Building Dev Skills While Staying at Your Current Job

Building Dev Skills While Staying at Your Current Job Tips
for Career Changers

Who am I?

@mirka Lena Morita • Former designer • Director for Women
Who Code Tokyo • JavaScript Developer at Automattic

We’re hiring!

How I got here

@mirka Editorial Design UI/UX Design Development 2007 2018 What I
was paid to do

@mirka Editorial Design Development (for fun!) UI/UX Design Development 2007
2018 What I was actually doing

Let’s talk money

@mirka Earning power Skill Compensation

@mirka Changing careers Skill & Comp Time Old career

@mirka Changing careers Skill & Comp Time Old career New
career

How to transition smoothly?

Build up as much skill/experience before leaving your old career.

@mirka Enter at a higher level Skill & Comp Time
Old career New career Prepare!

But how?

@mirka Learning checklist • Read books/documentation • Work through tutorials

• “Real” experience

• “Real” experience What do I build? How do I find the time?

Solve problems you actually have

Look for problems in your everyday life (and work!)

@mirka Everyday problems • Repetitive actions • Bad user interfaces
• Mentally-draining tasks

@mirka Maintenance • Versioning (git, svn) • Readable code •
Manageable structure

Some ideas

@mirka App scripting • Google Apps Script • Excel macros
• Apps you use for work

@mirka AppleScript or JXA • Control scriptable Mac applications •
Automate tasks for work

@mirka Regular Expressions • Master text manipulation • Get your
job done faster (?<=\.) {2,}(?=[A-Z])

@mirka Browser scripting • Write scripts to alter the looks
or behavior of websites • Peek under the hood • Greasemonkey/Tampermonkey • Build a browser extension

Conclusion

Gain experience while making your life easier.

Thank you and good luck!

Building Dev Skills While Staying at Your Curr...

Building Dev Skills While Staying at Your Current Job

Lena Morita

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