Cheers to my journey in tech - Dev Retro 2022

Cheers to my journey in tech - Dev Retro 2022

With 2022 coming to an end, let's look back at how this year has been as a dev !

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4 min read

Starting as an intern

My start to this year was amazing, I got to work remotely in startups across the world as a web developer, learning so much more about React, GitHub, automation, stylings, and growing as a dev. In startups you don't have too much guidance tbh - so I explored by myself a lot and that developed my "what to google" skill. Can you believe, I even managed to break production on my first-ever internship lol?

Also thanks to remote work - I could work from any place, any time. Thus giving me equal time to learn and work. Following that, I did intern at a lot more startups, and companies from around the world as a web developer. All of them were remote, and I'm thankful to myself for the hard work, and God for the 1% luck.

Falling in love - Opensource

My Opensource journey has been amazing. After contributing much I got to be a mentor, judge, and project lead in so many Opensource events like GSSOC, MLH, SWOC, JGEC, SSOC, Diversion and helped over 10,000 students in their journey! These events have allowed me to give back to the open-source community, getting to teach, collaborate and learn all of it was an amazing experience!

I also have my Opensource project with 80+ contributors, maintaining the project was sometimes hard but thanks to the community it was not impossible. Over the year I managed to raise over 190 issues, the majority of them were based on Frontend, and some were me helping out projects with GitHub actions, templates, docs and so much more. I got to contribute to Shopify, Graphql-engine, Bagisto, Hackclub and so on. Opensource FTW!

Giving back to the community

Knowledge increases the more you share it. Through 2022 I've attended more than 20 online conferences, Twitter spaces, events, offline meetups, workshops and whatnot as a guest, speaker, host and just encouraging more folks in the world of tech. Not only do I get to learn from more folks around the world but also I get to help so many people around me with the problems I faced when I was starting in tech. It's much like a relay race sometimes - you keep passing on the baton of Knowledge. Tech is not competition, the more you collaborate the more you'll get to know kinds of stuff!

Freelancing, writing, speaking

Financial independence is something I aimed for in 2022, God has been good - I made it. Freelancing is tough, it's not "easy money" as some people would say. There's a lot of patience, hard work, and research that goes into it. From unpaid work to contracts (one of which was a 7-digit project) the journey was worth it.

Along with that writing blogs, threads, posts, and articles and also speaking as the guest speaker, host, and audience was such an improvement for me. I used to fumble a year ago if I was asked to speak. My interviews were full of loud heartbeats, sweat and panic. Thanks to the community for making writing, and public speaking so much fun.

Failures

While my journey over the last few years has been a roller coaster ride but it was worth it. I failed badly, so many times in so many different places. I lost a lot of opportunities but I learned. I was not so good with advanced react concepts, core javascript, docker and so much more. To be honest, all the interviews I failed taught me more about what else should i be working on to improve myself.

I did also face a lot of challenges, mental difficulties, and breakdowns. The year has been rough emotionally. Even I'd get jealous sometimes about how lucky my friends are to get into XYZ company though I know for a fact they are not better than me in terms of a "problem solver" - but it is what it is. Life is a book and there will be bad chapters of it. All we gotta do is turn the page, and move on.

Ending the year

โ€œYou are the greatest achievement of your own life.โ€ ~ Sarah Rees Brennan

From what I can tell - 2022 was a year where I got first-hand experience of all the things. From coding, tech, family, and relationships all the way to cooking it's been so much to look back at. 2023 will be a year full of challenges both in tech, as well as personal life. Oh, also I got locked out of twitter lol. Anyways, Happy new year to all of you in advance!

If you love what I do, consider following me on Hashnode, Twitter, and Linkedin. I'd be happier if you comment down your year in brief ๐Ÿ˜‰

BYE!

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