My First Two Years as a Ruby on Rails Developer

My Background 🌅

In September 2020, amidst the COVID pandemic, I left my job as an English teacher in Jakarta and decided to teach myself how to code. After completing the Makers Academy bootcamp, I became hooked on the elegance seen in good Ruby code — something I hadn’t expected when first starting out.

After a short internship, I set off to find my first full-time programming role, hoping to find a place within the Ruby on Rails community. Thankfully, I found mmtm, and joined as a Junior Developer in April 2022.

Month 1 — Contributing from the Get-Go 🚀

Starting at mmtm, I was given a six-month plan to help me navigate my new role. Regular one-on-one meetings every two weeks and all-important support from my fellow developers helped me find my footing quickly. Initially, I filled some gaps in my knowledge by leaning heavily on GoRails videos, but within a couple of weeks, I was already contributing to sprints (albeit focusing on simpler tickets at this stage!).

I found transitioning from personal projects and tutorial-style learning to production-ready apps to be a steep learning curve, and something I was a little apprehensive about at the outset. However, more often than not, solutions lay in simply knowing where to look within a mature Rails project — or asking someone who does! This is where having a supportive team around me really grew my confidence.

Year 1 — Working Across the Stack 📈

Over the next few months, I had the opportunity to work across the stack, completing tickets on both the frontend and backend. Using the latest Rails techniques, particularly Hotwire, I rapidly expanded my skillset and became accustomed to jumping between mmtm’s various projects. The range of projects we work on at mmtm not only kept work varied but also ensured there was always more to learn.

Year 2 — Taking the Lead 🥇

Entering my second year at mmtm, I was given the opportunity to work directly with clients — something that I was unsure of initially but quickly became a highlight. Handling support requests, participating in client workshops and planning sprints (including database architecture, user story writing, and overall design) gave me an end-to-end understanding of the development process.

I also started taking on the role of sprint lead at this point, further developing my leadership and project management skills. I took on more advanced tasks, such as Rails upgrades and maintenance, ensuring our projects remained up-to-date and performant.

Afterword 💬

Overall, working at a digital agency like mmtm has been an incredible opportunity for me as a junior developer.

The variety of projects, from small MVPs to large-scale applications, has provided me with a breadth of experience hard to find elsewhere. This, coupled with the supportive atmosphere and enthusiastic can-do attitude from my colleagues has been fundamental to my growth as a developer. It's been fun too!

Interested in finding out more about career opportunities with mmtm? Click here