ultimately like yeah CEO is important but also your energy is probably trying to do the same thing so it's like on a smaller level try to help your manager be successful yeah because you might have a different viewpoint on things than they do so something might seem like a good idea to them but perhaps you're closer to the customers for example so you can see that actually it's completely pointless so if you believe that then raise it I'm not saying be argumentative about literally everything because that's okay but if you feel in your guts that this isn't the way to go I think it's useful to raise it yeah it works both ways like your manager has visibility that you don't have but also because you can be right in there like really close to some other aspect that they might not be aware of uh you can contribute back into that Vision just make sure that you know you know so you all move not as individuals but as a team together towards something because the first thing you want is to do a load of work which you believe from the start is pointless then it does turn out to be pointless and then someone says well you must have known this why didn't you say anything yeah exactly exactly never be afraid to speak up I'll run off the story yeah um Pelican as a senior developer how do you approach mentoring and leading junior team members what qualities do you look for in a mentee interesting uh so how do I approach mentoring and lead engineer team members I would say patience is very important and also you need to be you need to be patient and understanding because you probably can remember how you felt when you were Junior and so like everything everything you say can be considered a law you know you can't just joke uh and say like oh yeah just just do XYZ because to them that might not be a joke they might not understand it so you have to be very explicit about what you expect and what is um what you don't expect um uh and also because a lot of Juniors look up to you as their Mentor you need to kind of hold yourself to higher standard as well so you know you need to lead by example so in that way I would say these are probably the main important things like you lead by example and you deal with great patience and care for your mentee um but again that does not mean that you can um you know if somebody does something wrong you need to be very gentle but um in pointing out that something else is expected um and again I will try to probably avoid you know bird feeding that kind of thing like try to give people enough space to make their mistakes and learn from them uh so you're not particularly an overbearing mentor how can people ensure that they're good men to men too it's interesting it it's like I remember this concept of true learn how to manage your manager uh I think that is you know prepare prepare for meetings on your side you know like for example if there is a review collect everything you've done you know try to be really organized uh so it's way easier for me to help you so as a mentee what you can do is instead of telling me Oh this feature doesn't work or oh this ticket I can't do this ticket um probably instead of doing that you should try to be super specific about what exactly uh you're struggling with is it what doesn't work well you've tried and like yeah what have you tried the reproduction of what you're expecting um and once that is like you know basically ideally you point me to the line of code that doesn't work with exact error and I have all the context for the problem and then we can just sit down and work for it together okay thank you we have 10 minutes left about 10 questions so we're going to do a quick fire round try to answer the following questions in one sentence or less Muhammad what is the one skill that senior developer has that Junior doesn't there's one skill that senior developed by half did you it's more than one unfortunately uh it's more than one but I suppose the most important one is senior developers can well again because of experience they can just tell which things they can do that are much more impactful so yeah seniors would write um much less code for the same you know bang for the buck and for seniors that bang for the bug is much larger than Virginia's because again because you don't have much experience it's a little bit harder to assess what things are important what things aren't important again that's not one sentence should you freelance or get a job first okay personally personally job first but if you are uh entrepreneurially minded then go for freelance yeah like that person who coded Wordle you know if you've got an idea like that do it she actually works for Reddit so oh yeah yeah Mel W would you say there's a personality trait that is really suitable or not suitable perhaps one of each to be a programmer I actually don't know no uh yeah I don't know I don't know the it's like what personality trait uh is suitable or not suitable to be a writer or you know to be a doctor or takes all sorts I think yeah to be a bus driver I don't know like I made all sorts of different uh software Engineers so it's it's honestly it's really hard to tell I guess if you hate computers it might not be the route for you I need to be fair it probably could be pretty good uh because again you know you will make sure that you know like a lot of people create apps that are like really flowery and stuff like that but oftentimes you know if I go to Skyscanner I want to book a ticket you know not watch your animations so in a way if you hate computers you'll just make sure that it's like the absolute minimum amount to get stuff done so maybe there is a benefit to that as well interesting yeah himanshu can you please recommend some professional level react projects that one college student can to enhance their CV interesting professional level rare project I mean look as a college student what problem do you have what problem do your parents have uh solve that problem with with an app there you go done build something that sells the problem you have