Every week I join Daniel Maciel to share tips and suggestions for developers.
In this episode we talk about the development of TESTS. When should we do it? What are the main concerns and how should we start?
(Content in Portuguese)
Tag: Career
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Every week I join Daniel Maciel to share tips and suggestions for developers.
In this episode we talk about refactor. When should we refactoring the code and what can we do to minimize problems in this process? These are some of the issues that are addressed.
(Content in Portuguese)
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Every week I join Daniel Maciel to share tips and suggestions for developers.
In this episode we talk about the importance of documentation associated with development. Is it really important to document a project? It is the question that we will answer.
(Content in Portuguese)
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Wow! That’s the perfect word to describe my 2019. So far, my best year ever!
At Work
My 2019 started with me leaving TBFiles and joining Infraspeak. The change came as a surprise, even to me. I was not looking for a job change, but a casual visit to the Infraspeak’s HQ, to discuss the development of a Laravel related event, which led me to meet a lot of my (soon-to-be) colleagues and the company’s vision, goals, and culture, impressed me so much that I got stuck with the feeling that I belonged there.
My work, at Infraspeak, ranged from developing new, and exciting, features, to help to improve the overall code quality, improving the development workflow and stack used and implementing a Continuous Integration pipeline. I’ve been learning and growing so much! It’s definitely the best place to work, right now. Consider applying to one of our job openings.
There’s a lot more I plan to do here, in 2020, which I’ll blog about on Infraspeak’s Tech Blog.
Open Source
I did less open-source work than what I intended. In fact, I didn’t even complete 2019’s Hacktoberfest, with only two PRs made…
However, I contributed to the akaunting/akaunting and spatie/laravel-permission projects, created a side project that I’m still actively developing (SpeakHub) and I’ve joined the VOST Portugal organization, where I’ve been helping in the API layer development and maintenance.
For 2020, I’ll be releasing a beta version of my side project and dedicate more time to Open Source contributions. I’ll definitely not miss this year’s Hacktoberfest challenge!
Community Events
I tried something new in this area: I organized a Meetup around the Portuguese Laravel community. I tried to organize another one, but several things happened that made it impossible to create a second event. In 2020, however, there will be a new edition of this event.
I’ve also attended some events, too. I was present in the first Laracon Madrid, representing the Infraspeak Engineering Team. I met a lot of new people there, got to personally thank some of my favorite creators, like Christoph Rumpel, Freek Van der Herten and Adam Wathan. I got to be with other Laravel Portugal members and even fellow podcasters Nuno Maduro, Caneco and Bruno Falcão. I’ve also attended TechInPorto, a tech-related event in the beautiful Porto city.
For 2020, I’ll aim to speak on one conference, I’ll try to attend not only TechInPorto 2020 but also Laracon Madrid 2020 and I’ll definitely organise the second edition of Laravel Portugal meetup.
Publications and Podcasts
I’ve published three articles and twenty-one journal entries. It was amazing getting to write and share this much information with the developers’ community.
I’ve also been invited to participate in the amazing Ubuntu Portugal Podcast, where I discussed my transition from the Apple ecosystem to Ubuntu. I had a very good and friendly talk with the hosts Diogo Constantino e David Negreira.
Unfortunately, the Laravel Portugal Podcast only had one episode recorded in the whole year. It’s so sad that we (me and the other hosts) didn’t get enough time to do it more often. I always believed that a Portuguese podcast about the Laravel ecosystem makes sense to exist.
For 2020, I’ll definitely try to resurrect the Laravel Portugal Podcast, making it a once or twice per month event. Also, I’ll also make a weekly journal entry to round-up about work done and other relevant events. Maybe I’ll make a 2-in-1 and we might have a weekly Portuguese podcast about that. Who knows…
Final Words
This last year was a year full of experiments and trials and errors. As I close 2019 as the best year ever, so far, I look for 2020 with a lot of expectations to surpass the previous one. I’ll definitely begin to see the results of my work in Infraspeak, and will channel all my experience gathered until now towards open source and community development.
Wishing you all the best for this new year!
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Last month I announced that I’d be changing companies, leaving TBFiles and join Infraspeak. Since that, a lot more has changed in my life.
First, I’ve also changed to a new house, in a neighbouring city. This move is a long time in the making, as I needed something with better conditions, to allow for a better quality of life. Even with the housing market inflated, I manage to found a 4 bedroom house with plenty of room for everybody and, even, to have a home office, where I plan to develop some interesting open-source projects.
Before I speak about those projects, I’d like to share my experience at Infraspeak. Even though I’m still at the honeymoon phase (I’m with them, only, since the beginning of this month), but I can say that this was a very good transition for me. I’m surrounded by a very smart group of professionals, which I’m very excited to learn from and, I hope, teach something, too. The product is very good and has a real impact on the life of their users and that’s something important for me, knowing that my efforts, and work, will help people enjoy their work and be more productive and efficient.
