“Still a long way to the ceiling.” The story of a front-end engineer who became a senior at 23 despite COVID and war, but still sees a path to development

Organic growth

Currently, the front-end engineer lives in Kyiv, where she moved after entering the Sikorsky Kyiv Polytechnic Institute.

Although the girl’s parents and relatives did not have IT professionals or techies, since childhood Diana loved everything related to computers and studied mathematics with enthusiasm. Her parents gave her a computer for six years, and the girl immediately began to dream about how she would do «something cool and useful» on it.

The girl chose her specialty while still studying in Dnipro at the Lyceum of Information Technologies. Then she wanted to write code, like most of her friends who studied computer science at the Institute of Applied Systems Analysis of KPI. It was from them that Diana learned all the details about the specifics of the profession. Without hesitation, she chose the specialty «Computer Science» for her studies and aimed to develop in the front-end.

«The reason I liked the frontend was that I could see the results right away,» the girl recalls.

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The way up

Diana has been working for over six years, and it took her five of them to reach the senior level.

Diana started her journey with an internship at a small Ukrainian startup. During her first year of study, information about an internship at a small startup was posted in the students' chat room. The girl immediately filled out the form and came to the office for an interview. The employer was not embarrassed by the young age of the specialist and offered her a job.

The further process of growth was difficult for Diana, but very interesting. A teacher from the university helped her develop in her profession. Changing several jobs, the most difficult thing in the process of work, according to the engineer, was:

• learn how to properly test dev — do not submit a non-working (or incomplete) version of the platform for testing or to users;
• design scalable code — that is, code that is easy to extend and maintain;
• Understanding overhead code is being able to read someone else’s code, which is written very, very complexly.

The girl says that although she did not see open hate regarding her senior level at a fairly young age, she did encounter situations that could have passively questioned her skills.

«Everything was resolved quickly: I showed everything not with words, but with deeds, this is my approach,» Diana shares her personal recipe for how she gets out of similar situations.

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Study, work, COVID, war

The development of the engineer coincided with peak changes in society and the labor market. She graduated from her studies during the height of the pandemic. At that time in 2020, the girl lived in a dormitory, which was completely empty during the Covid period and she had to go to Dnipro to visit her relatives.

At that time, the engineer was already working as a front-end engineer at the Toy House, and they quite organically moved all communication with colleagues to online mode in Teams.

About money

Speaking of money, the girl recalls that at the beginning of her career she didn’t care how much she was paid. «I didn’t look at the salary at all, but due to certain family circumstances I changed my mind,» she adds. However, she says that now it is taboo for her to comment on her salary amounts, and refers to the statistics on DOU, where the thresholds for Senior Software Engineer specialists are published.

According to the data on DOU, a Senior Software Engineer (React.js) can claim a salary of $3,000 to over $5,000. But the specialist refrains from advising how many years it will take for other engineers to reach this level. «It all depends on the person, because everyone has their own „desired“ maximum and what is the maximum: money, skills, recognition, titles? There are many questions here, so I can’t answer specifically,» Diana explains.

For those who aspire to become a senior

Diana herself says that she doesn’t really focus on the title, because every company is different in terms of expectations and areas of responsibility. However, looking at her own example, looking at how she became a qualified and versatile engineer, she sees a simple formula:

• interest,
• persistence,
• curiosity,
• help from mentors,
• a lot of time dedicated to studying.

The girl looks for mentors among her surroundings, in particular, colleagues, or turns to teachers from KPI, and gets all the necessary information from udemy, medium, and other well-known online learning platforms.

Speaking of basic knowledge, in her opinion, a front-end engineer should have:

• basic concepts about algorithms and data structures,
• in-depth understanding of your primary programming language (for me it’s JS and TS),
• understanding how the internet works and why a web application is visible on the screen at all,
• communication skills,
• to convey your thoughts correctly,
• the ability to «translate» your technical language into business language when communicating with non-technical specialists.

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About plans, ceiling and future

The girl speaks about her professional future from the perspective of development. And despite her current level, she says that she is still far from reaching the ceiling.

Currently, Diana is focused primarily on horizontal development, because she already has certain skills that she wants to develop, in particular, so she is currently actively working on this.

«I don’t really like titles, but I’m moving closer to those ices,» the girl says about her future plans.

He can’t share clear timelines yet, but he confidently states that he is working on himself.

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