My First Dev Job, Woo!

My first developer job has been one big roller coaster ride! I met my boss through an Agile Meetup about three weeks before I graduated DeltaV, the code school I attended. We also had a mutual connection through my teacher at DeltaV which I believe helped in the hiring process. The process of getting my job started off with a few back and forth messages on LinkedIn and then exchanging emails and moving onto a short get to know each other meeting. Which I would compare closely to a behavioral interview with questions such as:

• Tell me about yourself?
• What are you looking for in a company?
• Have you looked into our company?

That interview went very well and we had a few other meetings that included meeting the team and seeing if we were a good fit for each other. STRATAFOLIO did not have a technical interview or whiteboard interview which was nice. The next step was the offer, I was taught throughout boot camp to negotiate for a higher salary, more benefits like paid time off and vacation, or something that seemed fitting for that company and role. I also had a lot of other help through my friends in a tech group I am involved in called Virtual Coffee.

Why I Chose to Work for a Small Start-Up

I chose to work at this startup because I loved the opportunity to learn and challenge myself. Every day is such a challenge and I get to learn so much about our product, about customer priorities, and about how to problem-solve.

I have been at my job for four months now and the amount I have learned in such a short amount of time astounding. I have been learning how to debug my code and dig in deeper when problems aren’t immediately apparent, learning how to speak about my code, and what it does more effectively (although this is very much a work in progress), and most of all I am learning how to navigate a new code base and the tricks to be more efficient.

I look forward to the future and looking back one the next year of my development journey.

Some questions for the community:

What was your first year of software development like?

How do you navigate a new code base, a large one at that?

What tips do you have for working at a startup?