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All right, hi guys! This is so strange for me. I'm usually used to being the one sitting in the audience rather than being on stage. If you didn't guess, this is my first talk. So anyway, did everyone enjoy the after-party last night? Are you as tired as I am? Because I'm exhausted.
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My name is Katelyn Hertel, and I'm here to speak to you about how to make it as a junior developer and stay sane. This talk is a little less technical than some of the others, but I'm here to remind you that we're all human. We might code 24/7 and be in front of a computer all day every day, but we are human. We need to treat ourselves like humans and take care of ourselves to succeed.
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Before I continue, with a show of hands, how many of you would consider yourselves to be beginners in the tech industry or junior developers? All right. And how many of you would consider yourselves to be senior developers or involved in management? A lot more; cool! Okay, so this talk is actually kind of for both groups of people. It's a little focused on junior developers, but at the end of my slides, I'm going to actually talk to the senior developers and managers in the room about how they can help the junior developers to succeed.
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We want our junior developers to succeed in order to have our team be successful. Let's start with a quote: "You don't have to learn to walk by following rules. You learn by doing and falling over," by Richard Branson. This quote is here to remind us that everything is not always going to run smoothly. Sometimes we're going to fail, sometimes we're going to fall, and sometimes we're going to get overwhelmed and burn out. That's what happened to me, and it is my story about how I picked myself back up and kept going.
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My name is Katelyn Hertel, I live and work in New York City. I work for a company called NewsCred, where I'm a Customer Support Engineer (CSE). I love dogs and I travel the world. In fact, I just got back from an orphanage in Bolivia where I was teaching code using MIT Scratch program. It was really successful, and by the end of the two weeks in my classes, I had some of the orphans teaching for me. If you're interested in the MIT Scratch program, come see me later and I'll explain all about it. It's a great program, and you can find me on Twitter at @CaitersToTaters—I'm very responsive there, so feel free to reach out.
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Now, how did I get here? I studied history and classical studies at Seton Hall University, but I quickly realized that learning ancient Greek and Latin was not going to get me very far in life, and there’s not a big career path for that. I talked to some friends and family, and people pointed me in the direction of tech. I decided to do the tech bootcamp Bloc.io, where I studied Ruby on Rails. I did this in February of 2016, and during that time, I met my mentor and best friend, Brittany Martin.
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Brittany Martin is an angel. I think it's very important for all of us to have mentors in our lives, and Brittany has always been there for me. She helps me with technology, she helps me with life, and she was there for me when I was definitely burning out and ready to quit.
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Before I continue, I mentioned that I work for a company called NewsCred. NewsCred is a global leader in enterprise content marketing. Content marketing is a strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing valuable and relevant content. What does that actually mean? Basically, we distribute content in all forms of media through either original or licensed content. Original content is written by our NewsCred team, and licensed content comes from any one of our 2,800 publishers like the New York Times. These articles can be published on your blog, WordPress, or website.
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We also do CMS design, and we have our own platform which we maintain. If there's ever a customer that comes to us with a bug report or something went down, that’s where CSEs come in; we fix all the problems. We also drive product adoption, help with integrations, and assist with onboarding new customers to the platform. Let’s talk about my first job because this is where I hit burnout status, which is kind of what this talk is about.
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I worked for a Content Distribution Network (CDN). Basically, what a CDN does is if you type in a request, like 'twitter.com', the request goes to the server, and we sit between the server and the request, caching the content. This makes it faster and cheaper. I got hired three weeks before graduating from my bootcamp, and I started my first job in May of 2016. I did about two weeks of training in San Francisco, and as soon as I got back to New York, I got the opportunity to work on two big projects: IPv6 and HTTP/2. I was so excited! Here I was, brand new to this world with zero experience, and I got these two big projects.
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But I had no idea how much work was involved. I had to send out hundreds of invites to beta testing, open countless tickets, and on-board anyone interested in these two projects. That was a lot of work on top of being hired as a Customer Support Engineer. By August, I hit burnout status, and I hit it very hard. In September, I was convinced that I was going to quit.
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I knew something had to change, and these are the steps that I took to turn it all around: I learned to ask for advice, I managed my time better, I spoke up when something didn't feel right, and I learned to say no. I also set goals and started taking care of myself. These might seem obvious or self-explanatory, but sometimes we get caught up in our everyday jobs and lives that we forget these simple steps, so I’m here to remind you.
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Let’s start with asking for help or advice. It’s really hard, and I think it’s hard for everyone in any profession. For me, I was afraid that my questions were stupid and would make me sound uneducated. I was a junior developer surrounded by senior developers, and asking a senior developer a question was really scary. However, I learned and accepted that in technology, there are no dumb or stupid questions. At the end of the day, we have deadlines, code that needs to be submitted, and bugs that have to be fixed. Asking questions to reach your end-of-the-day goal is not stupid; in fact, it makes you seem eager to learn.
