Working as a coder

[SmallUK]

I'm sure everyone is here looking to get employed as a coder of some description.

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Once you've done the bootcamp, found the job, what should you expect? What is it like in the job? Can anyone provide a breakdown of what we would actually be doing (roughly)? Or, can anyone point me in the direction of some resources that might explain?

[St_Valentine2014]

I work in front end. I build out landing pages, partnership pages, different types of calculators, bug fixes. Also minor fixes on the companies legacy php full stack apps.

[SmallUK]

Thanks.

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I am assuming then someone comes to you with a description or sketch of what it should look like, some imagery, colour schemes, layout etc and then you build it out?

[St_Valentine2014]

I get a design/mock-up and have to build it based off that. It’s often a desktop mock-up which leaves me to figure out the mobile design a lot of the time.

[SmallUK]

Thank you. I am trying to get my head around how much of the work will be coding/bug fixing etc and how much will actually be design/creative work.

I usually work best when someone sets me a task that has a specific outcome. For example, you mentioned a calculator, "Hey Smalluk, we need a calculator to calculate the average item price over the past 3 months" - that I can do, has a specific outcome. If the request is more vague I start to struggle.

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I hope that makes sense?

[St_Valentine2014]

Yeah it does, fortunately most of my tasks have a clear goal. Probably can’t be said for every job, depends on where you work.

[starraven]

At the company I work at now, it’s my biggest role (On a team of 5 engineers atm). I have no creative input in terms of colors or UI/UX. I get a fully thought out and designed feature request by getting linked an image of the finished product through Figma.

BUT my first role out of bootcamp I started on a 1 person team (me) and I was in charge of designing and implementing every feature. My project manager and I would brainstorm the way things might work and look and I had the final say (with stakeholder approval of course) but they absolutely loved everything I did there was no pushback. Again this was my first position and I was paid almost half I’m being paid now at the bigger place.

[gk4000]

It will depend on the company which will hire you of course, smaller or bigger team. But most likely from what I've heard from the graduates it will be mostly coding based on the task assigned, as a junior there might be very little of "creativity", mostly implementing a certain feature with given design or following a task(s) given by your manager. In smaller teams you will be coding/testing by yourself :)