Chaos Tamer
I wrote yesterday that I am pursuing the Google Technical Support Fundamentals certificate. Well, I’ve finished that one. It is one of 5 elements in the Google IT Support Professional certification, so I’m solidly on my way. 20% done!
It’s a fun certificate, and I enjoyed diving back into the subject. There’s so much more to learn, though, so I’m pumped to jump into the next one.
At the beginning of the pandemic, I was laid off (yet again). Growing weary of being the first let go when a company’s finances get tight, I started looking for a new direction. As I’ve long loved technology, I explored options to finally move into tech roles professionally. I discovered that Washington State’s Worksource program would let me collect unemployment while I pursued a Associates Degree in Technical Arts. So, a few weeks before the world locked down, I found myself enrolled at Edmonds College to pursue Computer Information Systems.
I finished that program last summer, and I found myself looking to land that first tech role. Right around the time that hundreds of thousands of unemployed tech workers were starting their searches. A few days ago, I came across this article in Wired that validated my perceptions: “Finding a Tech Job Is Still a Nightmare“. My favorite part? “The tech job market “doesn’t show any signs of turning around just yet,” says Julia Pollak, chief economist with online employment marketplace ZipRecruiter.” Man, I opted for this career path because of the significant career growth! I have been feeling frustrated and disheartened.
Reading the article, I see I’m not the only one. Actually, I’m in good company. When the Grace Hopper Celebration, a career fair targeting women and nonbinary tech workers, got slammed with huge lines and, well, men, it’s easy to see the desperation in many a tech worker’s life.
I’m lucky. Currently, I work roughly half-time with two different organizations. So, I’m pretty much full-time. I’m pulling in money, enough to pay the bills. And one of those half-time roles is in IT. So, really, I’ve met the goal of transitioning to IT.
I am not done, though. I still want to land a full-time role. And I still want to grow, to learn. I am in a place to keep growing, even if I’m not in a place to take more classes. Coursera offers some good options. Currently, I’m pursuing their Google Technical Support Fundamentals Certificate. It’s mostly review, but my son is pursuing the same certificate. It’s fun to do this together. I think I’ll go after their Data Analytics certificate next, to finish out 2023. I’m still exploring options for 2024. Perhaps I’ll go after my A+ and Network+ certificates. I also want to get AWS and Azure certified. And I want to continue to grow my coding skills. In particular, Python.
Are any of you finding the current tech job market challenging? What are doing to navigate these new situations? I hope you’re not feeling too frustrated or frightened.
Updated 10/24/2023: Karina Chow, who I follow over on Twitter, shared this Tech Crunch article which I think is quite germane: A comprehensive list of 2023 tech layoffs. Makes me think that the job hunt toughness will continue for a while.
As many of you know, I’m in the process of looking for an FTE role. Part of that is being registered on many job boards. One result of that: troubling amount spam/scam messages. This morning this one popped into my inbox (names, etc, redacted to protect the guilty…or probably just those being spoofed):
Now, I don’t discount the (very unlikely) possibility this is legitimate. However, this is laden with red-flags. First, the generic gmail account. And “click on this link” to apply”? One of the key rules of modern basic security: don’t click on links in random emails. Additionally, there are nearly zero details, other than the role title and the pay. Heck, I don’t know what city this is supposed to be located in. Which leads me to another email from this morning. Not spammy per se, but just problematic:
So, I’m pretty sure this one is legitimate, but woefully bad. First and foremost, I live just north of Seattle, about 2,700 miles from Alpharetta, GA. Secondly, is this role in Alpharetta, or Providence, RI? They’re 1,000 miles apart. My address is in all of my job posts. I’m sure the algorithms allow you to filter your recruitment searches. Please, please utilize the tools at your disposal. It’s not just my time you’re wasting.
There’s a lot of scammy behavior out there right now in the “recruiting” space. I’ve received so many “opportunities” to sell financial or pre-paid legal services. It’s frustrating and annoying. But it is the way of things, I guess.
Completed day 3 of the 50Projects in 50Days course, “rotating navigation”. This one rotates the whole page if you click on the hamburger icon in the upper left. Hard to imagine a use case, but it’s really fun.
