CodeMentor Talk: Nadia Zhuk - Writing a book: Venturing into other fields in tech as a dev (02/05/2022 - 18:00 - 18:30)

This online event was a motivational talk and a personal account about how the presenter came to become a professional software engineer, changing careers and how she published her self-help book. She faced a lot of adversity, not least a language barrier but came out of it mentally stronger and technically proficient.

The main turning points that gave her the drive to continue appeared to be:

• Learn from the best. Read, learn, apply. Repeat. The more useful material and lessons learned from other people that you can get access to, the more prepared you will be.
• When stuck, get talking. When you are faced with a technical difficulty or challenge, instead of ‘banging your head against the wall’, try to explain and break down the problem by speaking to a colleague or even to an inanimate object e.g. the rubber duck. The presenter makes a good point in that when we are tasked with explaining abstract concepts or any topic for that matter, it is easy to hide meaning in writing without substance but people are far more critical of conversation without substance i.e. it is harder to pretend what you think you know you are talking about, than writing about what you think you know about.
• The tiniest steps can take you a long way. Break complex problems down into smaller manageable steps. This goes for personal projects with a lot of friction. Ultimately, this is down to regimented planning of your time and determination. Remind yourself why you started on this path and what you stand to gain from completion.
• Show your work early. It is easy to go off on a tangent with a false sense of understanding on what the end product should be. Naturally, this is more common for inexperienced developers and engineers. So, the suggestion is to carry out small incremental work and get it checked early. Getting continuous feedback and iterating changes is in agreement with agile principles.
• Be a pro. More specifically, be professional. Treat your personal learning experiences and side projects as you would your work. Without the same level of commitment, this is one of the reasons why people do not complete personal pieces of work.
• Dare to Act. Don’t doubt yourself. Just start with your project! Procrastination is the biggest barrier to progress!

Her book worth mentioning: Cracking the Rubycon: How to learn to Code and Build a Programming Career.