because then for one you've solved a problem and two nice and easy to talk about it and it's probably yeah something that doesn't already exist otherwise you wouldn't have the problem yeah so it'll be a unique project for you yeah exactly it's like maybe your professor emails you essays all the time and they have never heard of something like Dropbox you know build build a Dropbox for them uh there you go back like one idea or maybe a recipe catalog for your mum's cooking or sunflower I don't know anything devil devil when do you feel ready to apply apply for ready enough I think when you ask I always say when you ask that question you're already apply sooner so you learn you learn the pain of rejection that's that's good and second maybe not or maybe maybe you're good enough that you will get the first one so you know and also you're learning to be it the sooner you learn interviewing the higher the chance that when you come across your dream job you will not actually Bond my interview uh but again I don't think there are such thing as dream jobs like so don't get hung up on find a V1 yeah that's true um I agree start applying as soon as you're asking that question because at worst you won't get the jobs you apply for but what you might get if you get rejected is insight into what it is you need to do to be more successful next time yes good luck anyway live emulator as a new developer what's the ideal page count for a resume one yeah one well again it depends one to two probably two absolute Max I would try to keep it yeah not not more than two uh two if you're a career switcher but if you're straight out of University and if you're a career switcher make sure you're only including experience which is related relevant so it doesn't have to be coding experience but you need to be able to relate what you did in previous jobs to coding so if you had a job as a football mascot for example that might not be relevant or it might be who knows as long as you can relate it back put it on if not leave it off yeah if it's like designing I don't know entertainment systems for the stadiums that is a good point actually I think always over like that if you're a career switch one tip we have is to look into your industry that you already have knowledge of yeah and try to apply that for engineering that so if you've been a teacher look at edtech for example or if you're still watching automator automatic uh car manufacturing yeah maybe maybe for like you have been making cars and now you can actually fix the terrible uh infotainment systems that are in modern cars I am totally not uh talking about my own problem right now okay is there any Insider news on the Thursday course being developed by a scrimmer well nothing solid it is coming this year though that one is easy to answer with one question uh one sentence yes yes keep your eyes on screamer.com and your emails how important is it to know typescript and or software testing for building a skill set for junior front-end developers uh I think if you apply for a junior job and you know typescript and you can tell me about software testing I think that sets you that says to your part very strongly yeah good stuff yes is there any project in your work says Chan that doesn't have unit testing project in my work that doesn't have unit testing no do you always use unit testing uh we use all sorts of testing we don't have but we do not have a single project but I would not have tests I think it's like even their company policy that things have to be tested sorry if you're interested in learning unit testing please stop calls right here one screamer yeah let's finish with um a question from Ali sajad what is the most difficult thing for junior developers in the first weeks of working how can you overcome that I would add probably setting up your environment uh yeah I remember that yeah I probably said and uh because you have never been introduced to a large project before in your life that might be tricky and I would say that maybe it's it's hard to do something like that but I would say try to go online I try to go to GitHub and find an open source application you know probably just Google you know popular open source apps and then try to find out how to set you up on your local computer I think that would be a very good exercise that will give you an idea into how to actually do it the amount of problems you will face might be so large and it might feel totally horrible but it will be very much similar I remember the first job I ever joined and I had to set up the environment and I have never done it before in my life it was awful yeah um oh yeah and also learn how to set up GitHub SSH keys yeah yeah I will say you like on your first job they'll save you like a day so learn it now more importantly it'll save you a lot of stress yes if you've at least seen this process of a fake idea of what you're trying to achieve yeah that is an excellent tip I think Michael limber says like hey Tengu coffee machines uh yeah lovely thank you thank you wonderful questions that's all we have time for at the moment coming up on the next stream the live stream because it's happening oh I'm made of which you may or may not know is Star Wars Day May the fourth be with you and all that right so we are doing a Star Wars themed stream a step-by-step guide to building a movie selector app so I hope you can join us for that looking forward to it yeah right nice is it Roku Roku made this thing yeah well congrats under my instruction yeah well done well actually my instruction was that I would be Leia and you would be chewy but he he made you on solo instead fair enough I think he can probably find a picture where it was just chewy and layer on our own yeah that's true actually yeah I think that'll be quite tricky yeah Roku is really good he built any closing thoughts to budding developers Michael uh have a great rest of your week and have fun happy cooking totally yes and best of luck with whatever it is you're hoping to achieve this week but in general catch you later foreign