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Also, power poses work for me when in doubt. When I got frustrated or lost confidence, I would literally march to the bathroom, striking a power pose. It might look silly, but it helps. Any pose that makes you feel confident, proud, or bigger can help. As you can see, my voice gets more confident when I talk about this—it works!
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So the next one is better time management. Initially, I thought I was excellent at time management, but I was barely staying afloat. I thought I could keep track of everything in my head, but I was missing deadlines, appointments, and even social time with friends. Eventually, I discovered time blocking. Time blocking can be done on any calendar app; I personally love Google Calendar, which I use both at work and in my personal life.
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Time blocking means scheduling specific amounts of time to work on each task you need to accomplish during the day. This method can help ensure that you complete everything by the end of the day. If time blocking isn’t your thing, I would suggest making a to-do list so you can physically cross off tasks. There’s something very satisfying about crossing things off a list, and managing your time is one of the keys to success.
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The next part is not being afraid to speak up when something doesn’t feel right. No one deserves to be miserable in their job, and if you feel something isn't right, it's probably not. Talk to your bosses, co-workers, or anyone on your team you trust. Let them know what's happening, even if you’re simply feeling overwhelmed. Speak up; someone will help.
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My problem was that I didn’t speak up right away. I found out that my managers didn’t even know what projects I was working on; they thought I was just failing at my job. But when I finally spoke up and expressed my concerns, things got infinitely better for me. Learning to say no is also essential. As a new junior developer, it’s easy to say yes to every opportunity, but sometimes we need to say no.
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Let’s practice that. Ready? One, two, three—no! See? That wasn’t hard. It’s easy to say no when it comes to tasks that are unreasonable. Like when someone asks, 'Can you send out 200 invites by tomorrow?' you can say, 'No.' As much as we want to take on everything, we really can’t, and we shouldn’t be ashamed to say so.
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Find a success story within your company to use as motivation. This is Peter; he's my manager at NewsCred. He started as a CSE just like me and worked incredibly hard. He was one of the only members of the team at that time managing the entire support company. Just eight months later, he was named head of support and now runs a team of six spread between New York and Bangladesh. I use Peter as motivation every day; he shows that progress is possible.
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Now, Peter is the ideal manager. He sits close to me and if I need help, he rolls his chair over and answers my questions. It’s everything I could ask for in a manager. Another thing is to set short and long-term goals. Short-term goals could be for a day, a week, or a month. They should help dictate what you do daily and get you closer to your long-term goals.
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Long-term goals could be for a year or even a lifetime and should paint a big picture of your life overall. For example, my short-term goals include answering 15 support tickets a week, getting at least two good ratings each week, implementing tech check-ins, and learning JavaScript because I'm not very good at it.
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Tech check-ins are really helpful for junior developers. It’s a weekly meeting with your manager to discuss a specific topic that you find challenging or uncomfortable. You discuss that topic, then implement what you learned in the following week. This can really help boost both your confidence and your relationship with your manager.
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My long-term goals involve climbing the career ladder and eventually moving towards technical consulting within six months. Ultimately, I would love to become a product manager, but I know that’s somewhere down the line for me. I also want to have a family and be happy, just like I think everyone here wants to be.
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It’s important to take care of yourself, especially when the workday ends and you're not on call. Put your computer away, disconnect, and turn notifications off, especially on weekends and during vacations. I often see people checking Slack or emailing while on vacation, and I will yell at them because they need to relax. Remember to take time for things you love—it’s essential.
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Meditating, having a spa day, hitting the gym, reading a book, or learning something new are all great ways to treat yourself. Do something for yourself that makes you happy at least once a week, if not more, because remember, you come first.
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So this is the part meant for senior developers and managers. We talked about asking for help and advice. You need to listen to your junior developers when they ask for advice, and it’s crucial that you share your knowledge with them. Help them manage their time better by prioritizing the tasks you give them, letting them know what’s most important.
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When junior developers express something is wrong, listen and offer help because they aren't going to approach you with trivial things. If they come to you, it's likely something significant and they trust you to guide them through it. Allow your junior developers to say no when they feel overwhelmed and praise them for doing so—this is very important since they have a lot on their plate and are learning everything at once.
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Be the success story that they look up to and set an example for them. Help guide them in setting goals as many junior developers may not know what they want to do with their lives. This is where you can help, giving them options and paths they can take. Also, ensure they aren’t pushing themselves too hard and encourage them to take care of themselves.
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So remember, everyone needs to have good relationships in the workplace. Junior devs, your higher-ups are there to help you; they have knowledge to share because they were once in your position and want you to succeed. They hired you for a reason, so remember that. No matter what happens, you've got this. Any questions?