Liam is our Junior Shopify Developer, and has been with Ecrubox since January this year. We wanted to sit down with Liam to hear about how (and why) he got into development. Liam is early on in his career, so we thought it would be important to hear his advice for anyone looking to pursue a career in development.
How did you get into web development?
I did computing at college and at University I did a few programming modules. I did physics, but there was a bit of coding in there and then towards the end of my course, I found I was really enjoying those programming modules more than any of the research or physics based work I was doing.
Then lockdown happened and I used that time to start learning web development languages, such as HTML, CSS and JavaScript. I also used freeCodeCamp, which is an interactive learning web platform intended to make learning software development accessible to anyone. It gives you credits and certificates for completing their modules and courses. I got some of their certifications and from there I applied for a developer job at Wren Kitchens which was a more JavaScript based role.
After Wren, I got a job working on the Shopify side of development, and then I found my way to Ecrubox.
How is life as a developer at Ecrubox?
I’m really enjoying it. I’ve been on mostly larger projects which has been a great experience. The work is very dynamic and sometimes I won’t know what I’m working on each week until our daily team meetings - it keeps you on your toes!
Some of the tasks I work on include reskinning and creating new pages, making sure apps are working properly, site speed improvements, to name a few.
What do you enjoy most about your job?
I really like the problem solving aspect of the job, it’s very satisfying. If you’re stuck on something for a while and you can overcome it, that's always a good feeling. And I also really like that I can work from home (or anywhere). This job allows me to be fully flexible, and I really enjoy that aspect too.
There are always new things to learn. I’m not doing the same thing every day.
What advice would you give to someone who is thinking of getting into web development?
Try and get certificates from a site like freeCodeCamp. Also, getting a bit of a portfolio together too would be very important even if it's little coding projects or website builds if you can.
Having good problem solving skills is also important to the role and being able to quickly learn new things and adapt. If you want to know if it's for you, there are a lot of YouTube tutorials you could watch and follow along. You can pick up some basic skills that way.
What are the common misconceptions around web developers?
That we will be able to fix your printer! I definitely can’t help you there!
So, what do the next 5 years look like for you and your career?
I’m not too sure yet. I really want to expand my knowledge as at the moment it's very Shopify focused. So I would like to learn about some other areas and hopefully progress to a mid level developer.
