PathPath
Robot friends celebrating the upcoming year.

Mike England, What's new in 2021

What’s new in 2021

Back in October of 2020, I decided it was time to rebrand myself as a JavaScript focused engineer. I’ve been in this odd place where I no longer fall inline with the traditional role of a Front End Engineer nor am I Backend Engineer. As a result, it’s made my career path moving forward very confusing at times and caused me to re-evaluate what my goals.

Taking a deep look at what I’m interested in

When I first started evaluating myself I took an inventory of the things that I’ve enjoyed working on lately and it looked a little something like this:

  1. I’ve really enjoy working on React based apps and building components
  2. Building complex UI tools and problem solving is much more rewarding than just building out layouts
  3. Unit testing with Jest helping me grow into a much stronger engineer and I find myself wanting to know more
  4. Pairing with engineers to determine the best solution is something I enjoy more than creating a quick and fast solution
  5. Learning JavaScript deeply has been and continues to be very rewarding in terms of my career path
  6. Sharing my knowledge with others to promote learning and growth

Longterm Goals

I often ponder the question “Where do you see yourself in five years?” and unfortunately I still don’t know. Aside from growth expectations such as larger salary and better title, this was a really hard question to answer. With some deep thought around this topic I came up with the following list:

  • Work on large scale global product / app and focus less on one off projects
  • Possibly transition into App development one day, this has always been a fascinating area to me
  • Be more niche and focused
  • Focus heavily on getting better at testing
  • Learning backend skills in JavaScript such as Node and creating APIs

Working towards my goals

So far 2021 is off to a good start, I recently overhauling micheal.dev so that I have a better platform to showcase my knowledge and experiences. Next, I turbo-charged my GitHub profile with some of details about my side projects that I’m working on.

What’s Next

Currently, I’m focused on deep diving into unit testing with Jest and React deeply. I’m re-working through the Test JavaScript course that I started in 2020. Along the way, I’m working on new blog material and creating detailed code sandboxes around what I’m learning.

Micheal England

Article by Micheal England.