Own your future #frontenddevelopment

When we were little, all we dreamed about was becoming lawyers, doctors, firefighters, or part of the police crew when we’d grow up. Later, we went to school, and some discovered they like working with numbers and complex equations, others manifested a preference for writing, while some were attracted to history, geography, biology, etc. When we entered this system called “school”, most of us discovered we like/are good at something. We sure didn’t have a name for our future job, but we knew it better involve that thing that we liked so much. ?

Together with our friends from?EvoCariera, we started a webinar series designed for high schoolers eager to find out more about different roles in IT companies. The Yonderists have many beautiful, interesting stories about themselves and their career path, and we thought this might be a good chance to write some of them down. We want to put in the spotlight that?everyone’s journey is different, there are no right or wrong paths, and what’s yours, will eventually find you.

We realized that from the moment we started this series of articles, we preached again and again that it is ok the change your mind, that you might be studying something more intensively in high school, be curious about something else when you go to university, and finally choose a completely different job. Yes, this is something that can happen. Or you can follow the path that you knew was yours from the beginning. We never talked about this kind of people, right?

The fourth webinar was dedicated to the Front-end development area. A front-end developer?builds the front-end portion (the part that users see and interact with) of websites and web applications using different languages and technologies. Let’s take the interface of a website, for example:

-?to arrange the elements on the page we use HTML, which can be seen as a set of elements that the browser knows how to display.

-? to stylize them we use CSS, a set of visual "rules" the browser is guided by when displaying those HTML elements;

-??for the logic part (of actual interaction and flows) we use Javascript, a programming language recognized as the core of the technologies used in the World Wide Web.

A front-end developer will translate into code everything established by those responsible for the UI/UX part (which was discussed in the previous article).

Let’s see what Andrei, Bianca, and Flavius think of this role. Two of them studied Mathematics and Informatics intensively in high school, all three went to a profile university later, and except for some months spent with Work&Travel in Bianca's case, all three never worked a day in a domain different than IT. Now we get to an endless debate: do I need to study Computer Science or Informatics to have a job in IT? No. But in some cases/roles, just like this one, it can make a huge difference because it provides you with a very good knowledge foundation.

Andrei

• Passionate about the latest technological trends, especially when it comes to programming. Never refuses a weekend getaway and tries to take a longer trip every 3 months.
• His focus in high school was Mathematics & Informatics, even studied Informatics intensively. He followed that path later and owns a bachelor’s degree in Mathematics-Informatics. During his first 2 years of college, Andrei worked as a freelancer, making good use of the web knowledge gained in high school (HTML, CSS, PHP, and framework for each one). Then he joined Yonder and he’s been part of our team for 3 and a half years already.
• Main skills needed for this job in his opinion: considering that technologies evolve, and frameworks change, same as the expectations of end-users, some important skills would be fast flexibility and adaptability to new.?
• The best part of being a FrontEnd Developer for him: the dynamics of his work, and the fact that new challenges rise frequently. Even though two things might look perfectly the same, there is always some small detail that makes you rethink all the flows.?

"Find a job you are passionate about. Don’t choose something because it sounds well or is trending in the labor market. If you are passionate and hardworking, results will show sooner than you think."

Flavius

• 24 years old, extrovert to the bones, likes to play the piano, spend time with friends, coffee, and the story behind it.
• Graduated from a theoretical high school, Mathematics & Informatics profile. Also owns a bachelor’s degree in Mathematics-Informatics. His first job was within our company but worked on his own on two more web projects two years after he joined us.
• Main skills needed for this job in his opinion: although it might seem that a Frontend Developer needs “good taste” so that everything looks good on the web, Flavius thinks that more important than that is the ability to look at something from multiple points of view.
• The best part of being a FrontEnd Developer for him: from the beginning, he liked that he could see results fast. With little effort, you can create big visual changes.

"If you have friends or know people that work the jobs you want to have, in domains you want to work one day, ask them all the possible questions that you might have. What does a day in their work-life look like, what do they like, and what they don’t like about their work? Ask for everything that might help you to decide.?Invest in developing your interpersonal skills and learn to work within a team. As John Maxwell says: “One is too small a number to achieve greatness. No accomplishment of real value has ever been achieved by a human being working alone."

Bianca

• 25 years old, cheerful, likes to share joy around her, loves to cook, play board games, and has a cat named Bobi
• She studied Natural Science in high school and was preparing to go to medical school, but changed her mind 2 months before the BAC exam. Now she has a Bachelors’s Degree in Mathematics and Computer Science, Master’s Degree in Business Modeling and Distributed Computing. During her first 2 years of college, she participated in the Work and Travel program, working for 2 summers in the USA as an Activities Attendant at a hotel (which involved a lot of playing with children). Her first official job is at Yonder, where she started as an intern and continued as an employee. She is celebrating her 4th Yonder Anniversary in April.
• The best part of being a FrontEnd Developer: it involves creativity, and you have visual feedback of your work - you write your code, and you see the page transforming, you create exactly what users will see: colors, animations, transitions, etc.
• Main skills needed for this role: passion and dedication - this field requires you to stay up to date with the latest technologies, find solutions to interesting problems, and create the best experience for the users.

“Be your own self. Do not hold yourself back in fear of what other people would say. Have the courage to do what you are passionate about and to work towards your dreams. Everything will happen exactly how it is supposed to.“

3 frontend developers, 3 (not so different) career paths.

Everyone is doing their work exceptionally because they had a clear vision about their future job in mind (sooner or later), worked hard to get here, and we are grateful to have them on our team.

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