Where are they now? Amber Wilson
Amber is a long-standing codebar member who first became involved in July 2016! She started as a student, then started organising the Brighton chapter before moving to Berlin and getting involved in that chapter. We originally featured her story in 2018! We caught up with her again recently to find out what has changed in the last 6 years!
1. What’s changed since your original story post?
I don’t do so much community stuff anymore. It really began to wind down for me over the covid period, and then I began working from home and had a lot less contact with people in the office, and then I became a mum. I was still involved in codebar remotely for a while, but not too much. I officially resigned as a codebar organiser at the end of 2023. I would like to get back into community stuff and blogging, but currently my family life is a bit too demanding — with a small toddler to take care of!
2. What have you learnt in the last 4 years?
I have learned a lot! The thing that accelerated my learning the most is having the opportunity to work in different sorts of teams and companies. This allows me to compare what worked best and what didn’t work so well. I think it’s given me a good intuition on how to work well in different sorts of teams.
3. What advice would you give yourself 4 years ago?
Keep learning, keep your web development knowledge up. If you feel like doing a side project — try to find time to do it. Doing your own side projects from scratch where you are responsible for all parts of a website really helps you to keep your web dev skills sharp. For example, at work I don’t touch the CSS code too often. On side projects, I’m responsible for 100% of the CSS! My latest side project taught me a bunch of new CSS things, and I’m grateful for that.
4. What do you wish you knew 4 years ago?
That even though my life was about to change quite a lot (covid, having a baby, and economic pressure meaning less jobs), that the one thing that would remain constant and reliable was the support from my colleagues and the tech community!
You can find Amber on the internet at:
