The importance of communities in my career as a developer

Hi guys, how're you? I hope that you're fine :D

Today's topic will be a very important one for me: Communities.

What is a community?

A tech (in our case) community is a group of people who are interested in technology and are brought together by a common goal or interest in a particular topic. Tech communities can take many forms, such as online forums, social media groups, meetups, conferences, and hackathons. They provide a way for people to connect, share knowledge, and collaborate on projects related to technology. Tech communities can be centered around a specific technology, such as a programming language or a platform, or they can be more broadly focused on topics such as artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, or software development. Tech communities can be an important source of support and mentorship for people who are interested in technology and want to learn more about it. I've seen also a lot of communities that don't speak only about technologies but talk also about Dev life, salaries, companies' feedback, job hunting, and so on. A good community can be a great resource to grow and learn a lot of things not necessarily related to tech.

They have also the power to motivate you, by reading messages about passionate developers and seeing how many of them work on a lot of projects, maybe you can also get more stimulated and motivated to create something on your own, or also some open source tool with other colleagues from this communities!

My experience

Here I'm going to explain briefly my experience with communities and why I found them a real plus in our job that a lot of other jobs don't have.

First of all a little bit of context: I currently live in a small village near Milan with less than 5k people. I'm the only developer in my area and so, since I was really curious to meet and chat with other passionate people, in 2021 I've joined some Telegram communities that allowed me to meet (even if virtually) a lot of fellows who share a strong interest in their jobs. It was also the first time that I saw people talking more or less casually about their salary, in Italy talking about money is almost a taboo for a lot of people so this thing kind of shocked me.

The more time passed the more I became part of these communities, I've spent a lot of time discussing in the chat with other people from all parts of Italy. After some time they shared some meetups and events in Milan and since I live near there, after work I went to these talks with a dinner after that (I think that my first one was about React). This first meetup opened my eyes to a lot of things, but mainly it made me realize how far behind I was in comparison with some people, so soon I felt the need to improve my knowledge. After that, I joined even more frequently meetups, hackathons, and so on and this allowed me to have a circle of friends with whom to attend these kinds of events, do co-working in Milan and discuss career and other tech-related topics.

After a certain amount of time, being in contact with people of a certain level allowed me to realize that my desire to grow was no longer satisfiable in the company where I previously worked, I had to aim for something more. I discussed a lot in communities and also on private chats with a lot of guys which I met during meetups about the topic and how could I solve this problem. Well, the answer was always the same: Job Hopping.

I was very doubtful about this, I wasn't sure that I wanted to change jobs since I was quite in a comfort zone situation in my previous company. After some time, thanks to multiple support received always by these guys from communities, I've sent the application to a company that I was really curious about : Moneyfarm. I was their client since the beginning of 2021 and I was really interested in entering a financial company like this since I am also a greedy saver. To be honest, I didn't even take into consideration the possibility that they wanted to hire me, my English is not that good and I didn't have any experience with Scala, I was only a poor PHP developer (joking :P, I enjoy also working on PHP). During this long interview process, I've received constant support from a lot of people, especially one that always tried to motivate me and chased away my doubts (Thanks Guido <3). If I didn't join this Telegram channel probably I wouldn't have had the courage to change a thing in my life and I would have stayed in my previous company, which was a really great one from the empathetic side. After almost 9 months I can say for sure that this was the right decision to move my career forward, I had the chance to see, learn and build a lot of new things that before were only things that I'd heard of.

Sadly there is to say also that not every community is good, there are some of them which also can demotivate you since it's full of negative people who risk influencing you. You should pick them with a very keen eye, otherwise, you'll get the opposite effect.

Main takeaways

So, coming to a conclusion, I just want to say to everyone who works in the tech industry that is really stupid not to try to join some community and try to use them to improve themselves and, why not, try also to help people in there which needs help like me. But you should be aware that not all communities (or people in there) are good and want to help you, so you need to reflect on what you are being told and take a decision on your own, don't take rushed decisions!

Also, when people ask for advices and help, you should try to be proactive and not demotivate people which ask questions (even the most basic ones, there is no stupid question).

What do you think about communities? do you think that they're a useful tool or not? if not can you list the reasons why? I'm really curious about your feedback!

Today I want finish this article with one of my favorite quotes from One piece, remember that one of our greatest advantages compared to other jobs is the fact that we like to create communities and grow professionally together, No one is ever born to work alone!