Hi, I'm Natasha...

WFH – paper anniversary

As we all pass our quarantine paper anniversary and we celebrate the majority of us getting the C19 vaccine I thought i’d take a look at my past year and how far I’ve progressed.

A year a go I was half way through the Nology course and when our practice WFH day turned into the year long epic it is now. But I’m very thankful that I decided to take the plunge into tech when I did. The time between finishing the course and getting a job was long and stressful but i ended up bagging a job where I feel valued, what i do makes a visual difference and I get the opportunity to learn and grow. After moving house and setting up a fully kitted home office, I can safely say I enjoy going to work everyday.

I have expanded my tech stack by adding vuejs to it, I now have a basic knowledge of python and can work with django and docker – I think me and google are best friends for life now. I have also decided that macbooks are ace and I take back anything bad i’ve ever said about them. I have made it a goal to upgrade my terrible laptop to a shiny new macbook M1, so savings are in order.

In this past year I have learned how to design for the psychology of the human mind, why doors are generally designed poorly and how to create nice prototypes. UX and UI is definitely an area I enjoy, so I will continue to do more research. I own more notebooks than ever before most of them day to day related, filled with sketches and checklists. The other’s filled with research and notes from all the different tutorials i’ve done. Can you tell I like making notes?

I’ve certainly grown a lot as a developer in the last year and as a person some of which has been due to quarantine snacking – bring on April 12th when i can rejoin the gym. Hopefully i’ll have my vaccine within the next few months and finally get to meet the people i have daily slack calls with. Maybe even get back to the office. But for now i’m going to just appreciate the short commute i have, from the office to the kitchen in 5 minutes. I wouldn’t say that was so bad?

Week 1 😍

This week I finally started my new role as a Junior Software Engineer. It has been a very interesting week.

My laptop didn’t arrive until Tuesday evening so the first few days were spent doing some self teaching and i built a small Django project. Wednesday was spent setting up my new laptop and getting used to using a Macbook. Thursday was spent moving my work over to the Mac and finishing the project i started.

Friday has come around quick! I started my first real piece of work and put in my first pull request! 😁

I’ve learnt quiet a few things this week: 1. I love a mac😍 2. Django is a lot of fun to use 3. How to make a png into a svg 4. How much I love my new job 5. I need a perminant coffee machine at my desk

I have had a very interesting and enjoyable week. I (for once) can’t wait to start work in the morning! I’m looking forward to seeing what they have instore for me.

Finally it worked!

I had given up on React and just tried to work around not being able to use it but after a talk with someone on LinkedIn I decided to try one more time. So after weeks of not being able to get it to work I finally fiddled around enough and got it to install! My notes came in real handy for a React refresh.

During lockdown we have spent a lot of time looking through my partners HUGE Lego collection building and selling bits and pieces. This inspired me to build something Lego themed. It is currently a long while off being completed but I found a Lego API I can use to search for set, not really to sure what else i’m going to do with the site at the minute. Currently I have been working on making the entire site look like it’s made from Lego. It’s really been putting my CSS and SCSS skills to the test. I love a good variable and mixin.

I have made myself a MVP of “just get it to work” and have it hosted. Once that’s completed I could extend it out to have a login and a database for personal collections allowing you to search for your set then add it to your collection. But all of that rely’s on it working and looking awesome. I want this to look awesome, show off the design and creative skills I occasionally possess and build something I am proud of.

Are you really a developer if you use WordPress?

I definitely think the answer is yes. AS LONG AS… you are creating themes and working with php.

For the last week and a half I have been working my way through a udemy course covering custom theme building on WordPress and this what I found out.

1. Make sure you download the right stuff! Wondering why VScode was giving me errors and spending hours researching only to suddenly realise I forgot to download php 😐.

2. It was easier than I thought to transfer over a vanilla html, css and javascript website to WordPress. Its all about where I place code and how reusable I want pages to be.

3. Php is very similar to javascript and WordPress comes with handy little functions that means I can do something all over a site with one line of code.

4. If my code doesn’t work there’s a good chance I’ve incorrectly named your file…. (it took me over 4 hours to realise its supposed to be functions.php not function.php)

5. I need more note books. I take a lot of detailed notes when learning so that If I completely forget everything I’ve got something to go back to. To count I completed 3 books whilst at nology… im already 3/4 way through a notebook now and I haven’t even got half way through my udemy course. Thank god for Amazon Prime, right?

I started this for someone who was willing to give me a chance to take on something I had never done before. To let play around with it and show her what I had. She gave me a website design she wanted me to take inspiration from and let me go off and come back to her in a few days.

I presented my work to her and she told me that she was changing how she was going to make her website and was actually going to use shopify. I took a few days to research it and see if I could learn it but unfortunately she had a very tight deadline. There was no way I was going to be able to produce a custom design that was presentable by her deadline. The design I just created for her was extremely basic. I explained this to her, thanked her for the opportunity. I didn’t want her to rely on me especially if I wasn’t sure I was able to do it. She thanked me for my efforts and wished me luck for the future and we left it there.

Her business idea was amazing and I’m excited to see what she the finished product will look like!

Even though I decided it was best to turn the role down, I was thankful that someone actually gave me a chance! I’m enjoying my udemy course at the minute and hopefully by the end of next week I’ll have something worth showing off. Or at a minimum I’ll have some great notes for anytime I decide I want to build something custom on WordPress. Better get out that new notebook.

Lockdown

As someone who has been furloughed from my part time job and is actively looking for a junior software developer role I can tell you for a fact it’s hard. There’s very few roles available and with no end in sight for lock down it doesn’t look like our situations about to change any time soon. I’ve even started to apply for key worker roles just so I have some more income coming in. Someone can only take so many rejections from people before keeping your head up and keeping motivated becomes difficult.

