Top 5 Tips: How to thrive as a part-time developer while in school (Part 2 of 2)

Learn how to balance work and school as a part-time developer effectively

So you landed a part-time job. What now?

In my previous article, I discussed the steps to get a part-time job as a developer. However, this is only the first half of the equation. Ensuring that you get a good experience both at school and at your work is also key.

In this article, I’ll talk about just that: balancing schoolwork, work work, and all the while keeping a reasonable level of sanity.

This advice is based upon my experience at Athennian, where I worked part-time while completing my university education.

The meme from the previous article deserves a reprise.

#1: Accept that your grades may be negatively affected

I just said a sentence ago that I’ll talk about keeping up with school work. However, expecting the exact same grades as if you weren’t working part-time is simply unrealistic.

This might seem like strictly bad news, but know that most employers will care more about your work experience than your grades, especially the more work experience you have at that point. Knowing that you have a part-time coding job, most employers would look at that fact first (and maybe only that) while being understanding of your grades.

This said, your grades don’t have to suffer that much if you consider the rest of these tips.

#2: Take courses that are relevant to what you do at work

Guilty-as-charged, I opened the previous article in a rather c̶l̶i̶c̶k̶b̶a̶i̶t̶y contentious manner:

Let’s face it — most of the things one learns in higher education will not come to be relevant in the real world.

But, note that I said most and not all because, in fact, some of what you will learn in higher education will be relevant.

Technology stacks get churned out so fast that evidently not academia nor HR can keep up with it.

Fortunately, my alma mater offered electives that dealt with databases, networks, user experience, and even web development itself. Me choosing these courses helped with doing well at work, and work, in turn, helped with doing well on these courses.

#3: Dabble in some scheduling wizardry

Speaking of selectively choosing classes, try to see if you get only MWF or only TTh classes in a semester. This will allow you to come to the office on the days you don’t have classes(or get in a full day’s worth of work at home, assuming you guys have the option to work remotely). This might necessitate a lighter course load, but you may be able to make this up by taking summer classes, block week classes, or online classes. Whatever works for making working work!

#4: Simply don’t work for a whole semester

Your scheduling mojo could involve dumping difficult-to-schedule classes all in one semester and simply not doing hours at work then. My work was thankfully understanding of the two months of radio silence I had. It was during a summer semester that ended up becoming the hardest semester of my life academically: CPSC 313 — Computability went so over my head I purchased a Chegg account for the first time just for those two months.

These affirmations kept me well affirmed during those tough semesters.

#5: Take a capstone course with your company

I know that this may not work out with everyone’s circumstances. Nonetheless, if you could take a capstone course with your company, you will be able to double-dip on work and school, working for credits rather than pay on a certain work project.

Plus, if you were to take a capstone but with another company, working part-time with your current company may no longer be viable. Juggling two companies plus school becomes much less feasible. I was fortunate enough to have this workout, doing a Google Drive integration project both for my work’s bottom line and capstone credits.

It’s worse if you’re part-time: thinking about work at school and school at work. If you take a capstone course with your company, at least you’ll be worrying about just one project.

Bonus Tip: communicate, communicate, and communicate

Work with a company with communication at its cultural core because the responsibility of balancing school and work isn’t just on the onus of the student. My then supervisor (and original interviewer) and the rest of the team at work went the extra mile to ensure that we had adequate communication, planning, and avenues of support to keep me as effective as possible as a part-timer. The projects we took on were chosen carefully to be non-critical and more independent in nature. Our one-on-one meetings were more comprehensive. We actively made it work.

This extra communication is vital because, trust me on this, working part-time makes any change in the company move 2x as quickly, especially for fast-growing companies.

Part-timer problems: One week, my setup would be where I left it, and the following week my stuff would be elsewhere completely (though thankfully, we’ve gone remote now).

Takeaways

• Due to the speed of progress in software development technologies and practices, employers highly value up-to-date work experience, even more than grades.
• Part-time positions as a student exist, but unlike internships, part-time positions are almost never listed on job postings.
• Try to d̶o̶u̶b̶l̶e̶ ̶d̶i̶p̶ synergize: take courses relevant to your work and try to find opportunities for school projects sponsored by your work.
• Take it easy. Extend your education if you need to. Take semester-long breaks if you need to. Try not to feel guilty — working a relevant part-time job already gives you such a step up over other applicants.

I hope these lessons I’ve learned from my experience in the industry you out!

If you’d like to get more informative stories like this, follow BACIC where yours truly, Elvin Limpin, will post more about culture-related and technical topics.

Thanks for the read!