Doors I Walked Through to Reach DEV

Table of Contents

• Knock, Knock: The First Domino
• The Numbers and a Plot Twist
• How Did I End Up Here?
• Door #1: Let Go for Being Too Good
• Door #2: The Interview I Tried to Write in C++
• Door #3: The Call
• Door #4: The Community I Didn't Know I Needed
• Door #5: The Register Button
• The Door I'm Standing In Now

Knock, Knock: The First Domino

A few months ago, my DEV buddy @francistrdev invited me to join DEVengers. Of course, I accepted. It's a great team full of cool folks, they're all stars and it's a real honor to be among them.

The thing is, a team like this only stays alive if people keep showing up and writing. This is my first post under DEVengers, so I wanted it to be special: easy to read, but with some depth. Consider it the first domino. I'm knocking it over, and I fully expect the rest of the team to follow. (No pressure, folks.)

The Numbers and a Plot Twist

So here I am: thousands of followers, almost 50 articles, 2 hackathon wins, 6 Top 7 of the Week features, and that's only scratching the surface of what I've accomplished since I joined this amazing community.

You might think I've been creating content here for years. Nuh-uh. It's been just a year and a half since I started writing for real.

Here's the twist: I first heard about DEV back in 2017. Yes, some of you were probably still in high school. That was also around the time I started my professional software engineering career. A year later, in 2018, I registered.

So basically I bought the ticket in 2018 and boarded the train seven years later.

How Did I End Up Here?

To be honest, there's no funny story about how I discovered DEV. No viral post, no friend or colleague dragging me in.

So instead, I'm going to do what Ted Mosby did in How I Met Your Mother TV show. He sat his kids down to tell them how he met their mother, and ended up telling them his entire life story first.

So grab a seat, fellow devs. This is the story of how I met DEV, and all the doors I had to go through before I finally stepped through this one.

Don't worry, though. Unlike Ted, I promise it won't take nine seasons.

Door #1: Let Go for Being Too Good

Before I landed my first job as a junior software engineer, I worked in network and IT support while studying at university.

Yeah, that's the reality in my home country. You can't just focus on your studies and then glide smoothly into a job. Most students are broke as hell, and I definitely was one of them. Even with a job, I barely had enough money for public transport and food.

At first, the job was fine. It paid (a little), and it left me enough time for my studies. But the longer I stayed, the more I realized how much I hated it. I still performed like crazy, because that's just who I am. I don't know how to do things halfway, even things I can't stand.

And then I was let go. The reason? I was "overqualified", according to the CEO, or whatever he called himself.

Back then, I was angry and stressed. In hindsight, maybe he was right. And to be honest, I'm glad he did that, because that's what finally pushed me toward the software engineering job I'd been dreaming about. The last thing I wanted was to get stuck there.

Turns out, sometimes a door opens because someone kicks you out of another one.

Door #2: The Interview I Tried to Write in C++

A cold winter day. I'm sitting in a university building, not much warmer than the street outside, pretending to be a student. Well, technically I was a student, just not at that building of the university.

I was there because the building was close to the office where I had an interview and a coding assignment. And me being me, I showed up almost an hour early. It was freezing, and I didn't have the money to sit in a McDonald's, so the university building became my shelter. At least my brain wouldn't freeze. I was going to need it.

I was nervous as hell. Being a junior developer trying to break into the industry is brutal. You know you're not that good, and you're convinced everyone expects you to be great. It's nerve-wracking.

Then it was time. I walked into the office, and they pointed me to a desk where I'd spend the next hour and a half or so solving five coding problems.

In C#...

I didn't even know how to declare a property in C#. Then I saw something like this:

public int Total { get; set; }

I figured it had something to do with getters and setters. I knew getters and setters... but in C++, where you write them out explicitly. What on earth was this?!

"Alright, Giorgi, that's it. It's over. It's all over, there goes your hopes of becoming a developer" I thought.

I was close to giving up. Instead, I worked up the courage to interrupt my future co-workers, who were clearly busy with their own work:

"Umm... excuse me. I know this is C#, and I have some basic knowledge of it, but most of my classes were in C++. Can I possibly write the solutions in C++?"

You can't imagine my relief when they said the language didn't matter. Oh god.

I solved four of the five problems, clean. I couldn't get the fifth one running, but I explained my approach and they seemed fine with it.

I walked out of that office completely drained. I was sure they'd never call me back, and I was already looking at other companies.

Door #3: The Call

About a week later, my phone rang.

-"Hello?"
-"Hello. Is this Giorgi?"
-"Yes?"
-"You completed an assignment at our company. If you're still interested, we'd really like to talk to you. Could you come to our office?"

They wanted to meet me in person. That could only mean one thing: they were interested. If it were a rejection, they'd have just told me over the phone. I was so hyped.

I went in, we talked everything through, and they offered me a salary that was even lower than what I'd made at my previous job.

BUT WHO CARED?

I would've taken even less. A whole ocean of the industry was waiting behind that door, with SO MANY OPPORTUNITIES and I'd have walked through it. That's exactly what I needed - the opportunities.

I left the meeting and immediately called my mom. What I said to her is what I now call the turning point of my life:

"Hey Mom, your son is officially a software engineer. How cool is that?"

Door #4: The Community I Didn't Know I Needed

The first few months were extremely tough. My goal was to make software engineering part of who I was and to be good at everything. That stressed me out. Not the hard work itself, but the constant feeling that I wasn't as good as I wanted to be. I was decent, but I wanted to be much, much better, which is impossible with just a few months of experience. You can only do so much in that time.

I didn't really have friends to share that stress with, since I was fully dedicated to work (well I don't really have dozens of friends even now, but I don't really care to be honest), my only escape was a few hours of gaming on weekends.

The only developer community I knew back then was Stack Overflow, which, as you can imagine, is famously the friendliest place on the internet, especially for juniors... this is sarcasm, by the way.

I was looking for somewhere I could find people with the same struggles, read good technical articles, and feel like I wasn't the only one in this madness.

I can't recall exactly how I found DEV or which article brought me there, but I remember how fascinated I was. People discussed topics without trying to prove they were better than everyone else. No attitude. Just a welcoming place. I found so many interesting articles and great authors. It was like finding treasure. One Saturday, I spent the entire day at my laptop, reading article after article.

"That's exactly what I need in my life", I thought.

Door #5: The Register Button

I didn't feel worthy of registering, let alone writing a comment, and an article was completely out of the question. I thought that was something only seasoned masters did.

I was so wrong.

Finally, sometime in 2018, I registered, thinking I might join a discussion or two. I'd occasionally send articles to my coworkers, and they loved them too. That's when DEV became my go-to place for reading whenever I had some free time.

Back then, I set myself a long-term goal: to become one of the best writers on this platform. Maybe in ten years or so.

The Door I'm Standing In Now

I can't call myself one of the best here. The competition is way too strong. But I think my 21-year-old self would be proud. I finally learned to write about my personal projects, tech analysis, AI, career, everything, and to inspire others to grind more, build more, and show their work to the world.

Truth be told, I'm doing all this for that young fella who was almost too anxious to ask if he could solve the problems in C++ instead of C#, and too broke to sit in a McDonald's to warm up on a freezing winter day.

And boy, am I just getting started.

And that, fellow devs, is how I met the DEV Community.

Let's stay connected!

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The DEVengers Have Unfinished Business

They were scattered across the world, their names whispered only in legend, until the day the darkness returned and the DEVengers answered.