Improve the developer inside of you

See your job as a boat that takes you to the next port. It’s your mission to find the right boat in the right port to take you to your goal.

Vladut Ion

I had a discussion with a colleague from work, Vlad (check his blog). We talked about our path in the world, in our family, but especially in our job.

Sometimes we have the feeling that we’re not good enough. We cannot do more than we’ve done, or we need to learn more, but that’s procrastination. Start now!

Every job it’s a boat

After I started as a PHP developer I had a lot of problems trying to find my own path. I tried to learn more about patterns, frameworks and libraries, but I realized that I don’t like it. Wasn’t necessary something that I couldn’t achieve or I don’t understand, but I feel that I have to program unnatural.

I started to learn OOP at University, then I searched for more online courses. Even if I put everything in practice, at work, I couldn’t stick to it, because this was not for me. So I learned to say stop because PHP it’s not for me. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t say bad that things about PHP, because to many people blame it. I won’t do it, because I grew up with it, so doing this is like blaming your parents.

It was hard for me, but I had to take a decision and to move forward. Because that position at RoWeb, storied here, was such a nice experience. I learned a lot and grew me up, but there comes a time when you need to say bye.

I wanted something else and I had the feeling that I can do bigger things than just simply renegade my present. Looking after something else, I tried to become a freelancer.

You should always use your position, whatever that may be, to advance in your career. But don’t forget that you must love your work. Have in mind in every moment that you are the most important person. That means not your boss, your project manager or your client, only you.

Don’t leave money to lead your career and life.

Find the next boat to take you to your goal

When I realized that my life is going crazy with faculty, work and a girlfriend. Yeah, I say it, don’t blame me, because is true, I had too less time for sleep and too much time for work. I realized that I don’t have enough time to learn and practice what I want. So I decided to quit RoWeb.

In that period I experienced the front end and different activities with JavaScript. I was amazed about that language, but I didn’t understand the freedom which have me being strictly typed programming language. Wasn’t necessary a problem, but I didn’t know how to benefit from its power.

I discovered as well the freelancing platforms and for me was too strange, but I was shocked how much money you can make in this industry. As mentioned before, I was born in a normal family, in Romania. Maybe you don’t know already, but is not exactly like Luxembourg when we’re talking about money. I wanted to learn more and to try that experienced, I learned about motivation and how to stop procrastination based on “I’m not prepared yet”.

I tried and I failed, but not because of my programming skills. The problem was more oriented on my lacks as a sales man and the experience with the clients or how to make a proposal. I started to look over the internet for courses or other resources to fill my lack of knowledge and I found multiple articles on Quora, I discovered who’s John Morris and I discovered Simple Programmer, both are channels on YouTube oriented for programmers.

I decided to take the hard it from down, climbing the hill, so I started to look locally after projects and I succeed.

I found my next boat at that time, but trying to establish the correct conduit for my career as developer, I decided to learn more before to dive into a full freelancing job.

Don’t stay in a single port for the entire life

You should never stop to look for interesting things, you should search for new technologies, programming languages, frameworks or tools to improve your knowledge. Don’t think that someone will build a statue, because that’s not happened. Trust me that I asked for one and I didn’t get it yet.

Don’t be a jumper, that’s cool neither for you, the employers or your CV. But don’t try to be nice and quiet, just to don’t disturb someone else peace. Stay strong on your feet and don’t let someone to shut you down.

Conclusion

You think that you don’t know when is the time to leave a port. I guarantee you that you should do it whenever you have repeated question about this topic. I feel this constantly, because that’s something inside our blood, but if this comes in your head often, move on.

Originally published at https://whyboobo.com on April 11, 2019.