Lock down has taken a toll on everyone. It has disrupted routines, destroyed peoples mental health and lots of companies have had to make hard decisions. It has however also done some good, it has allowed parent’s to spend more time with their children, we appreciate the NHS and Key workers more than we ever have before and people have started learning new skills through online training courses.

At the end of it all we might appreciate life a little more. We have made some major improvements to the environment by not allowing humans to destroy it and hopefully we will be able to keep it that way. Our government might finally have the appropriate talks regarding the funding of our health care system, now that we know how vital they and many other key worker roles are.

Really who know’s how big of an impact will this have on the way we live our lives? But I’m looking forward to the future, finding a job role suitable for me and finally getting to socialise with people outside of my household again. Just need to keep positive and maybe it will all be over by September/October.

The end is just the beginning

So that’s it. 12 weeks of intense training is over. We Graduated! Friday we celebrated our graduation remotely. We played games, drank and had a lot of laughs! I can’t wait to celebrate in person with each other. By the time we will get to do that we might all have jobs and we wouldn’t have seen each other for at least 2 months, i know everybody’s looking forward to that.

I look back at the start of the course and see just how much progress I’ve made with the help of our amazing coaches! I’ve made some amazing friends, I’ve built a portfolio i’m proud of and have realised how much i enjoy learning. All I have left to do now is find myself a job that allows me to continue building on the skills I’ve learnt.

Day 21

Working from home day 21. Were getting on well. Our client project is finished and has been handed over. Our portfolios are being polished up and we have our CV’s ready to go. The coaches even threw a virtual pub quiz to keep up the social side! That was a lot of fun and we all needed it (just in case you were wondering Bristol won overall!).

Next week is our last week. London finished Friday just gone and everybody is suddenly coming to terms that it will be over soon. Were all very nervous about what’s to come. Next week we start our job search and we are being taught how to make sure we apply for jobs we are suitable for and that we don’t under sell ourselves. As much as we would all like a job now I’ll be sad to see next week pass us by.

WorkingFromHome.jsx

Monday was our last day in the office for a while…. not that we knew that on Monday. Our Coaches wanted to practice a remote working day on Tuesday so we all took our laptops home ready for Tuesdays trial run and said goodbye until Wednesday.

Tuesday was a success and remote working made some aspects easier but also slowed down things like class room learning. Things have taken a little longer to learn and explain but using google hangout and vs code live share has helped a lot.

Turns out our trial run wasn’t just going to be a trail run and Opus had followed the governments advice and closed the office for a minimum of 14 days. We are working well and this continues to be successful, hashing out issues as we go. Were missing the social aspect, the water cooler chat so were trying to work on that to make being alone at home easier.

I’d like to say remote working will be over in 14 days but I highly doubt that. We will see how it goes.

COVID-19 wont stop us here.

2 minutes… too long

2 minutes sounds like such a short amount of time. And it is. Until you have to present your work in front of your entire class, your coaches and a guest speaker. It’s made even worse when the guest speaker was brilliant and everybody else’s portfolios are extremely good.

2 minutes can feel like a life time when your as nervous as I was about this afternoon. I hate demonstrating my work, I know it’s a work in process so it’s not expected to be perfect. My portfolio is so different to everyone else’s I was worried about what the reactions would be. I knew this would be the case so over lunch I went through what I would say and took notes so I didn’t forget things, but even then it was only a minute long. I had to slow down.

Once our guest speaker was finished we were called up one at a time to present. I knew who was scheduled to present before me, so I could feel the nerves slowly building as we went through the list. When it was my turn I got up. I could already feel my face going red and I had to really concentrate on making sure I took my time to go over each element. Once that was over it was time for feedback.

Now this is when I noticed myself fidgeting and shaking. All the feedback I got was positive and the improvements that were suggested were things I knew I was capable of doing. People liked that mine was so different and that it had personality. This was the thing I was most worried about so I was relieved when it was said.

It took me a good 10 minutes to get rid of the shaking, even after I finished. But I sat down feeling better about my portfolio and with a constructive list of things to work on next week. Let’s just hope I’ll get used to presenting and if I don’t by next Friday… I guess soft skills week isn’t far away.

Back to Tech

Hi, I’m Natasha.

I’m a 22 year old trainee web developer with nology.io and I happen to be the only woman on my intake.

I haven’t done anything with tech since I was 16 years old. Where I was once told that I could make “a million pound app” – which led me to instantly laugh at my teacher in disbelief. Not knowing that it would be the comment that would push me back into the tech industry 6 years later. (well that, and “if you don’t get an A* overall grade in computing I will break your legs”)

I shortly went from finishing year 11 with 2 IT qualifications (I was half a mark away from an A* -if anybody was wondering- and some how managed to escape without broken legs) as well as some catering and hospitality qualifications to then throw myself into a hospitality degree I didn’t overly enjoy. It did however, set up my career for the last 6 years.

After 6 years in hospitality working my way up to a supervisor at 17 becoming a manager by 19; changing from working in a cinema for 5 years to doing a year in a hotel as part of the events management team. I still had my computing teacher stuck in the back of my head pulling me back to tech.

So here I am a few months. A _nology student!

Being one of two females in my school computing class and being the only female on my _nology intake, it has become important to me that I find amazing role models and strive to be one for others too. I have always found that female tech role-models are difficult to come across. The _nology team have been amazing making sure I am comfortable in the office, introducing me to other ladies I can talk to and sending me links to female only meetups based around the tech industry. So as my course goes along I will be dipping my toes into the meetups and network. Hopefully finding a great role-model and may be becoming one for someone else along the way.