mentoring

Perhaps the only constant in my adult life is that I have been able to make a comfortable living in high tech. One way or another, I can shake that tree and make money fall out. I think it is high time for me to acknowledge my good fortune in this area and try to give a little something in return.

I have done a lot of different things in the tech world over the years. Sadly, almost all of those former skills of mine are now stale and irrelevant. The only thing I am good enough at to help others with is Flutter.

(And also, to a lesser extent, Dart. One nice side effect of becoming a Flutter developer is that I discovered that I love Dart. Love it. The accepted wisdom is that the only reason you learn Dart is to write Flutter apps, but I very much disagree. I love the language so much that I abandoned all my small Python projects and re-wrote them in Dart.)

Why do I think I am qualified to help someone start a career as a Flutter developer? Because I succeeded at that goal myself. In 2019, I decided that I had spent enough time as an iOS developer, and that I wanted to do something else for awhile. Surveying the tech landscape as it existed back then, I settled on Flutter as my next specialization. I started working on my first Flutter app as a learning exercise. Not long after that, I sent a few emails to would-be employers. The demand for Flutter developers was so high at that time that I had a full-time job within weeks. I am still working at that same employer, five years later.

Based on what I’ve seen, demand for Flutter developers remains strong. As a technology, it occupies an important and valuable niche. Flutter meets the demand for usable cross-platform apps in a way that no other technology can, in my opinion.

What I can offer

Are you a would-be Flutter developer who is having trouble landing your first job? Here’s how I imagine that I might help you overcome that hurdle.

First, It would be a good idea for us to have a video call. I want to determine what your development experience has been like so far, and what you are hoping to achieve.

The next step is to help you build your first app, if you don’t already have one. This is a crucial step. It will be a lot easier to convince a potential employer that you can do the job if you’ve completed at least one portfolio piece on your own.

Writing a useful, non-trivial app is a serious undertaking. Many junior programmers are comfortable adding features to an existing codebase, but struggle to create new apps from scratch. This is a skill that can be learned, like any other. If you’re having trouble coming up with an idea for your first app, I can help you narrow down the possibilities to something useful and realistic.

The next step is to get your app in front of would-be users. This might involve navigating the red tape imposed by the big tech companies’ app stores. (Something I have a lot of painful experience with.) Listening to your users and making improvements based on their feedback is an important part of becoming an effective and valuable software developer.

The next step is to build yourself a website, if you don’t already have one. At minimum, your site will contain an easily-accessible copy of your résumé and a page for your portfolio app. It’s great to have an app you can use as proof of your ability to code, but you cannot expect would-be employers to download it and try it out. Most will not. You can expect them to look at a web page you’ve built to show it off, though. Bonus points if your website has at least a few blog entries, which helps establish your own unique personality.

The final step is making yourself known to potential employers. I get a whole lot of messages from recruiters who want to fill positions for Flutter developers. If you can successfully complete all the earlier steps, I am pretty confident that you will too.

Some final thoughts

The sequence of events I’ve laid out here is not set in stone. It could be that you think some or all of those steps are not important to you, or that this leads you down a path that you don’t want to follow. That’s fine with me! If you have a different idea of how this should work, I am happy to listen.

Just in case it isn’t obvious: if you get in touch, I am not expecting to get paid for this service, and I am for sure not guaranteeing that you will land a job.

A word of encouragement: don’t be too quick to rule yourself out! If you hesitate to get in touch because you think you couldn’t possibly complete all these steps, well, don’t be so sure. You don’t have to complete everything on any specific timeline.

Also, don’t rule yourself out if you think the high tech world is unwelcoming to people like you. It is true that high tech often appears accepting of only a narrow range of people. I for one would love to change that perception. I will be thrilled to hear from you, regardless of your sex, race, nationality, or disabilities.

Does this sound like something you want to pursue? Get in touch via my About page.