Um So, hey, my name is Jemima and today I'm going to be talking to you about defining a career path in technology. I'd like this to be an interactive session.So you could just like write in the chat, you know, where you're tuning in from what your level is. If you're just starting out, if you're like a junior level developer, mid-level where you're from, you know, just whatever you feel comfortable. I want us to talk. Yeah. All right. So let's just get into it. Um I'd like to introduce myself, like I said before. My name is Jemima. Jemima Abu. I'm a self taught front end developer and school taught systems engineer from Lagos Nigeria. I'm currently working at Teles Sofus in Lithuania and you can find me online at Jemima Abu everywhere. Um That's linkedin Twitter, Instagram, github, or you can visit my website Jaima abu.com. So, yeah, this talk is basically going to be uh like an introduction to not introduction.

It's like a guide to building a career path based on my career path. So how I got started in tech was that in 2017, I started learning how to build websites I wanted to, I did a programming course in school. I thought it was cool and to get some more information on that. And so I started teaching myself how to use websites. I used textbooks because I didn't really have good internet connection. And buying internet was very expensive for a student back then. So I used textbooks and it was great. That same year I attended an internship fair. That's where I had my first technical interview and my first internship. And then the year after that, I got another internship back to back with that one because internships don't pay well. I had two internships. The year after that, I got my first full time job because I applied. I answered the job posting I saw on whatsapp they're basically just like, oh, we're looking for a front end developer. And I was like, hey, I'm a front end developer. I applied and I got that. And then a year after that, um someone reached out to me on Twitter. They were like, oh, we have this relocation program. It seems like it'd be a good fit for it. And I'm like, yeah, sure, why not? And I applied and then I got that job and now I'm here. So I just like to break down the areas like the sections I like the sections I used basically for how do I say this, the sections I use for like finding my career path.

So I am going to make this talk about 15 minutes, so I can have five minutes for questions. So you could just write any questions you have in the chat or in the Slack Channel and I'll be sure to reply you. Great. So the first thing I had to consider was choosing a tech area. How do you know which field in tech you want to work in? The thing with tech is that it's a lot. OK? If you're just starting out as a beginner, there are all these words like front and back, end, full spot data, you, you actually say like, hey guys calm down. So I found that it helps to narrow it down. An easy way to narrow it down is to analyze your interest. What do you like to do? Do you prefer design? Do you like coding? Do you like to supervise? Do you like to organize an easy way to know that is kind of start with everything? So I'm not saying that you should learn everything but like the easiest way to know if you want to do something or if you don't want to do something is to actually do it. You know, if you try learning Java, like I tried learning Java. And the next day, I was like, we do not want to do Java, you know, and then the requirements, what languages do you need to learn? What tools do you need to use? Sometimes um it's helpful to choose car um paths that are easily accessible.

For example, I knew I wanted to design so I could have done either front end, I can design on the right code. I could have done either front end or mobile. But the thing with mobile is that you need to have like a particular ID E or you need to use a particular device if you're mobile and I didn't have that. But with web, you just need a laptop and like a browser. So that was why another major reason I went to the web. Then the demand. What is the job market looking like? What's the average salary range? Because you're choosing a career? It's totally fine to go into it because it pays well. I don't think anyone should shame you for wanting financial stability. It's totally fine to get a job just because the pay is good. You know, and in the community, how easy is it to get access to resources or support a very important thing when you're starting out is to know that you can easily find help if you need it. You don't want to run into a problem when you first start out and then you go on stack overflow and you're looking at the problem and the only question related to your problem is from six years ago and there still isn't any answer.

Not really good, doesn't really encourage you. So yeah, this is a helpful article. I found online for choosing a cop pa the details like the fields, you can go into the requirements, what you need and everything. So it's really cool. Um I will be sharing the slides, I guess I'll put them on the Slack Channel so you can have access to all these resources. Yeah. So after, you know, choosing the field, I think people usually ask me is the qualifications like do I need a computer science degree to go into tech? I would say no, you don't. The best thing about tech is that you don't need a fancy piece of paper to let people know that you, you can't build stuff, right? Like I studied systems engineering in school. But all the jobs I got, I got them while I was in school. So I never actually used my degree to get these jobs. I got these jobs because I had proof I had proof that I could do what I said I could do. So that's what I always say. The best qualification is proof. If you want to find a job as a front end developer, you need to show the company that you actually know how to do, front-end stuff. The best way to do that is to have projects to have like physical proof that you can show them that.

