Quality over quantity
Every year presents us with many unexpected events, both good and bad. The challenging part is preparing or responding to these events as things don't always go according to plan. This is the second article of a series where I share my journey as a Flutter Developer, I'll be reviewing my second year (2021). You can read the previous article here.
My approach to each year is to improve and become better in different areas from the previous year. Although my 2021 had as many ups and downs as Bitcoin, I'm happy that I was able to improve and made many needed adjustments.
How I got burned out 💀 (January - February)
Well, let's pick up from where we left off the previous year. At this particular time, I was promoted to lead mobile developer for a client project. Things seemed to be going well, bugs were being squished and features were being rolled out to production. But behind the scenes, company culture was becoming extremely toxic. It turns out that a lot of developers were owed salaries (including mine), as a result, I spoke to the boss to find out what issues there were concerning my pay. I was promised that it was going to be paid out soon, but that was a lie. A few days later, my work email was deleted and access to various repositories was revoked. So yeah, that was it. . . . No pay for several months and burnt out from working overtime.
Before I was laid off, I managed to work on a couple of UI design freelance projects for some clients. Hey, don't judge me, desperate times call for desperate measures, so I made a plan. Here's some of the work👇
The search for opportunities 🔍 (March)
Feeling unmotivated and discouraged, I spent a couple of weeks just resting and recovering from that experience. Managed to catch up on some shows I missed and didn't write or look at a single line of code. After my mental health improved, I slowly took steps to get back on track. That meant organizing my portfolio and reaching out to my network to find opportunities. Twitter was great for this, I had put out a tweet previously that I was looking for a new job and attached my portfolio with it.
I'm very grateful for the people that were supportive and looked out for me. One of my contacts reached out and introduced me to a Founder of a start-up that was looking for a Flutter developer. After a few emails and a call, I accepted the role as a contractor for the start-up. What a relief! Getting a new contract so quickly was a blessing and brought the opportunity for a complete reset. I changed my environment by moving into a new apartment and started coding again😃
New Contract Work - Tracto (April - December)
I experienced a lot of growth during my stint at Tracto. This was my first time working for a company that wanted to improve the life of its users. It was great to learn more about ADHD and the challenges that families face. Working on different features and solving problems helped me to get a better understanding of the Flutter framework and general software architecture. Some things I enjoyed working on were creating a visual pdf with graphs displaying info from our database and working on the teachable website for parent courses.
Eventually, my contract expired at the end of the year and I had to start looking for the next gig. The Founders at Tracto were amazing and very passionate about their cause. My eyes were also opened to the fact that not all employers are out to exploit their employees and can be very understanding about your circumstances. This was foreign to me as most of the Zimbabweans that I worked for were very demanding and took advantage of employees.
Lessons Learned
I had to take on another project during my contract to ease some financial pressure. However, I had to terminate the contract because the client became very overbearing and disrespectful. At this point, I made a vow to not work for a Zimbabwean company ever again, the stress and unappreciative treatment are not worth it. I'm sure there are good Zimbo employers out there, but the ones I've worked for never left a good impression on me.
Overall, 2021 was a year of growth, both professionally and in my personal life. Key lessons were:
For your mental health, work for people who value what you do and willing to compensate you for the skills that you bring to the table.
If you work as a freelancer/contractor, it is wise to save up to 3 - 6 months worth of expenses to cover you when you don't have any gigs to work on or if your contract gets terminated early. This gives you peace of mind and takes you out of a scarcity mindset that can lead you to just accept any gig that comes your way.
Your network is your net-worth. Always look for opportunities to expand your network and relationships. You never know where your next breakthrough will come from. I've found Twitter very useful in this area.
Take note of external factors that can affect your work and try to remedy them. Whether it's load shedding (electricity cuts) or doing chores around the house, find ways to get those things done so that they don't affect your productivity.
Your environment can have an impact on your productivity, moving to a different place and investing in your setup can bring huge benefits.
Moving Forward
All the hard work was finally paying off, learning from my mistakes and leaving the past in the past, I had renewed motivation to take things to the next level. At the end of 2021, the mobile team lead at a FinTech company noticed my work and reached out to me for an interview for a Flutter Developer role that opened up. Look out for the 2022 edition article of this series to see how it turned out ;)
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