Code & Tell at Junior Dev SG - Reading Time 4 Mins
📅 March 17, 2019
•⏱️3 min read
Introduction
Last Thursday, I had just spoken about "Building a Personal Blog with JAM stack" at the Junior Developer Singapore.
A Junior Developer chapter in Singapore that originated in Australia.
Which aims to focus on providing a platform for junior developers who are new to the software industry.
To network with peers and learn from senior developers to hopefully one day become a tech lead.
Overall it was a wonderful experience in speaking in a junior developer meetup.
So here are some of my take on the talks on the junior developer meetup.
Elements of Technical Interview
Going through a technical interview has been a necessary evil for all developer jobs.
Which there are tons of articles that talk about it at depth from whiteboard tests to programming questions by Google and other major companies.
I find that for this talk, it is actually very beneficial for junior developers to understand and the preparation work needed even before starting your interview.
Researching a company and the interviewer who will be interviewing you. Helps to be a huge confidence boost to yourself and interviewer.
Since having conducted a few interviews, I always find it amusing for candidates that come for an interview.
That they have no idea about what my company is doing and try to bs your way to impress me.
With your technical understanding or credentials to talk down on me is always an instant red flag for me.
Data Science in Insurance
Data science in insurance is an area that I had never explored.
Since I believe it might be because most of the fintech startups that I had come across.
Who build their startup to focus on either blockchain or payment transaction in the fintech sector.
What I like about the talk is the various use cases of data science in insurance.
One of them was an insurance recommendations engine that helps a user in purchasing insurance policies.
Which this AI agent uses insurance underwriting checklist to gauge an individual and recommends an insurance policy without actually going through an actual agent.
Creating Technology that Customer Needs
Product development is an area that is hardly covered in tech articles that I had come across.
In this talk, Nidhi Gupta from Portcast focuses on building products or services to fulfil the customer's needs.
Since as a developer, we might focus on the technical side of a product but we might lack the understanding of the user who will be using the product.
She recommends touch points on what we could do as a developer to be in tune with our customer's needs to retain their existing customer.
This is one of the talks that are really important for a developer who is just starting out.
Conclusion
The talks provide insights into the product development, data science for insurance and the interview process.
Which I believe is really useful for any junior developers who are looking to start their career as a developer.
I find that speaking is vastly different from being the person on the receiving end of insights of the speakers.
As there is a lot of preparation that comes when your speaking about a specific topic to share your insights or understanding to an audience.
It is really a good feeling that your talks helped to inspire action and is useful for your audience
I hope to improve on what I had learnt from this talk and become better as I speak in more meetups and conferences in the future.