Look, I built this, I know how to do it. You know, you could also take a course online. You don't necessarily have to go to a boot camp and pay all the money. You could take a course online and fine. I mean, boot camps. Yeah, I get, they have their reasons or personally. Yeah. So, aside from qualifications, you may need to know, like certain languages. If you're starting out with this new job, like which language do you need to learn? Which framework do you need to learn? My advice to all beginners would be to keep it basic to look for the bare necessities. Every time you're starting out with a new framework, it's very tempting to get caught up in. It's very tempting to get caught up in the Also you guys, if you can't hear me at any point, please just write it in the chat and I'll be sure to like go for it because I would imagine if I be talking about this one that you literally couldn't hear me. Wow. Yeah. Anyway, so, yeah, it's very tempting to get caught up in the hype of needing to know everything, you know. But I think if you're a beginner, it's totally fine to just know the basics. If you're learning front end, you just need to know HTML and CS s and you'll be fine. OK, then I know that sometimes people are like, oh, but what about when I'm applying for jobs?

I um I don't know like a lot of companies that was asking for React or they're asking for like two years of experience and I'm like, ok, cool if you're applying for a job as a junior level developer as an intern and the company is asking you for three years of experience with two years of experience and they are students pay you a junior level developer salary, you know, ask yourself, do you actually want to work there?

Ok. Because from my experience, all the professional experience I've got in with languages, I got them while on the job, I learned React when I got hired for a job that needed me to use. React. I've been working at my past at this company for like 34 months now. And I'm in that space of time. I've learned three new frameworks. I didn't know these frameworks when I got in, but I learned them on the job. And that's why I always say you can't know everything and that's OK. You don't need to know all billions of javascript frameworks that they are because TV, H A new framework comes out every day. You don't need to know all of them. You just need to know how to know them. I think that's what I would say. So it's not, you don't need to know everything but you need to know like how to easily learn things if you're going to got a new job and then the company is like, we need you to learn this framework, compute something with it. You need to know how to learn the framework, you know, you need to know how to read documentation, do a simple project, utilize it. That's what I would say.

So you don't need all the knowledge before you start out, you just need to know how to learn the knowledge. Yeah. And then soft skills, I think soft skills are very important when you're applying for jobs because soft skills are what separate you from everyone else. OK? So everyone can know react, everyone can know html what makes you special? What makes the company want to take a particular interest in you? Soft skills are the non technical skills you use that kind of boost your technical skills. So some ways I've discovered of boosting soft skills would be public speaking. Public speaking is a great way to boost your soft skill because it's, it boosts your when you're in front of people and you have to start presenting to them. It boosts your communication skills, it boosts your attention to detail because you have slides, you can't just like pour, pour all your information, you know, you need to be particular about it. So I think that's great. I put some tips here for getting started with public speaking and there's also a link here for a guide to public speaking if you need to. So in case you're not like a very extroverted person, I don't want to stand on stage and talk in front of people. That's fine. They are also like, it's tech, tech is in itself an introverted career. So yeah, we have, we got things for you.

There's technical writing, technical writing is just writing, technical art schools and it's really great for boosting your comprehension skills because the easiest way to understand something is to explain it to someone else. So when you're writing art schools and you're trying to explain concepts to people, you realize that you start understanding them more and it also helps your storytelling skills. Storytelling is great for you want to get to the point quickly and you don't want to lose interest while you're talking. So yeah, getting started, you write as you learn, I think this is very important for every time you learn a new language or you learn a new feature, you fix a book, write it, write about it. And then I think as developers, sometimes it's very tempting to get caught up in this. I need to build a blog before I can have a blog. You don't need to build a blog, whatever. I can't start writing, but I haven't built my blog yet. There are a bunch of blogging platforms online that you can use as medium dev to hash not, you could use wordless or blogger. You could, there are a bunch of them. You don't need to view the blog.

You can't choose to view the book, but don't let the fact that you don't own your own blog be what's stopping you from writing and then for resources, once again, I included a link there that you can check out teaching and mentoring. Now, this is more of a mid-level skill I would say because you need to have a certain level of experience before you can start teaching and mentoring people. But it's a great thing to keep in mind for like your future, you know, for further down the line teaching, the mentoring, it boosts your social skills because now you're not just working by yourself, you're working in tandem with people. OK? You need to learn how people think you need to learn how to interact with them. You need to learn how to properly talk to people. So that's really great for building social skills and teamwork and then great ways to get started. You can volunteer to teach if you have been working at your company for a while and then new um employees come in. You can be like, oh you know, you could just take one of them like mentor that it's totally fine. There's a link to an article here, Sanga wrote on his tips for mentorship also really cool. And then finally open source contribution.

