So I’ve just completed my 9th week at Lovespace already as a junior front end developer. Or has it been 10 weeks? I am losing count.
It was been a much gentler introduction than the last place I worked at – with not only a plan, but also with support. People to help me, people to train me – people to whom I can ask questions when I don’t know what I am doing, and people that understand juniors can make mistakes.
I massively appreciate my previous employers giving me a chance, I learnt more in the 3 months there than I had in the previous year or so of learning in my spare time. I just wasn’t right for them – and vice versa. They needed a senior developer – not a junior.
Things are going well so far.
At first I was tasked with documenting the large JavaScript files. I was a tiny bit disappointed – I wanted to be coding.
And I was also a tiny bit overwhelmed – I’m used to writing JavaScript at 100 lines at best. I most certainly am not used to 6,500 line files.
However by the time I started to be given coding tasks to complete, I could clearly see the benefit of the amount of time I had spent studying said files. Whilst not understanding everything that was going on, I generally could either amend, or write new functions to be able to complete the required tasks.
Now I am working on a complete overhaul of the main website, making it look simpler but adding more detail to assist both the user, and those who receive the orders.
A lot of what I have been doing over the last week or so has been styling, though there has been some fairly complex JavaScript function-writing (for my standards) to ensure that I can recreate what the product team require within the current bounds of the website.
The website is pretty much my baby now, at least the front-end side of things – the bits you see. The senior developer still does the more complex bits that I don’t understand, and still checks and signs-off all of my changes. Will be interesting to see what he makes of my current project, which has taken a few weeks now, once I push it over to him.
I will also be learning how to make amendments to the consumer and scanner apps, which are coded through Angular – something I definitely need to learn. My boss looks after it – but it would be helpful for me to understand what is going on so I can actually make amendments/urgent fixes if he isn’t around.
It is a good challenge. It is definitely at the right level for me – I know enough to be able to impress myself with what I am doing, and feel comfortable with most tasks – yet still be challenged and be learning almost every single day.
The people are really sound, the company is young, ambitious and culturally on my wavelength (making storage sexy) – it is a generally very good place to work.
And I am very happy.
It does go to show that the rewards are out there if you work hard enough. But my journey has only just begun – and I still need to pass my 3-month probation.