What's it about?

The event was free and online, held by Ironhack and Eventbrite. It was a very engaging presentation with the aim to offer tips and tricks to the audience on their journey to employment in web development. Josh discussed his inspiration and history of tech, his work experience and gave some advice on interview preparation and soft skills management both from a hiring and interviewee perspective.

Developer Good Traits 🧬

I found interesting the slide he shared with some personalities or traits he would consider valuable from a potential hire and a judgement of their character:

• Creativity: an artistic side is always helpful for the front-end
• Critical thinking: the ability to make clear, unbiased evaluation based on facts and evidence
• Curiosity: this goes hand-in-hand with creativity as a person in development needs to "think outside the box" for solutions on front-end and back-end problems. This means researching and experimenting with new solutions and tinkering with older solutions
• Problem solving: closely related to above and also considers problem solving from a person management point of view where a developer needs to find solutions utilising the appropriate people resources at their disposal
• Communication: a big part of a developers day is not actually physically coding but being involved in discussions that affect the work and resource management. As you become more senior, your experience will be relied upon and you would be expected to weigh-in on decisions.
• Team Player: knowing when to accept a task for the greater good of the team and alleviating pressure by taking on more roles to support team mates. This builds trust and long lasting work relationships.
• Attention to detail: a difficult one to assume on anyone as everyone makes mistakes. But, does that person learn from their errors or do they keep making the same mistakes?
• Self-directed: if you think you can finish a degree or bootcamp course and then you're learning is done, you're sorely mistaken. A big part of development is having the drive to study on a topic where you can leverage that knowledge. The company would not want to keep reminding you on what new tech is out there. Unfortunately, that is up to the developer and the team.
• Opinionated: perhaps a contentious one, but strong opinion backed by critical thinking and evidence should be promoted. There is a tendency to fall in the trap of "if it ain't broke, don't fix it". This is a dangerous path to follow as there is a possibility of being left behind, so opinions do matter and should be followed up with honest, constructive dialogue.
• Ability to learn: institutions tend to manage teaching and learning by absorbing knowledge and regurgitating said knowledge in exam conditions to achieve your grade. This works for some but attention should be placed on identifying with the individual how to learn. In development as you progress, there is an expectation that you must love to learn to stay current. What technique works best for you? Or maybe it's a combination? Is there a time of day where you feel most productive? What resources do you use and which are most effective? Being clear with the answers could help you come to terms with what barriers are stopping you from effective learning.
• Cultural fit: this really comes down to your personality and social behaviour. First impressions are important and you should strive to make a good one in the interview. The interviewee is also assessing whether they or their team mates could see themselves working with you all day i.e. is their chemistry? There's no hard and fast rule to this one in my opinion, so just be honest and be yourself.

Outro

I really liked the presenters story that his father worked in BT's mailroom where he identified a laborious and repetitive task that could be automated saving the company time and money. That knack for improvement was noticed by BT's management and Josh's father pursued software engineering further which gave Josh an incredible opportunity to explore at the time, the novel concept of the world wide web through the early versions of the PC. The rest is history.