After graduating into the pandemic, I used the transitional time to teach myself software development. Having recently continued training on a development team, I’ve noticed a significant acceleration in learning, and therefore career progression.
There are a few aspects that have remained the same in my new position, such as working from home, but many have changed drastically. Whilst self-taught, online resources such as Stack Overflow, YouTube and LinkedIn Learning made my entire curriculum. These are still incredibly useful, but I am now able to reap the rewards of peer-to-peer learning; this is where the crux of progression mostly comes from.
In peer-to-peer learning, not only can you gain knowledge from each other, but in explaining your own methods you cement the retention of your learning. At WayMaker Digital, we have been using the Scrum framework to aid our teamwork. Within this, self-organisation is key to accomplish goals. Peer-to-peer learning fits this environment perfectly, as it allows co-workers to develop timelines together to complete a project. This further facilitates the transfer of knowledge as all team members contribute their areas of research and development to make a cohesive outcome.
Meetings with people from different departments have given structure to my day. These provide valuable perspectives on the same project and allow us to fully flesh out our approach and discuss implementation. Besides hard skills in software development, this element of peer-to-peer learning has progressed soft skills, such as finding a compromise for a team and utilising a wide range of ideas.
The best way to learn in software development is to do. Writing code and creating projects is by far the best way to improve and start understanding best practices. Every day is a learning opportunity. As a team, we completed many small side projects before embarking on our current task to optimise our working style. After habituating myself to the peer-to-peer learning style, I was able to more efficiently develop all skill sets, further setting me up for success in my new career.
Elliot works as a full-stack software developer at WayMaker Digital, helping clients to solve business and technology challenges.
WayMaker Digital provides technology consulting, product design and information products, that enable our clients to consistently thrive and innovate to meet user needs. The quality of our experiences and ideas set us apart when it comes to service delivery, customer experience design and product development.
Our team of consultants have built digital experiences for leading brands with complex business scenarios ranging from startup companies to public services and from telecoms to e-commerce; no project deliverable is too complex.
Our approach: we adopt human-centred & design thinking models to solve complex business challenges, which ensure our clients are on top of their business.
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