In week 4, you’ll have a job experience activity with employers. The next two prompts are designed to help you both prepare and reflect on that experience:
Activities: what questions do you have about the activities that a software developer does on a daily basis?
How often are you given new projects / do you see projects through to the end? What’s your favorite thing about your job? How did most software devs you work with learn code? Degree? Bootcamp? Self taught?
Environment: what questions do you have about the overall environment and culture of this workplace?
What are some biases you’ve seen in the workplace?
Interactions: what questions do you have about the team at this company? What do you hope to learn during this experience?
How many people are on your team? Are there junior devs on the team?
Did you learn a new language on the job? What did you know prior vs what you learned on the job?
Do you focus on accessibility? If you’re launching a new feature, what does the testing phase look like?
I met with Mason and I really liked how casual he was and very up-front about going into the workforce.
Environment: what did you notice about how they talked about the culture and environment of this company?
He harped on having a good team. A good team makes all the difference and a toxic team can break you down in ways you won't realize until you're out of it.
He was very casual, we even attended a meeting with him and his team and that was also pretty quick and casual. Their communication was very straight forward and easy to follow.
They had very clean code and it was all separated very appropriately which made it easy to find the code and what it should be doing.
We didn't talk too much about their approach to users.
What are your main takeaways from the shadow? How will you use this information to help you with your job search strategy?
To be okay with being at the bottom of the food chain and accepting that you don't know everything. Don't try to fake knowing something because it won't get you far. Also making mistakes is okay and is expected. For my job search I really need to focus on finding a place that shares my values and really asking questions about their team dynamic.
Assess your habits from week 3: how did you spend your time this past week? What was effective in your habits? What could be more effective? What steps will you take to make that happen?
Getting up and sitting at my desk an hour before class has still been a habit but I wanted to work on jsFun during this time. Last week I did still work on SOME jsFun in that allotted time but I was easily distracted and would work on the paired project that was due later that week. I need to remind myself there’s enough time in the day for me to give myself jsFun time and not solely work on the project that week.
Implement a reinforcement strategy: to make one of your habits more satisfying, what is a reward you can give yourself immediately after completing the habit? How will this reward encourage you to continue completing that habit?
I’m a big list person so in my calendar I have jsFun written on each day. Simply getting to cross that off the list feels very rewarding.
What is a habit that you want to make sure to do every day? How could you visually cue yourself to complete it (i.e., moving a paper clip)? How can you visually track it each time you’ve completed it? Could you automate the tracking? How will you do that?
I want to run every morning and do jsFun (or IronFE) for an hour each morning. I’m going to try the Seinfeld Strategy with putting a big R on my calendar day when I run and a FUN on the calendar day for jsFun and watch the chain grow!
How to get back on track when missing a habit: if you miss a day or two of completing your habit, how will you get yourself going again?
Honestly it may not be healthy but I get back into it through guilting myself.
Pick an accountability partner (your cohort accountabilibuddy, your mentor, a close friend, etc.) and create a habit contract with them. How often will you check in with each other? How will they hold you accountable?
Mike and I are working each morning for an hour on jsFUn together. We’re going to hold each other accountable.