I just think open-source contribution is cool because like it gives you mad props, you know, you can be like uh yeah, I'm not trying to brag or anything but I kind of helped build like the React Repo like, yeah, they merged my pill request some kind of a thing too. So seriously open source is a great way for like thinking of problem solving a critical thinking. You see an issue, you start thinking how can I fix this? What's the best way to go about this? And you can't just like write code that fixes it. You need to write things that already fits in with their existing code structure, you know, so it's a really great way and then, you know, it's like you, you look at the issue and you create the progress and you merge a progress and you're like, oh yeah, awesome. You know, it's great. It's a great experience. And then finally, you've done all of that, you've done your qualifications, your soft skills, yada, yada, yada. Now you want to find a job. So how do you find jobs and when should you apply for a job? So I'm going to talk about the how first, how do I find my jobs? I should find my jobs on online sites. So there's linkedin, linkedin is a really cool way for finding jobs that are close to you, like in your particular area. Angel dot IU, I really like Angel dot IU because it's a start up platform. So it's really good for finding remote jobs.

And it's also a good way if you like working at start ups, like Angel dot Iu is a great way of finding, you know, jobs there remote. OK dot IO, I put this because in case you're looking for a remote job, it's a good place to find jobs. But personally, I don't like masks. Like I don't like mass job sites. Like, if you're applying with like 500 other people, it's very easy for your application to get lost somewhere in the crowd. So another thing people don't know is that T Switzer is actually a really please for finding jobs. The thing with Twitter is that people usually just tweet things like, oh, my company is looking for a front end developer or we're hiring a front end developer or I'm leaving my role. Is there anyone that, you know? So it's a great way of finding like inside information and it's very easy for you to connect to the people because all you need to do is just reach out to them and say, oh, hey, I saw your tweet. Um are you still applying, what do I need for the role? And you know, they'll tell you it's great then looking out for opportunities, people are missing out on job opportunities because you do not know that these opportunities exist.

For example, in my school, sometimes international, when I was in school, international companies would come to the school to recruit students, you know, and then you'd be in class and you'd be talking with your friend and they'd be like, oh, did you attend that Microsoft event yesterday?

And you're like, what Microsoft event? You know, you could have worked at Microsoft. So you need to look out for opportunities. A great way to do. That is a great of finding opportunities is from word of mouth. You need to join communities, attend me to grow your network, follow blogs. People. If there are companies, you want to work, if you want to work at Google or Facebook or Amazon, follow people that work at Google, Facebook, Amazon because it's the easiest way to find out like direct information, you know, because nowadays everybody is very social, everybody's talking online.

So it's a great way of just like knowing these things straight up. Then when is the right time to start looking for a job? If you've been learning and you have no previous work experience, the best thing with tech is that you don't need work experience, you just need experience and you don't need to work to get experience. So if you have a good grasp of the basic necessities, like the basic necessities for whatever job you're applying in, that's fine. If you have proof, you have a couple of projects, sure for you want to apply as a front end developer, you've used a couple of websites, that's great. And then research, people are usually forgetting that it's fine to want to work somewhere, but you want to know where you want to work and why you want to work there. You may be a better fit for a start up. You may be a better fit for an established company. You may be if you're not the kind of person that likes, you know, pizza nights every Friday and hanging out with your team after work, you probably don't want to work at a start up.

So you wanna look into the kind of industry you want to work in, that's very important for when you start applying for jobs. And then the most important thing is to apply. I feel like a lot of people usually prevent themselves from applying for jobs because they're like, oh, you know, they need like two years experience and I only have one year and six months. So I probably shouldn't apply. It's fine. Apply. You have nothing. Like, I mean, if they don't give you the job, it's fine. You had the job before, you know, you lose nothing. So I would say just always apply for every job if you meet even 25% of the requirements, apply for it at the, at the worst case, like they will say no, but at least your name is in your system. You know, you always want to be in the system. So, yeah, um, if you want to read some more things on this, I wrote an article on how I got my first remote job. So it's a really, um, I just like, outline the, like, exact things that I did to get my job so you can check that there. Ok. Then um final advice, my final advice to you and to whatever stage you're in is that you belong here.

I know that in tech sometimes you look around and you don't really see people that look like you. And it feels like is this the right field for me when I first started? I remember the first meet up I attended when I first started, I couldn't see any of that girl there and I was scared to go to the hall because I was like, yeah, I don't know about that, but I went into the hall and I remember there was a female speaker and I just kept on looking at how, when she was talking and I'm like, oh my God, that's so cool.

