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Mod 3 Week 4
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mod3week4.md

Mod 3 Week 4

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  1. Prepare for Job Shadow: AEIOU
  • Activities: what questions do you have about the activities that a software developer does on a daily basis?
    • How much of your time is spent solo coding v pair/group coding or in meetings/other activities?
    • How much of your workday is spent directly interacting with clients (if any)?
    • How is your work assigned to you? How much say/independence do you have in how the work gets done?
  • Environment: what questions do you have about the overall environment and culture of this workplace?
    • What is mentorship like on the team? Do you get regular feedback from your manager or other senior members on the team that helps improve your coding ability and other skills?
    • How big is the company overall and how big is the engineering team?
    • Are there opportunities for growth within the engineering team? Is there a clear roadmap on how to advance?
    • What is the work/life balance like as well as the daily stress level?
  • Interactions: what questions do you have about the team at this company? What do you hope to see in your interactions during the shadow?
    • Is the team overall supportive and open to questions? Do they want to help you learn and grow?
  • Objects: what questions do you have about the code or the product?
    • What tech stack is used?
  • Users: what questions do you have about how the company interacts with their users?
    • How many different clients do you tend to be working with at a time?
  1. After the Job Shadow, reflect on the same questions; what are your takeaways from the shadow?
  • Activities: what was engaging to the person/people you shadowed?
    • The person I shadowed with was working on a Ford charity app that donates money to local charities with every test drive completed. Recently it had to be overhauled to work with virtual test drives.
  • Environment: what did you notice about how they talked about the culture and environment of this company?
    • Overall, the way they talked about the culture and environment of the company was very positive. They said that the team members overall were supportive, intelligent, and helpful. However, working on such a small team made meant that there was less time and opportunities for mentorship from more senior software developers, and that each employee often had to take on non-engineering tasks as well. This was a reason why the person I shadowed was actually transitioning to a job at a much larger company the following week.
  • Interactions: what did you notice about your interactions with this person/people?
    • I had a great time interacting with Liv. She was extremely personable and willing to help me, which made the whole experience very enjoyable. When we walked through solving a ticket together, she was impressed that I was able to give some input along the way and generally follow along with what was going on.
  • Objects: what did you learn about their approach to code and/or product development?
    • Liv emphasized the importance of knowing how to read code, since on the job, you read code more than write it. She also talked about how to trace back an error, which was similar to what I've been doing at Turing, which was a nice boost. She also gave some really food tips about technical interviews, saying that it's more about demonstrating you know how to approach and think through a problem, NOT about getting the right answer.
  • Users: what did you learn about their approach to their users?
    • We didn't specifically talk about this.
  • What are your main takeaways from the shadow? How will you use this information to help you with your job search strategy?
    • Overall, after having done the shadow, I feel way more confident in my abilities and that I can succeed in the 'real world.' I do need to work more on networking to make sure I open up opportunities for myself though. It also made me realize that I would prefer at least for my first job not to work at a small company, as I want to be somewhere where there is mentorship and code review fairly regularly so I can continue to learn and grow.
  1. Interview Prep:
  • Pick a successful project and write about it with the STAR method (What was the situation/scenario of the project? What was the task/target of the project? What action steps did you take? What were the results?):
    • Situation: I went to Turing, an intensive 7-month engineering school, and enrolled in the Front End program.
    • Task: About halfway through the program, I was tasked with creating a hotel app for both managers and users to manage bookings using vanilla JS.
    • Action: I spent significant time planning out my app architecture keeping good practices of OOP in mind and creating detailed wireframes for each app view. This meant that when it came time to actually code, I knew exactly how my app should be organized, what code should go where, and how to creat the appropriate html.
    • Results: I was able to efficiently and effectively create the app in less than 5 days, along with a robust test suite with over 90 tests.
  • Write about a time you failed and what you learned from that experience:
    • At Turing, at the end of the first 6-week section of the course, I was tasked with building a Slapjack game as my final solo project. I struggled at first with how to set up the game, what classes to have, and what properties and methods to store in each. After that initial stage, I was able to work relatively smoothly to finish up the logic of the game and get it working propertly along with an interface. However, when I received feedback on the project, I did not do well on the Javascript portion, as I was told I had not properly separated the data model and the DOM, something I had been actively trying to do in my code. I was very disappointed, but after getting that feedback, I was able to return my code and realize that I hadn't properly understood the concept of data model & DOM separation. I refactored my project to have propert data model/DOM separation, and then was able to take my newfound knowledge into the second section of the course and succeed in that area.
  • Write about how you’ve approached working with a team using a specific example:
    • Being at Turing taught me a lot about how best to work with others. I have realized the importance of good planning, good communication, and propertly setting up expectations before the project begins. For example, Turing introduced us to the concept of a 'DTR', a 'Define the Relationship,' which involved taking time with your teammates before beginning to code to talk about each of our individual and shared project goals, preferred working styles, times available to work, how we would communicate, plan, and manage the project, and any potential issues or pitfalls that could get in the way during the project. At Turing, I was part of a 3-person team that had one week to learn a new chosen technology and create an app using it. We chose Redux, and found it extremely challenging to learn the concept along with how to test all aspects of it and create a fully fleshed out app all in one week. However, because we had done a DTR, we went into the project with a good roadmap, which helped us stay on track through the struggles and challenges. We also felt more comfortable communicating our struggles to one another and being willing to help each other, since we had set up communication norms at the outset.
  • What other stories will you prepare to share?
    • I often weave my experience running marathons into stories that I share during job interviews as I think it often mimics life and shows perseverence. I've had some races where I felt great, like I was flying to the finish. I've had others where I've slogged through the entire thing desperately wanting to stop. Some days and tasks in life will feel like slogging, others will feel like flying, but the important thing is to keep going until you reach that finish line. That's what allows you to keep moving forward.
  • Do some research into your top companies’ tech stacks; what do you already know? What can you compare to your own learning? What do you need to learn more about?
    • Sondermind uses HTML, Javascript & Angular, plus Ruby & Ruby on Rails. I already know HTML & JS, and I know React which is supposed to be quite similar to Angular. Inspirato uses JS & React, which I know, but also NET, C#, ASP.NET, and more that I know nothing about. Evolve uses Python and Redshift. I know a tiny bit of Python but mostly don't know that tech stack at all. Healthgrades uses JS, Node.js, React, and Redux, which I know, but also uses Angular, Python, R, Scala, .NET, and more thatI do not know. I need to learn more about what Sql, .NET, and MYSql, as I see these come up on a lot of jobs.
  • Using this interview prep resource doc, pick out at least 3 resources you will use to prepare for interviews as well as 3 behavioral questions you could practice:
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