 What is going on everyone? Welcome to my channel. My name is Jocelyn Jay and in today's video I want to talk about my experience as a 24 year old software engineer And my goal in this video is to share my experiences and my journey as someone who is a pretty recent college grad I graduated college 8 April of 2018 and I've had three summer internships and I also had experience working at a Smaller software company under 5,000 people and now working at a much larger information technology company You can think of my software journey and really four parts an undergraduate curriculum All right, so right now I have it's good, bro. How you doing? Right now I have a little break. So just gonna get some more work done Got a programming assignment how cliche right the summer internships full-stack development at a smaller software company And now front-end development at a much larger information technology company I think four parts is the wrong way of thinking of it think of it as four stages because they all built off of each other So when looking at my undergraduate curriculum in computer science Don't think about just software development and software engineering because computer science covers the breadth of computing technologies including the development of analysis software mobile development algorithms Digital logic computer graphics Internet engineering databases and the list goes on you study computer science You have a huge range of career opportunities I know a lot of people just think of the software development path Which is the typical path for people who major in computer science because a lot of times you want to become a software developer So you pursue a computer science degree? However, there are other career paths such as you know computer software Networking consulting you can work in insurance or banking amongst other things my undergraduate career I focused a lot on mathematics Introduction to software development and design with C++ Which was a major pain as a matter of fact I had to withdraw from my first intro to computer science course And the reason being is because I really just didn't understand file IO not just file IO But I just had trouble grasping the concept of using functions and Classes and how all those pieces come together and when looking back at it. I'm glad I withdrew from that class There was a possibility I could pass it, but I figured it wasn't worth getting a D Especially when I was on scholarship and needed to have at least a 2.75 GPA To keep that scholarship and there was no way I was gonna put that in jeopardy I also took computer ethics and I took a couple calculus courses and I took chemistry So when you major in computer science and specifically an accredited computer science degree program You have to take a lot of math and you have to take a lot of science. I took Calc one. I took Calc two I took linear algebra. I took discrete mathematics I took chemistry a sequence of plant biology and I took geology Don't ask why it was second semester senior year And I just wanted to get the science elective over with junior year was probably my favorite year because I took Data structures and I also took software tools and then fast forward to senior year Senior year was fun. It was pretty stressful though because I took like 20-something credit hours and I luckily I was blessed to already have had a job offer in like August But I didn't accept it. I told them that I was basically not gonna accept it until I Explore other opportunities and I actually had the opportunity of interviewing in San Francisco For Pinterest I made it to the final round. I didn't get the job But that was okay It was a great experience and I end up accepting a role at the company I interned at for three summers and I'm really glad I took that opportunity to accept a full-time opportunity At a place that I intern at because it helped me a lot, especially Transitioning into a full-time development role. No, I talked a lot about my undergraduate curriculum But I just want to talk about my internships real quick. So for the first summer, I worked on a C sharp desktop Application for education even though I was in health care. That was weird, but I got exposure to front-end development I remember wanting to switch majors because I just got sick of computer science However, my internship helped helped expose me to the many different career opportunities that computer science Provides and one of them was front-end development. Yes I was doing full-stack software development as an intern But I was exposed to being able to work on the front end My second internship was more or less the same building a C sharp WPF application But this time it was an internal application for QA So basically software testers to use to be able to like retrieve documents. It was called man I can't remember. I'm sorry. I had exposure to working in a more scrum setting. So I had a software tester I had another developer and I worked with a product owner third internship was actually the most fun because I've Got exposure to web development Which is something that I do on a daily basis now and is something that I love and we basically built a Application that scans other web apps and websites to determine if they are compliant with WCAG Standards and think of it this way It would scan a website or web application and determine if it is accessible to people who are visually impaired That was a really fun application to build because I really felt like I was giving back my building and web Accessibility tool, but I also learned how much fun building websites are now fast forward to starting full-time software development now transitioning to full-time software development was it was cool I guess the most fun part was making full-time money right making a lot more money So that was great training for like a month And it was kind of stressful because you can't get to your desk until you pass these tests that would certify you and the product that Hyland built and That was cool. I really didn't like it too much because I figured hey I don't need to know a ton about this flagship product because I knew I wasn't really gonna ever work on that product But looking back at it it made sense because our product interacted with that flagship Product and you really want to understand and know your product But I did want to start you know day one by learning, you know a new programming language Or you know at least day seven learning a new programming language instead of being in training But that was okay. I was able to meet other people in other departments, which was really cool I met like this one dude who was a manager who's supposed to be a manager And he actually is from like Sydney, Australia So I was really cool and I grew relationships with other people who were starting their