Ask HN: As a junior front end developer what should I focus on? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: As a junior front end developer what should I focus on?

3 pointspixelfog6 comments

I'm currently a frontend web developer with 1 year and 4 months of experience. I see two roads in front of me.

a) Improve my web development knowledge by learning the topics from these sites(both frontend[0] and backend[1])

b) Work on personal projects which I'm interested in, but none of them are web dev related

My mind tells me that the first option would be the right choice for my career, but I just can't bring myself to learn things for the sake of learning. I see all those topics but I can't come up with any projects I want to create, so it appears that all that learning will be ineffective because I won't put it to use.

My heart wants to go with the second option because I feel like that's more fun. I get to make things I love, and if possible I could make some money too. And since it will be a change of pace, I think I would enjoy it more.

I initially thought that I should just do both, but that didn't work for me because I ended up wasting time in deciding. After reading this article[2] I understood that I should focus on only one thing at a time, at least it would get me started.

[0]https://roadmap.sh/frontend

[1]https://roadmap.sh/backend

[2]https://sive.rs/donkey

I'm a firm believer in learn-by-doing. Take a look at these stats:

Learning Retention Rates:

- Listening only - After 3 hours: 70% - After 3 days: 10%

- Seeing or Observing only - After 3 hours: 72% - After 3 days: 20%

- Hearing and Seeing / Observing - After 3 hours: 85% - After 3 days: 65%

- Doing - After 3 hours: 95% - After 3 days: 90%

As you can clearly see, nothing comes close to the amount of information you actually retain by doing. You should try to connect your passion to learning new skills.

For me, I did this by working on personal projects that used the newest web technologies that related to my interests (horticulture, education, biotech). I quickly became proficient in those technologies and became a resource for other developers in my organization. My career accelerated and I rose from junior javascript developer to chief software architect before I was 25.

Are you currently working as a junior frontend developer? If so, your goal should be to become more valuable to the place where you're working now. You want to build up a reasonably long tenure at your current job, show a history of promotions and raises, and impress your coworkers enough to establish a professional network.

Ask your manager or senior coworkers what you should be learning if you're not sure. You should be trying to become the owner of multiple parts of your employer's codebase, which is a good sign that you've moved up from junior to mid-level or senior.

This may sound counterintuitive but you need to trust that excelling at even the tedious parts of your current job will open doors for you later on to let you actually do the exciting things you're interested in.

My two cents: 1) only pursue what you’re naturally interested in, you’ve got a long career ahead of you, and 2) build, build, build. What problems do you face in life? Fix them yourself with code and suddenly you’ve found motivation to learn.

1. Build a social life outside of work.

2. Save enough money to take out a mortgage on a place to live.

3. Fall in love.

This might be seen as glib, but this is actually real solid technical advice.

We are machines that require social connections to function. If you want to spend 5 years sprinting and burnout, go ahead and do that, but if you want to build a career and run the career marathon, you really need to build a foundation upon which you can grow.

Spending all of your time on technical pursuits will come at the cost of social pursuits, and that absolutely leads to being burned out and a stalled career.

If OP is young, like in their early 20s, then this is the time to focus on career. They have lots of energy and their age won't be held against them as a junior. Most of their social peers will be moving around constantly and uninterested in settling down. All of OP's softball pals or whatever will move away or start families and fall out of touch no matter what OP does. Much better to enter your 30s with a rock solid career than with a weak career and friends you never see.

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