I’ve been posting these to my recently re-done Github site. Again, I’ve done three of these:
With Expanding Cards, when you click on individual cards, they expand out, and the other ones shrink. For Process Steps, it’s like a progress indicator. Each time you press the “next” button, the line advances one over. And for Rotating Navigation, when you click on the hamburger icon, the web page rotates, showing the navigation buttons. For me, this is fun stuff. Which is good since it’s now 9:30 at night and I still haven’t eaten dinner yet.
Anyway, it feels good to refresh my knowledge and build out these skills. I feel it’s a critical part of my march into a tech career. Plus, the internet and web development are the future of tech. I intend to do one project per day every day, but we’ll see. I have a few things coming up that may cause a day or two to be lost. But I should have not problem keeping this moving forward.
Wish me luck!
Over the course of my studies, I’ve heard about Scrum, but we never really went into it. Well, as part of a project a little bit ago, my team dove into Scrum. My part of this was to write up how Scrum is implemented. So, I thought I’d share that with you.
In order to understand how SCRUM is implemented, we need to understand Scrum’s basic roles. There’s the:
The Product Owner is the customer or the customer’s representative. They have the authority to allocate resources, as well as make decisions about product scope and scale.
Team members are the people tasked with completing the work required to finish the project.
Lastly, there’s the ScrumMaster. Their role is to advocate for the team’s needs, hold them accountable to timelines and goals, and remove any roadblocks the team comes up against.
The Scrum process creates three key documents or elements, which are called artifacts. Those artifacts are the:
The Product Backlog is the list of features and requirements that define a successful product. This includes all the functionality the Product Owner needs. The backlog is arranged by priority, enabling the entire team to be aware of what remains outstanding and the importance of each of those items.
Before we talk about the next artifact, the Sprint Backlog, we need to define what a “Sprint” is. Sprints are distinct periods of focused work. A Sprint is anywhere from a few days to a few weeks. During the sprint, the team only works on a subset of features and requirements. And the Sprint Backlog is the list of those project elements worked on during that specific Sprint.
The last artifact is the Product Increment. Simply put, it is the product that is being worked on. For example, a web application or database. It is what will be presented to the Product Owner and shipped at the end of the Sprint.
With all that in mind, a SCRUM cycle starts with a Sprint Planning Session. These review the Product Backlog and ascertain which priorities will be focused on during the upcoming sprint. All team roles are present: product owner, team members, and ScrumMaster. Those items that are selected for this sprint are added to the sprint backlog. What is NOT selected will remain on the Product Backlog. It’s important to note that many items will remain in the product backlog, waiting for future sprints.
During a sprint, there is a daily meeting, called the daily scrum or a “stand-up”. These are short meetings, around 10-15 minutes. During this, the team and ScrumMaster will review what was accomplished the day before, what will be focused on today, and what roadblocks or other concerns have come up. After the daily scrum, work is performed on the product increment.
At the end of the sprint, a sprint review is performed. This is when the product increment is shared and evaluated with stakeholders, teammates, and the product owner.
After the sprint review, there will be a sprint retrospective, where opportunities for improvement are identified and implemented. The whole project cycles from sprint review to sprint planning and then back to sprint review until the entire product backlog has been cleared.
So, a lot has happened since my last post in May (so much for posting more often!). Last month, I completed the last of my coursework for a Web Application and Cloud Developer Associate in Technical Arts degree at Edmonds College. This is in addition to completing the coursework for these certificates:
Currently, I’m taking a class in Enterprise Architecture (first day is today). Upon completing that class, I will that have earned these additional certificates:
So, I’m rather pleased with the results of the past two years of study. I feel well suited for my goal of moving into an IT career.
Another thing that happened: in April I accepted a role at Trinity Lutheran Church, where I’ve been involved for years. I also have worked there covering for the communications coordinator’s paternity leave a couple of years ago. This role is as the Pastoral Administrative Assistant. As it’s part-time, it gives/gave me room to continue studying while earning some income (my unemployment benefits have expired). It is also a contract position (until December of 2022), which will work nicely for me. I plan to find a new, full-time position this fall. Once I’m in my new role, I plan to continue with my technological education. More about that soon.