Like there's another girl here, you know, because in Nigeria it's not so much of a race thing because everyone is black, but like seeing other girls in the space. So when you realize that there are people who look like you in this space, it's great. But what you also need to remember is that you belong here and don't let anyone tell you differently if anyone tells you that, oh, you should take the car. You, you tell them that that's negative energy and you don't need it. Ok. Ok. Then another resource I would recommend is roadmap the sh is this really cool detailed paths by um Cameron Ahmed? Hope I pronounced that right? Um Basically just paths on like specific languages and things that you need to learn for whatever career you're going into. So I think he has front end um maybe backend, I think devops and they're working on mobile so you can check that out. The link is roadmap. Do sh it's also really cool. And uh yeah, that's about it. I was right on. Time stuck to my 15 minutes. So I'll be taking questions now. If you have any questions, please ask them in the chat and I will be answering all of them. Thank you so much for tuning in. Um Hope you guys enjoyed the talk also, if you don't want to ask your questions in the chat, you can always message me on. Um Let me just go back to that.

Think it's roadmap dot sh that is s like I say, S like, and my brain just blanked. I literally could not think of a word that started with SS like sand. Yeah, and H like house. So road map the sh you can just check it. But like I said, I'll be sharing the slides in the Slack Channel. All right. So I have four minutes left. I'll be taking, I'll be taking all your questions now. So I'm gonna just scroll through and start. Could I send the link for the survey? Ok. You know, I would just like, you're right. Let me just paste the and stop sharing my screen actually. And I'm going to paste the link in this chat here. And I'll also, I will also put it on the Slack channel so you guys can easily view it. OK? So first paste this link da da da da. So you guys please just ask me all your questions. Now, I have four minutes. So I have enough time to take your questions. Really glad that I stop the time gave me. All right. That's the link. Sorry. It's ugly. It's Google slides and I can't see, I can't figure out like where to share my slides right now. OK. Um Yup. Yup. Yup. Yup. Yup. Yup. Yup. Well, thank you. Thank you all for enjoying the talk. Mhm Just looking for cost. Uh Thank you guys so much for interacting with the chat. I really love like having interactive sessions. Oh Yeah. If you also, if you guys want to connect with me anywhere online. Um I'm on linkedin, I'm on Twitter. I'm on github.

You can always just reach out and you know, connect there. OK? Asking the question, how can someone who doesn't have any knowledge on tech or has skills to learn it? Get the job we stop. So like I said, if you don't have, wait, OK, you don't have any knowledge of tech but you have skills to learn it. All right, I would recommend looking for, it's important to know how you learn. For example, I know that I don't really work well with videos because I kinda get distracted when things are moving on my screen. So I prefer textbooks. And also if you don't have like stable internet connection, you may not want to do an online course that requires you to be constant online. So there are lots of free resources, online, free go camp is a great place for learning. Like the basics of front end development, you can also download textbooks, just look out for usually what I just do if I want to learn a new language, I just Google it and I put like for beginners at the end and there will be recommendations based on what you Google. OK. Um And what's like channel, I'll post it on the um global conference live chat. Thank you guys so much for tuning in. Really glad you. Yes, I'll share the slides. Thank you. Oh, wow. So many things. So, wow. Oh my God, you guys stop. I'm watching. OK.

How do I deal with imposter syndrome? Personally, I have this weird thing with imposter syndrome. Like the way my imposter syndrome works is that it doesn't tell me that I'm bad. It just tells me that I'm good at deceiving people. So like if I get a job or if I got such a conference, my job, my impulses syndrome is like, hey, look at you lying to people that you know what to do. Good for you. So one thing that helps me is to just, just take a deep breath and realize that, you know what I know this and I know that and that's ok. Right. Like sometimes you're looking at other people and you're seeing what other people are doing and you're feeling like, oh, I haven't done enough. I haven't done as much as them. It's fine. Everyone moves at their own pace and you don't need to do the same thing that everyone else is doing. Just realize, look at what you've done, go through your portfolios, go through your github, go through whatever, go back to the first time you started working and go back to. Now you realize that you have come far enough and you're fine. How long have I been working remotely?

Um I just worked remotely for about 11 months. That was while I was in Nigeria and then I moved here. So, oh yeah, because of the lockdown we've been at home for, we've been working from home for like three months now. So yeah, knowing many tech or knowing one tech in detail, definitely, I would say knowing one tech in detail because if you're applying for a job, the the country, you know, many techs is that you can't do all the jobs, right? So just like know one of the know like the main tech you need and then apply for a job in that area. We have to specialize and to have knowledge of everything, any advice for a fresher. Um Don't try to know everything I think. Don't try to know everything. Just try to know one thing. I know it will. That's what I would say. No one thing. No, it will build projects. You'll be fine. Oh, my time is almost up. Ok. It's 1030 I need to get out of here for the other speaker. I see. I still have some more questions. Sorry, I couldn't get that. I will be taking questions on the Slack channel. If you guys have any, just be sure to, if I didn't answer your question, please just, you can send me a personal message on Slack. You can put it on the channel. It'll be totally fine. All right.

Thank you all so much for tuning in and thank you so much for being nice. Y'all are great. Bye. How do I leave? I just leave. Bye. Ok.