Dev Retro 22: From COVID to Success

In this part, we're going to take a look at all challenges, concerns, and more importantly, all stressful moments that I experienced during 2022. It's been a tough year for me. I had to start my technical career working remotely!

Of course, COVID brought so much stress to everyone's life and forced everything to become remotely accessible.

Let's be fair. Unfortunately, although COVID took so many lives including one of my dearest friends, it taught us a great lesson and that was Flexibility. In another word, expecting the unexpected. Lots of our plans changed because of a simple sneeze. isn't it?! Lots of our trips were canceled just because of the pandemic. Lots of decisions changed.

Started My Career Remotely

We have been dealing with COVID since 2019. We all passed through tough situations. I was not enough experienced in working yet. In 2022, I applied for my first job interview. It was an office job at first but a massive COVID wave turned it into a remote job unexpectedly. I had no idea what a REMOTE JOB is going to look like under the heavy atmosphere of the lockdown and how I was supposed to collaborate remotely! Frankly, that was a huge shock to me.

Thanks to COVID, I experienced my first-ever job, remotely. I could've collaborated with my co-workers at the office.. meet them in person but yea. I chose to learn that COVID lesson other than meeting my first teammates in person. Life never goes the way we want!

COVID Taught Me Flexibility

I'm not going to talk about the politicals since I'm not a politician but COVID did teach us a great lesson I truly believe. Always be ready for unexpected incidents. Your plan always might change. There is always a probability of change. I had never expected to start my first-ever job experience remotely even when I was attaching my resume but COVID made this happen!

COVID forced me to change my expectations, my schedules, and even all my plans. It left me no choice but to change my mindset about life. It was the first pandemic that I was experiencing. There are always trade-offs. COVID took my friend but gave me this great lesson! I can't be either appreciated or pleased but it is what it is. It's life.

Lockdown Helped Me Start Writing

I was so upset about life. Even though I had started a new career position, life meant nothing to me! There was nothing enjoyable in life for me anymore. To keep pace with life and get myself sorted after his death, as my dear mother advised me, I tried writing.

I was so busy with my work. I had not enough time to build up my own personal website and keep writing there. At that time, I found Hashnode to be a great choice!

I started writing, I got great engagements at the start. Blog post after blog post. One of my very first blog posts got even featured on daily.dev. That was a huge positive vibe for me!

A lot of my friends were playing video games together during the lockdown. Meanwhile, I was designing a banner for my next blog post.

Started My Journey on Hashnode

After writing a couple of articles on Hashnode, thanks to Hashnode's community, I was getting more and more engagements day by day from you, nice fellows. It was nothing but pure joy! That feels great to see people reading your words, and valuing your statements!

So, to get better and get to know more awesome people, I kept writing consistently. I started collaborating on Hackathons and Writeathons as well! That was a fun time spent on open-source projects. I was introduced to so many awesome projects and people as well!

Recently, I talked about the impact of keep doing something consistently compared to overdoing it. You can read it here.

Founded Collove Community

After finishing high school, I was quite experienced in programming but not confident enough to work at a company. Whenever I was thinking of a job offer, the mindset of "not-being-ready" was coming into my mind.

I had always been thinking that I was not ready yet. Working at a company; on a real-world project takes me more experience and I'm not that guy yet! That feeling made me procrastinate a little bit and apply for my first job a few years later.

Years later, after a few weeks of working remotely, I was thinking of a way that I could follow to help newbies treat and deal with that feeling easier by collaborating and contributing to open-source projects till they get better, get more skilled, and nail their job interviews!

It's been a few months since I founded Collove, you can read more about this lovely community here.

Applied for GitHub Campus Expert Program

After founding my open-source community, I felt some lack. I was not enough experienced in community management subjects. So I needed some help from great companies such as GitHub to meet my needs. I applied for their Campus Expert program. I gave my best shot for that spot and impressively, nailed my first application interview. Even though I'm still working on that, I'm so optimistic about the amount of effort I can put into Collove after becoming an official GitHub Campus Expert!

We're Almost Done in the 2022

Now, there is just a few weeks left in 2022. I personally had no idea that this year could end up like this. Back in the day (before 2019), I had no idea that I would one day, enjoy writing technical articles for my audiences. I had no audience back in the day.

Believe it or not, Everything has consequences. Life takes you something valuable but gives you a chance. A chance to choose the way you want to live the future in.