# Mentoring talk
(Hebron 19.09.19 & Nazareth 23.09.19, FAC 18.12.19)

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## Talk time!


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## About Me

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## Studied Biology with Psychology


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## Then worked in Pharmacy


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## Now work as a Front-End Developer


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## And right now...
- Giving you this talk!

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# Disclaimer
- Please don't let this talk be daunting!
- Take it with a pinch of salt
- Only based on my experiences

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1. Getting ready to apply for jobs
2. Working as a developer
3. The future

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# Step One
## Get experience

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## Projects are important
- Main bit since limited professional experience
- What talk about in interviews
- 1-2 Projects to showcase
- One could be portfolio

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## README
- Intro: what project is about
- Links to where can access it
- Badges: build status / testing
- Screenshots and videos (giphy)
- Split into features
- Markdown: use tables
- Tech Stack/Framework used
- Split into FE / BE

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## README
- Developer instructions
- How to install
- How to run project
- How to run tests
- Who are contributers
- Roles
- Link to gitHub profile
- Extra
- More info on how designed / product research
- Folder structure

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## Project Code
- Good folder structure
- Eslint / Prettier
- Readable code
- ES6
- Tests (end to end / integration /unit)
- TDD: Test Driven Development

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## Project Code
- Error handling
- Don't just catch errors and console.log them
- Notify the user
- Use: <ErrorBoundary></ErrorBoundary> (React)

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## Project Code
- Security
- No sensitive information (e.g. username/password) passed to BE using cookies / url
- Hash data (e.g. passwords)
- GDPR privacy laws
- User can delete all information

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## Project on Github
- Commit messages are good (short / point)
- Pull requests made - good descriptions
- Evidence of code review
- Small number branches
- Good workflow
- Use issues (labels / assign)
- Git: milestones / Kanban boards

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## Project on Github
- Contributors equal

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## Running the code
- Easy to run - just one script
- Make sure it runs
- Ensure no errors or warnings in the console

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## Make site accessibile
- Accessibility
- HTML elements heirarchy
- Good rating from audit


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## Stand out
- Attend Hackathons
- https://www.meetup.com/UK-Hackathons-and-Jams
- Couple of days meet and code together
- Online/remote ones
- Together or with new people
- Contribute to open source projects
- Giving back to the community
- Jobs

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## Stand out
- Mentor others
- Codebar, FAC
- Document new learnings
- Post on Twitter / Github .md

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# Step Two
## Advertise yourself to employers

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## CV
- 1-2 pages
- 1-2 Projects
- Link to them
- Contact details
- Experience
- Other (mentor/volunteer)
- Tech Stack
- Check spelling etc

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## Projects on CV
- Largest section
- Brief summary on aim/what about
- Timeframe
- Team (number of people)
- How worked (paired / Agile)
- Personal contributions (e.g. specific role?)

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## LinkedIn


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## LinkedIn
- Recommend each other
- Endorse skills on each other's profiles

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## Twitter


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## Twitter


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## Meeting recruitors
- Conferences
- https://diversitytickets.org/en
- Networking in meetups
- Sicilon roundabout
- https://www.siliconmilkroundabout.com/
- Hackathons
- Contact company directly

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# Step Three
## Getting a job

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## There are lots!


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## What are your preferences?
- Big vs small
- Startup vs not
- Well known company?
- Front end / Back end / Full Stack
- Company culture
- How technical are higher-ups?
- Agile?

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## Interview Process
1. Informal phone call / meeting
- Exchange details
2. Technical Test
3. Visit in the office
- Another tech test? (Paired programming)
4. Interview

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## Technical Test
- Usually do it at home
- Small project already set up
- Series of tasks need to complete
- Within a time frame
- E.g. 2 hours

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## Technical Test
- Looking at your code
- How work (commit messages etc)
- How prioritise work
- Be honest with your times (x hours to set up etc)

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## Technical Test
- Is reflective of the company

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## Preparing for a Tech Test
- Practice online
- Companies can post online
- https://kata-log.rocks/
- Codewars
- MDN Documentation
- Array methods
- Algorithms / Data structures
- Hackerrank, TopCoder, CS50

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## Preparing for an Interview
- Research the company
- Always have 3-4 questions to ask them
- Print CV?
- Basic technical questions
- Cracking the Coding Interview book
- Generic interview preparation

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## At the Interview
- Focus on talking about your projects
- Know why chose frameworks
- Basic technical questions
- e.g. What is a closure
- Whiteboard simple tasks (e.g. invert)
- Let them give the number & then negotiate

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## Working as a Developer

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## Starting out
- Can take a while to set up the project
- Expect to read lots of code

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- Expect not to understand lots of code


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- Experiment locally
- Break things
- Learn how things interact
- Try to understand the code

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- Ask lots of questions
- There are no stupid questions!

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## Imposter Syndrome
- Most people in tech industry experience at one point
- Feel like you were hired by mistake
- Remember you were not!
- Colleagues are there to help

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## Writing code
- Find other places in codebase achieved same thing
- See if there are any util functions you can use
- Or look for examples online
- Read framework documentation

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## You will get frustrated


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## You will get frustrated
- Part of programming
- Ask for help
- Can ask to pair programme

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## Breaking things
- Sometimes you can introduce bugs
- Everyone does at some point
- How company responds
- Good test of company process
- Bugfixing skills

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## Working at Ticketmaster
- About 6,000+ employees
- Founded in 1976
- Legacy code
- International (we deal about 13 markets)
- Interesting problems: translations

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## Agile


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## Stories


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## Refining session
- Beginning of each week
- Define stories
- Discuss how to solve technically
- Who in other teams need to talk to
- Ensure has enough details (Problem statement)
- Story pointing

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## Stand Up
- Every morning
- Update: What was working on, what will work on, any blockers
- Product owner sort blockers
- Look at the board
- Kanban board

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## Retro
- Every two weeks
- Stop / Go / Continue
- Set amount of time to write points on post-its
- Reflection
- Chance give feedback
- Improve the process
- Action points decided
- Assigned to be done before next retro

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## Day to day
- Front End developer
- React Native
- Team of two FE Devs (within larger team of 12)


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- Assign to a story
- Usually only one at a time
- Write code for it
- Make a pull request
- Documentation very important
- Code review: 2 other developer approvals
- Adjust code (git rebase)
- VS Extreme coding
- Check with designer and product owner meets requirements
- Merged into master / goes to production

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## Step Four
### Staying employed

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- Keep updated
- New frameworks etc
- Twitter
- Read new releases from frameworks
- Conference videos
- Keep learning new frameworks
- Side projects

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- Attend/watch Conferences, Twitter updates
- Continue volunteer
- Give talks / mentor / hackathon / open source contribution
- Good for finding future jobs / networking
- Think about specialising (FE vs BE / technologies)
- Keep CV and LinkedIn profiles updated

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## Any questions?