As a mostly self-taught web developer, one of the biggest challenges was finding people to work with as a team. When I started my coding journey in earnest I was focused on Hack Reactor's program and believed in the success of their model.
When I left Hack Reactor I felt confident in finding all of the resources I would need to deeply learn Full Stack Javascript development, and I did...mostly. Finding available teammates with similar skillsets and available time has been one of those problems that I knew would be tricky, but I had no idea HOW difficult it would be.
Yes, I've heard all the advice about finding bugs on GitHub to make fixes for, correcting ReadMe's, or volunteering to help an existing project elsewhere, but everything I ran across seemed out of my experience level. Perhaps I should have picked something and stuck with it. Ignoring the discomfort, and learning through it regardless. But, perhaps, I approached the problem with too high of an expectation on myself.
Imposter-syndrome sapping the walls of my confidence.
A number of months ago, a developer at a MeetUp made the suggestion of Chingu. I listened, thought it sounded almost too good to be true, and then became very skeptical when it involved paying about $30/month to be placed with a team and guided through the experience. Surely it can't be that easy. There had to be some catch. Some scam?
But as time went on and new connections continued to not mesh up with me for the kind of pair-coding, or team project that I needed, I realized I had to give Chingu a try.
And now, after 6 weeks, I wish I had tried it months ago.
I should give a full breakdown of the experience, but that will need to be another post.
(If you're familiar with Hack Reactor, you may be aware they have a mentor, of sorts, that you work with. Well...I was never able to find a mentor on my own. Not yet. They do exist, and I was focused on finding someone in my social network for free, but in the end it looks like I should have just found a mentor-for-hire.)
Top comments (5)
If you write a full breakdown of the experience, please let me know. We can add it to the Chingu publication if you'd like!
Finally finished the retrospective, I'd be pleased if you shared.
I'd tag you in the comments of the post, but maybe that isn't possible here. So the post is over at: dev.to/cliftonhill/project-retrosp...
Woooo! Happy to see your post Clifton :)
We've been experimenting with different ways we can introduce mentorship.
Great article Clifton...I can't wait for more!
Finished the post finally: dev.to/cliftonhill/project-retrosp...