journey as full-time employees as software developers Consultants and that was great because we end up building this bond and we're still friends to this day Now when it came to going to my desk and learning how to code some days would be mundane because I wasn't working in Production and I needed to learn the co-base and we were in a phase of Modernizing our products to angular products and making everything kind of look the same Transitioning desktop applications or modernizing desktop applications to web applications So what I did was I said hey, I have design experience. I have some web development experience Let me take on some of these like Research tasks research stories and see what I could build and I remember building a prototype that was functional It didn't have any it wasn't connected to any server-side stuff But it was an angular application that was an example of how we can transition our Desktop legacy applications to a more modernized Framework because I took that opportunity upon myself when we reorganized I had the opportunity to say hey, I want to work on modern products And the reason why I want to work on them is because I understand how to code an angular I understand web development and design and that allowed me to actually work on a new product That's implemented with AngularJS at the time and was going to be modernized to like Angular 7 and because I took the Initiative that's one thing you're gonna definitely need to do is take the initiative on things because it shows passion And it shows that you're dedicated to whatever is put in front of you or even taking on tasks That aren't in front of you and that maybe other people aren't interested in doing so having optimism and taking the initiative Can take you a long way because I'm so glad I wasn't put on a team that was working on like a C sharp C plus Plus application because some of my friends were working on those applications and they were really boring and that's fine as an Entry-level developer. You're not gonna always work on the product that you want to work on There are levels to this right also They're growing pains and learning curve and all that stuff, which is fine Like sometimes you'll look back and be glad that you learn something that you didn't want to learn because how valuable it is Like at the time being studying computer science I wasn't miserable, but it was tough and I thought a lot of the things that I was doing was stupid and dumb And why not code in C sharp but now looking back at it? I'm so glad that I learned how to code in C plus plus Python did parallel computing built linked list instead of just using Built-in libraries and not understanding what's underneath the hood after about a few months really six months I really felt confident in my code I started taking on more tasks that were interactive with the user hence like front-end not necessarily front-end development because I Did do a lot of C sharp work Specifically like debugging to see if the service that I'm even calling is even getting caught and if I'm populating the right data And if I'm sending the right shape to the service so I can get the right data Decided to leave the previous company I was at not because I didn't enjoy because I really did enjoy the work I was doing and I enjoyed I really enjoyed the people that I was around I still hang out with my friends from My previous employer and I even played basketball on a basketball league with them and all that good stuff but I wanted to focus on front-end development and They didn't really have that they just have really full stack development And I wanted to actually pursue a front-end role because I knew that was what I'm passionate about when I was 19 years old I knew I wanted to do front-end development remember I talked about I wanted to continue pursuing computer science Because of front-end development so now I work as a digital front-end developer And I don't just do front-end development I do a little bit of app development as well and I specifically work in marketing So I really do whatever is thrown my what I really enjoy about my job now is that I Can pick really whatever Programming language I want when it comes to building, you know a website or an application Yes, there are other projects that I'm working on where there's already a code base That's great because I get a chance to work in a large code base and work with a bunch of developers that working at code base But I also have opportunity to work on projects where I'm really the only developer on it or I work on like 90% of the work and I make the technical decisions and I enjoy that so much Because it allows me to grow as a developer instead of just like leaning on someone who is a senior developer That says hey use this programming language this library and this is how you do it Which is great, but at some point in time you're gonna want to make those decisions yourself and learn from your mistakes so now I work in a much much faster pace work environment and The priority changes all the time and it's cool because that's how industry works That's how technology works You have problems that arise and you solve them and sometimes you're working on one product and the next moment You're working on another product and maybe it's a totally different programming language But that's cool because I'm continuously growing as a developer learning new frameworks learning programming languages And I'm also having leadership experience where I'm the tech lead the technical lead on this working with designers And they say hey, this is what we design you build it how you want to build it and I'm like yes That's all I ask so that's my experience as a 24 year old software developer Software engineer whatever you want to call it and I would say my experience is probably a lot more than most Solely because I had three internships and decided to leave the company I was working at after a year and a half of full-time software development And I felt confident in making that leap because I intern at that previous company for three summers So I knew what I wanted and I'm very happy with the decision I made working in a faster pace and working on a lot more Projects a lot more products that are actually customer-facing like consumer products, which has been great And I'm learning a lot. I'm only 24. I have so much more to learn and that concludes this video I hope you all enjoyed it comment down below some of your thoughts and some other videos that you all want to see Since I have so much more time on my hands. I want to make sure that I'm putting out more content So share with someone who you think might benefit from it give it a thumbs up if you liked it at all and as always stay blessed I'm praying that your families and friends are staying healthy. I'll see you all soon. Peace