[Music] [Music] hi everyone welcome back to my channel and today I'm going to share you my experience as a software developer for those who don't know me yet or for if we haven't met yet I am Justin I a 23-year-old software developer working for Accenture an IT company in Rome Italy in this video I want to keep things casual and simple and I'm going to sum up my journey throughout being a software developer into seven topics the first one is educational background I'm going to share you where I started what I studied and what what led me to become a software developer and the second topic is how I learn to code I will spill the beans on how I started to code the resources and my journey along the way and the third topic is projects and experience I'm sharing you the projects I worked on the skills I picked up and some additional informations about my projects and experience my job search and career transition as a fourth chapter or fourth topic um where I'm sharing to you my experience my personal experience on how I land my first job as a software developer and the transitions that came after working as a full-time software developer fifth one working as a software developer I'm going to share you my daily activities so you will find the present me my uh activities as a software developers what I do at Accenture and the projects that I'm tackling day by day as the sixth topic I'm going to give you some personal advices and some lessons I learned throughout the journey so let's start I don't have a college degree I just have a high school diploma and going back in high school programming was a foreign language to me I didn't like it at all because I didn't like to solve algorithms and my head wasn't into it so um the main languages or the main language that we studied at school was C++ and um we learned the very basics of C++ I wasn't really into it as I said before and um honestly my interest were not in software development or in programming in general After High School I found myself lost I felt myself at the Crossroad and I didn't know what to do to be honest because I was um undecided whether to pursue a um degree in film making in software engineering or in computer science or start to work and find my true passion it was a tough decision and I felt lost to be honest but looking back it was a tough decision and I felt lost those moments of uncertainty were part of the game were part of the journey randomly we find our true passion and my passion right there was software development the journey to becoming a software developer wasn't all rainbows and sunshine for me there were tough times where I felt lost and sometimes a little bit useless and but that's part of the game During the period I found myself drawn into the web development somehow and I started by studying HTML and CSS even though they are not technically programming language I like the idea of of um building something from scratch with my hands and I remember that the first two books that I bought are these ones and um these were the two books that allowed me to uh have that mindset even though they are pretty simple they are really schematic as as books but um yeah then while browsing the internet for some site uh work I found a boot camp sponsored by a small company in Rome we started to learn Java uh moving then to the uh Enterprise oriented topics such as the web development so the back end and also the front end and just like that my adventure as a software developer began I was not into the backend development at first so I decided to switch to the front end to learn the front end where I started and I learned JavaScript and typescript as programming languages I decided to pick up my first um front end framework which was angular it's not a beginner friendly uh framework to learn but the Dynamics of java the patterns that we uh learned uh through Java give me the possibility ability to have more familiarity with the framework even though I didn't have much knowledge on the front end I realized then that software development was my calling it was something that I wanted to do for the rest of my life and in the midst of all I enrolled to uh computer science university online but I put that on hold because I had some difficulties on managing my time and also finding a balance between working studying and personal life throughout my journey I have relied uh to some incredible resources such as YouTube free code Camp zero to Mastery udmi algo expert for algorithm and mostly documentation documentation is like gold my go-to programming languages are JavaScript and typescript with the sprinkle of java and python I don't have a ton of projects under my belt but um the few of them were a game changers for me even those small projects played a huge role for my software development career um they helped me on understanding and also passing some time on uh coding and understanding the basics of programming and the projects in my software developer job were a game changer and I have some projects in my pocket but um I need to change a little bit my priorities and start to work on them learning my first job as a software developer was a mix of luck and also of knowledge that I had throughout the time and because the company that sponsored the boot camp noticed my soft skills and also my knowledge to work on in a real life project when it came to the interviews they were more chill and before I knew it I was officially part of the team here in Italy especially for junior developers as I was the salaries were not really high compared to uh other countries in Europe and also around the world so I made the decision to stick it and gain some experience throughout the time and also gain more um more knowledge into the projects where I was working on so fast forward to today here I am I am a front end team lead at Accenture and I have 3 years of experience under my belt and the main challenges that I have day today are team leading and um also have a client uh facing role we are working for an e-commerce in the automotive industry and um the main difficulties that I challenge day today are um clarifying the requirements with the client even though there are plenty of roles in between the front end and the client I am trying to communicate with the functional teams SL client and also the backend team okay so let's talk about the lessons that I learned in these three years so the first thing is curiosity never stop being curious of the things that surround us and this is what keeps you sharp and updated on what's happening around you and it reminds you how much is left to explore the second one is embracing the junior developer mindset there's always more to learn and sometimes the lessons come from unexpected places and unexpected people like listening to someone else that apparently can be more uh junior than you or someone that is more experienced than you so never stop having the Junior developer mindset the third one is the art of saying yes or no it's a delicate balance that took me a lot to learn knowing your limits most of the times is the key the fourth one it's time time is one thing that we can't get back I've learned to cherish it I've learned to spend more time with my loved ones and also spending times for myself let's not waste a second of it if you're dreaming of becoming a software developer I can give you one advice which is go for it but at one condition you have to be interested and you have to build a passion for it so focus on what really matters keep learning keep networking and mostly enjoy the ride enjoy your whole journey paycheck may be nice not here in Italy for some rare cases but the passion will give you the possibility to overcome and to while enjoying the ride of being a software developer thanks for staying until the end of this video and if you're chasing your dreams or if you leaving them already I'm hoping for your success and I hope that you are enjoying your journey if you are in the soft software development like me or if you are interested in the software development as I said before just go for it and I hope you found some nugget of wisdom in today's video so thank you again don't forget to like to comment to subscribe and see you in the next video bye for now [Music] oh