Introduction
I got my first proper job as a developer and had my first day on the 1st of August this year. Getting this job is a testament to all the work I've put into elevating my skills the past year working with Templify. The idea of being competent enough to be able to work with almost anything any company would throw at me (within the scope of Next.js development) has been at the forefront of my priorities, and it paid off big time.
Taking initiative at work
After all the onboarding stuff was completed, I immediately went to work drafting up a revised design of PowerPay, which is a payment solution for electrity at campsites, marinas and so on. When I had a few screens mocked up in Figma, I showed the result to my manager, who was unaware of my initiative. He was so pleased and happy with the initiative and the direction I'd taken that he invited about all of the employees into my office (not at once) to have a look, which was hilarious and very supportive.
Completing the Figma mockups
I can't remember exactly when I finished the mockups, but I think it took about four weeks. There was a lot of initiative from people in the company who have both first-hand experience using the app and also dealing with the customers who use it. Their feedback was crucial for getting the UX and UI design right for the specific use case. I didn't change the application flow much, as my manager/developer/IT extraordinaire had done a great job here already. I did propose a few flow changes, which were accepted and made it into the current live application.
Once the mockups were signed off by the management, I got to work implementing the screens in the existing Next.js codebase, which was a lot of fun.
Implementing the code
I love Next.js, Typescript and Tailwindcss, and luckily for me, this is exactly the tech I was presented with. I felt like home in this codebase, again, because of spending hundreds of hours in the ever-growing codebase of Templify. It took me about another 3-4 weeks to get the new design implemented, along with a few bug fixes, improvements and feature requests that occurred on the way - there was a team who did end-to-end testing and created tickets as the issues were discovered. Having a team testing your work is awesome and something I've never experienced with Templify, being the only person involved.
Deploying to production is scary
My manager deemed the application ready for deployment to production, which is nerve-racking for me as I've never done anything like it. Templify isn't even officially launched, so this was entirely new to me. It has been a few days now, and the business is still running as strong as ever, and there has been almost no issues. The relief, bro... The relief is real.
Final toughts
Before finishing off this post, I just want to say that I cannot overstate how important it is nowadays to do side projects like Templify. If you're a graduate and struggling to find a job, do a massive project instead of spending your time and energy on applying for jobs you'll never get. I did just that and when I realized it was getting me nowhere, I turned my attention to the root cause: people don't need juniors, they need mid-level, at the least. Elevating yourself and your skills to the level of independence, productivity, and experience of a mid-level developer could be just what it takes for you to get a job in this tough job market.
Thank you for reading!