Senior developer, what do you look for in a junior Rails developer?

4 pointslists11y ago3 comments

I'll be shortly completeing a Rails app to help a friend implement his idea and another for a friend of his. Both are CRUD-focused with social/community orientations (read: sharing economy). I began my IT life desiging and developing static and wordpress sites in Chicago before coming to Portland to work with my friend and implement his idea in Rails. I've greatly enjoyed the experience and am constantly keeping up with new patterns and techniques and am now wondering if I'm at the point to solicit for junior developer positions.

To the working engineers out there, what know-how and qualities are you looking for in your junior developer?

A final note, I plan on sanitizing and posting these projects on Github soon as well, but wonder if that's enough of a resume. I'm also aware this is a frequent question on Hn, but feel there are always peculiarities on the side of the asker and answerer that may be lost in merely researching prior threads (which I've been collecting as well).

3 comments

3 comments · 2 top-level

timrosenblatt11y ago· 1 in thread

Yes, you are good enough. Go apply, and never stop learning.

A more helpful answer: yes, if you've successfully done what you just said you did, you are absolutely good enough to apply for jobs. You might not get the first one, you might not get the second, but even if you don't get a job, you'll get information about what companies in your area expect (and there are very important regional differences).

Find Ruby meetups in your area. Go to them. There are many reasons why this is valuable. Trust me.

Make sure you know the libraries out there that people are using. https://www.ruby-toolbox.com/ is helpful.

Make sure you know a bunch of other programmers. Everyone gets stuck sometimes, being able to know who to turn to is important in any discipline.

Keep writing code, and keep publishing code. Practice good coding style, and ask other people for feedback.

mostlybadfly11y ago

Just came across this, thank you. Self teaching myself now and constantly worrying about having x number of pages/apps going to show I know what I'm doing.

rcoder11y ago

First: if you're building sites that people are using, you are officially a "junior web developer". That's especially true if you're deploying and supporting those sites.

Second: PDX.rb is a friendly, knowledgeable group. Find them on calagator.org and go to some meetups. They'll absolutely help.

I don't really do Ruby or Rails any more so I can't offer much more concrete help than that, but welcome to Portland regardless.