Now, about those projects. I’ve been a little away from the community, for the last month an a half, and that is “killing” me. I really want to get back to contributing to open source. So, without further ado, I want to share that I’m starting the development of a little project that I’ve been thinking about. With this, I’m thinking about blogging about it. However, the real objective is not the project itself, but is the learning and development of my own capacities as a web developer. If you learn with me, that’ll be even better!
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If you follow my work, you know I’ve been working on a company called TBFiles since the first trimester of this year. However, on January 2019, I’ll start working on another company: Infraspeak.
In spite of the short term I’ve been working for TBFiles, I really enjoyed it. I’ve had the opportunity to work on a big project, for a well knowm Portuguese travel agency, as weel as working on another couple of strategic, internal, services which, in a matter of fact, the CEO decided to invest and make them a top priority for the company, for the next year. However a very good job opportunity came to my attention and I couldn’t say no to it.
Just to be clear, it’s not a simple matter of payment upgrade! As I’ve written before (check this article), money is not the main condition for my departure. Deciding to join Infraspeak was not a easy decision but I couldn’t let an opportunity to specialize as a Senior Backend Developer, instead of continuing as a Full Stack Web Developer. This position suits me the best and was one of the main reasons that led me to sign for them.
I really liked working in TBFiles and I thank all of the people that works there, as they’ve made me feel very comfortable. All my colleagues are really interesting and friendly people, with lots of knowledge and they’re very supporting: no matter your level of expertize, they just focus on making you a better developer. Their soft-skills are really on point. That’s one of the main reasons that this team has mamange to deliver every single project ahed of time. It was the first time I saw that happening! Every sprint was meticulously fulfilled. 👏
Now it’s time to focus on a new chapter of my career. Let’s see how this goes! 🤳
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This is a question which I’ve discussed, many times, with colleagues and friends, and I think it’s such an interesting topic that I wanted to share my opinion with you and, in return, I’d appreciate if you shared yours. So, please, feel free to comment.
Although the answer seems petty easy to predict, I would never decide only based on money. Yes, it takes a great part on my decision process, but there’s three more parameters I’ll also evaluate: 1. What’s the main vision, the mission and culture? 2. What kind of problems and challenges are they solving? 3. How does this company contributes to my own professional objectives?
The answers to this questions are as important as how much will they pay me. Let me explain…
The Vision, The Mission And The Culture
Lately, I’ve been hooked on Simon Sinek’s videos, on YouTube (if you don’t know him, I highly recommend you watch some of his videos). He talks about how important it is for a company’s vision (and mission) to be palpable, and how it effects their employees. He says that a well defined, tangible, goal, where people can clearly imagine that vision coming true, would make them feel more motivated to help achieve that goal.
That’s why this is the first thing I analyse, when I look at an offer. I try to know and understand what’s the vision, where does this company wants to go and how can I add value to that? Where do I fit? If I don’t feel good about the culture in place, I will simply decline, period.
No money in the World would make me wake up to “just” do my job. I want to be working on something that has meaning, that has a positive impact in the World. I want to be able to say “I contributed to that!” to my friends and family. I want to be proud of me and my work.
The Problems And Challenges Ahead
The second thing I tend to look is the type of company that I’m evaluating: is it a Design Agency, a Consultancy Agency, a SaaS Company? This let’s me filter out offers from companies on which I’d take no pleasure working on.
To avoid that, I tend to prefer a company that has a mix of mature projects and gives the liberty of exploring and trying new things. Bonus points if they encourage their employees work on side projects and present them as possible new solutions for the company, or it’s clients, to benefit from.
So, How Does This All Fit Into My Master Plan?
My main career objective is to be a Team Leader. It’s an awesome title to have, but that comes with big responsibilities. Being a team leader requires more than hard skills on whichever area you’re trying to lead on. It requires exceptional soft skills, like empathy and people management, for example.
I definitely know I’m not yet ready to take that kind of responsibility, but I work very hard, everyday, to improve myself to, eventually, fulfill that objective. That means that I can take advantage of making myself available to be wherever it’ll help me gain the necessary experience to get to where I want to be and I may even be comfortable in getting a little pay cut if that represents a step closer to my main career objective.
Again, like I said at the beginning of this article, money is still an important metric, specially for exclusion purposes. However, I found out that focusing on being a better you, on finding your true purpose and keeping doing what you love the most, will make you a more rich and fulfilled person. Happiness is king here, and I keep saying that we must position ourselves, in life, on where we really love to be, and do what we really love to do.
Because money will always follow your passion. It’ll always be a part of the equation or, at the very least, a result of it.
I Am José Postiga 