It's been a year and 6 months since I became serious about having a tech career, and I have learnt a lot. I have had ups and downs and I feel someone can learn from some mistakes I made.
This article is mainly for beginners in the tech industry and maybe experienced tech people can give some advice after reading.
Mistake #1 - Distractions
When I decided to have a tech career, I became active on Twitter. Every day, I would post the things I learnt from courses and books.
This brought a lot of attention to me and I liked it. I was getting noticed by important people, getting invited to spaces, hosting spaces, and my follower count was increasing. All of a sudden, I was getting hundreds of likes and retweets and I was on top of the world.
Based on my follower count, it looked as if I knew what I was doing but I was clueless. I let the attention distract me from putting in the work to get the required skills of a technical writer and software developer. I focused on being a social media developer instead of a real-life software developer and technical writer.
Mistake #2 - Maintaining Relationships
I met a lot of people on Twitter but I didn't maintain some of the relationships and I feel bad. My focus was money; getting a job and getting paid. I didn't realise that it takes a village and the journey is shorter when you're not travelling alone.
Now, when I connect with someone on Twitter I know I can learn from and also offer some form of value to, I try to keep showing up. I do this by retweeting their tweets, leaving comments on their posts, liking their tweets and sometimes, sending a direct message.
Mistake #3 - Inactive in communities
I joined tech communities and open-source communities early last year but I wasn't active in them as I should have been.
Immediately after I joined these communities, I added the volunteer experience to my LinkedIn profile which is bad. I joined these communities for optics.
Now, I have joined Nexascale and I have decided to volunteer my time. I am still a member of She Code Africa and I plan to be more active there. I have also joined three open-source communities I know I can be active in. This time, I will be more intentional.
Volunteering is good because you get to learn from experienced people who probably don't have Youtube videos you can watch or courses you can pay for. You get to experience first-hand, their thought process, how they do the things they do and why they do it.
Mistake #4 - Money-minded
I know it is normal to think about money when starting your career but I feel there's a point it becomes detrimental. At the beginning of our career, I feel we are meant to invest time, a lot of it, before expecting the kind of pay we want (say six figures).
I was thinking about money so much that I didn't take out time to grow the way I should. I refused to learn the fundamentals of computer science. I overlooked building meaningful relationships. I disregarded the importance of volunteer experience. I did not build a portfolio before applying for jobs.
I felt that if I "wasted time" doing all of those things, the good jobs would have finished. I did become an Outreachy intern but after the internship, I saw that compared to other technical writers, my skills were half-baked.
Mistake #5 - Confusion
To be honest, I was confused. Yes, I chose to be a technical writer, but I needed technical knowledge and that was where the problem was. I couldn't decide on and settle with a path.
I knew Python, HTML, CSS and a bit of JavaScript, but I was more comfortable with Python and decided to go with it. The next thing was to pick a niche as a Python developer but I was all over the place.
I went with data science first but the roadmap wasn't clear so I left it. I remembered I started learning Django one time but the resource I was using was outdated so l was scared to continue with Django as I felt there wouldn't be any comprehensive resource to learn with. I took a break. I had to.
During the break, I was able to evaluate my tech journey and articulately define my goals in the tech space. That is how this post was born.
Conclusion
I am happy that I was aware enough to recognise these mistakes and learn from them as quickly as possible. I restarted my tech journey in April this year and I'm already seeing good progress. I am excited about what my future holds.
If you want to follow me on this intentional journey to become a world class technical writer and software developer, please follow me on Twitter and here on Hashnode 😁
Did you learn anything from this post? If you did please share with me. If you have any advice please share them with me as well