That’s the status and plan for the next few months. Do you have any advice or guidance? Or, even better, lines on IT roles in the greater Snohomish County/Seattle area? Let me know!
I have one more quarter after this one. One! Currently, my post-school plan is to return to the workforce after I’m done. As much as I love web development, I feel that I can offer the most to a company within the realm of project management or systems analysis.
One of my “superpowers” is communication. I am excellent at connecting with people. As I’ve worked across a number of business functions, I understand the information they need, and how they think. With my developer skills, I think I would do an excellent job as the intermediary between IT and business units. I have been told that I communicate IT and other technology issues in a way that doesn’t make users “feel like idiots”. Plus, my career has a solid amount of project work (project coordination, documentation, etc). And I really enjoyed my project management and systems analysis and design coursework.
I intend to continue my studies, too. At this point, I’m looking at pursuing the Bachelor of Applied Science in Information Technology and Administrative Management degree at Central Washington University (ain’t that a mouthful) here in Lynnwood.
The past few years have been full of change and growth. I’m extremely grateful for the opportunities that have presented themselves. Now I look forward to using all that I’ve learned to add value wherever I may roam (queue up Mettalica) and make the world better.
Pooja over at Life’s Fine Whine posted some goals for 2022. Made me think it was a good time to post some of my own.
I’m not sure what else to add at this point. Do you have any suggestions? What are your goals for 2022?
Someone recently pointed out that I should label my studies “web design” not “web development”. Now, this was not meant as a troll! But to better describe what I’m studying, and what I offer.
My coursework does NOT dive DEEP into code. Edmonds College does offer an associate’s degree with a similar title that does. That program includes two quarters of Java programming after the Introduction to Programming course I took. In addition, that program covers the same website coding elements I did: JavaScript, jQuery, and PHP. My program spends that time diving into design (two quarters of design). The design courses were what made this program interesting to me. I love studying design!
So, I’m quite happy with labelling myself a web designer vs a web developer. Actually, finding an accurate label for what I love, what I offer and what I “bring to the table” is exactly what I want. I don’t want potential employers to think I have a skill-set I don’t have. That doesn’t end well for anyone.
I was chatting with one of the baristas at my favorite local coffee shop earlier today. I like how she described her current, I guess I’d call it “focus”: the acquisition of skills. She’s gained barista skills, store manager skills, she’s now working on hair-dressing skills. There was far more to that, but you get the drift.
This describes much of my career life. I’ve loved learning, new skills, new business types, new business functions (you can see the range of work I’ve done over on my resume). I relish breadth of knowledge. However, I did get to a point where I wanted depth, to become an expert in something. Much of my mental effort over the past few years has been seeking that something.
As I love so much, and focus requires denying, saying “no”, this has been a painful challenge for me. But I’m making progress. I do have something of a focus now. Something.
When I started down this web-development path, I assumed that at the end I’d be good at making websites and, well, then I’d make websites. Oh, my goodness, no…it’s been far more than that. I’ve studied data systems, systems analysis and design, graphic design, programming, project managment…so many things, and I would argue I have explored databases and system analysis in more depth than I have HTML, CSS and JavaScript. So, even while refining my focus, my opportunities have expanded.
Back to my friend, and to anyone else out there in a similar place: there’s value in focus. Maybe, to start, just start compiling a list of what you want to study/learn. First, having a list is the first step in a plan. And having a written list makes it much more likely to happen. Also, you’ll start to see patterns. Within that will be the first inklings of a focus.
I’m working on the same. I’ve started journaling on paper again (I’m using a Leuchtturm 1917, if you’re interested). And that’s where I’m working on this sort of thing. Paper engages the brain differently, which I find important. It also slows me down (I type pretty darn fast). Right now, I’m focusing on the kinds of work I want to do. Do I want to code? Do I want to design? Do I want to dig into data? Manage projects? Figuring out these elements, I can then craft a plan to achieve them and build the next phase of my career.
Have you done anything like this? What do you think of this notion? Let me know!