10 Plan your life as a tech professional

[SallyMcGrath]

Coursework content

You will have made a plan in your head about how to take an intensive training like ours. As an adult you know you have to find time to work, look after a family, solve legal issues, get healthy, commute, etc.

Like all speculations, this plan is usually not accurate. CYF grads report they were quite wrong about the actual time and energy they needed to do the programme.

Even a good plan for the course is rarely accurate. If you have planned to return to your everyday life after the course until you find a job, then this plan will fail.

We know that successful CYF graduates begin their lives as tech professionals when they begin our course, and do not stop.

If you want to be a developer, you have to act like a developer daily. Becoming a developer is not about getting a job. It’s about playing a role in software development weekly, daily, if possible. If you want to be a DevOps Engineer, a Product Owner, a Scrum Master, an IT Professional, a Business Analyst, a Functional Consultant, a Data Engineer, or any of the other roles in tech, you need to start as you mean to go on.

Becoming a professional in this field requires constant improvement and practice. It doesn’t stop after your training. This training is just the beginning. Whatever plan you make, you must project it for the rest of your life. Tech professionals are continuous, life long, self-learners.

Estimated time in hours

1

What is the purpose of this assignment?

If your goal is to move into tech, you must commit to it. And that doesn't mean only committing during the training. It means committing until you find a job in tech, which doesn't have a fixed deadline.

This exercise will help you identify your time. It will help you plan your time. It will help you to always have enough time to be healthy, happy and a developer.

Let's identify your weekly activities and availability,

• Make a copy of this spreadsheet onto your drive

• Fill in the number of hours for every weekly activity. Consider an average week so you don't have to update this week by week. Your summary will describe how your week divides between these activities. Don't write details about these activities, just write how much time you spend on each. Make sure you include the time you spend in each. If your week changes a lot, average across four sample weeks in the last six months.

• Add a row if you have an activity not included in these items.

How to submit

Feel free to share this with anyone you feel comfortable to do so.

It's good to get review. Everyone at CYF has different time constraints. Share your insights and help each other. And you can get tips for yourself at the same time.