Coming from a design background and looking for a job meant you need to represent yourself as a brand. As a developer, my brand leans toward more of a front end designer because that has been where I decided to place my attention when creating a website. As a developer, the more features, the better, but in conflict with the designer, the busier, the less attractive. The amount of features to use has been a struggle for me as I would often compare myself to others with more feature-heavy projects. At the same time, I would give attention to how well the UI is perceived.
I am working on giving more attention to projects’ functionality and solving more problems that a company would be interested in seeing a Junior Dev accomplish. This knowledge reinforces why my brand exists and why Full-stack Developers care more about back-end versus front-end and managing a bunch of API. My experience with sticking to my brand and adding to it has been rough because when I would design before becoming a Developer, I would utilize Adobe XD and other resources. Using Adobe XD allowed to create an imitation of a web-application/mobile-application and then send it to a developer(s) that would be interested in tackling this application.
This process was simple for the designer by helping reduce verbal confusion and created a visual way to communicate between both parties. At some point, I decided that I also wanted to sit in the driver’s seat and design my own web- application. My brand began its first steps of evolving into a new career path. The more I learn about SQL and ActiveRecord, and it became easier to understand, there were more words to understand and more ways to think than what looks a certain way. This feeling became familiar to me when I started to learn Graphic Design. I had the feeling of crawling. I was taking my first steps into a new world. The expectations I had were far from what I encountered, and I am still excited. Working on my Ruby project, I received a lot of help; I was surprised so many people were willing to help me, and I am grateful. After the completion of my project, there was very little I designed.
It was the first time I created something and only cared about the functionality. That made the fight learn as much as I could worth it, and my first designed project was when I incorporated JavaScript with a Rails API. The project had met the requirements, and I could see what I could do with more effort. In being a developer, you are continually learning and taking what will make you better in your chosen industry; your brand will not hinder you from getting a job, enhance you, and give you personality, culture, and shows your experience. The more you build applications and practice your craft, the better your brand will become. A brand is not a one size fits all scenarios; it is a way to be more than a number, to be a human being with a purpose in the Software Engineering world.