What I learned in my first year at Shopify👩‍💻

(Photo courtesy of Shopify)

TL;DR

My name is Sanaa and this month, I joined the Fulfillment team at Shopify after being on a training path for 8 months. Here are a few of my key takeaways:

1. BE COMFORTABLE WITH THE UNCOMFORTABLE
2. BE THE CHANGE YOU WANT TO SEE
3. KEEP LEARNING

Around this time last year, I hit ‘reply’ to an email about my acceptance to the Dev Degree program. I remember going into grade 12 with an uncertainty of which field I was headed into. My mind said I should stick with the sciences because that was what I was good at but it didn’t feel right, a part of me wanted to see where coding would take me. So I applied to a bunch of computer science and software engineering programs.

And here I am, two semesters into my computer science degree, having learned and enhanced my knowledge on seven coding languages, most of which were new to me. Although it feels like longer, it has been 8 months since I started training at Shopify and it has quite literally been, life-changing.

As I have now begun my first placement, here are a few things that I learned while being on the training path and being in a company environment:

1. BE COMFORTABLE WITH THE UNCOMFORTABLE
2. BE THE CHANGE YOU WANT TO SEE
3. KEEP LEARNING

📍BE COMFORTABLE WITH THE UNCOMFORTABLE

This can be hard to wrap your mind around. Sounds like an oxymoron, right? How can you be comfortable with something that makes you uncomfortable? And why would you want to escape the sweet place you call a comfort zone?

This was a phrase I heard a lot while learning. Entering the program with a bit of coding experience made me feel more comfortable with my abilities to code. However, when new concepts and syntax were thrown at me, I found myself questioning, “Am I able to learn this?”. Which I was, but at the time I felt uncomfortable going into a new territory of code.

The feeling of being uncomfortable brings challenges and consistently pushing yourself to reach new heights can open many doors of learning and opportunity.

Starting

When being placed in an environment where you are learning something totally new, it can be easy to get discouraged if something isn’t going your way. The hardest thing to do is getting started and pushing away procrastination. If you’re starting to write an application or even a single file from the program, half the battle is won when you decide to start by writing one line of code.

Be comfortable with not knowing what to do

When learning something new, naturally you encounter problems. I found myself being intimidated by the idea of not knowing how to do something, failing to realize that it was just a part of learning. When you come across something you don’t know how to do, it’s best to use your resources, whether that be Google, stack overflow or various textbooks on the internet. Most importantly, ask for help even if it feels daunting. I often shielded away from asking for help from others because I felt like I was bothering them or annoying them but this is the best way to learn.

Instead of spending hours of your own time being, ask for help and take 5 minutes of someone else’s time.

📍BE THE CHANGE YOU WANT TO SEE

Currently, the whole world is at home due to this pandemic and this means working from home. When this quarantine first started, I became lazy, forgetting that I had school (don’t lie, you did too 👀) and simply had no motivation to do my work. Slowly, deadlines approached and I had to change the way I was viewing this quarantine, as a temporary break, which it wasn’t.

So, I began setting a routine for myself and keeping up with waking up early, having a set time as to when I do school, when I do work and when I have time for my own personal development and leisure time. It also helped to have different workspaces to avoid associating one place/room for everything (check out this video that explains the importance of tackling quarantine and working from home!!).

This idea of becoming the change you want to see applies to joining a new team or starting an internship as well. Before starting on my team, my mentor mentioned this phrase to me and said,

If there is something that you want to see in your team, but it isn’t already in place then you need to step up and be that change instead of waiting around for it to happen by itself.

This struck me and made me realize that instead of waiting for an opportunity, you need to create that opportunity.

📍KEEP LEARNING

The term learning is associated with school most times but it is much more than that. My perspective on what learning was changed a lot these past few months. Learning to me was more than just my classes at Shopify and university. I was learning when I had chats with people from the industry and I was still learning when I was simply watching over a Github repository.

Even in these tough times, it is important to keep learning. Reach out to people on LinkedIn, through email or even on the phone and ask people to shadow them on a cool project they’re working on or even pair with them on something, regardless of how small (or big) the task is. The worst answer you’ll get is no so take the chance!

When learning, it is helpful to look through the many online resources and courses available for free. However, the problem is that most of these are a series of ctrl+c and ctrl+v which doesn’t teach you much other than becoming a pro at copying and pasting. The best thing to do is to use the code given to you as a template and build your own piece of code and act like you’re teaching a class. Run through each line of code and explain why it is used in the program.

As mentioned before, keep asking questions! Questions are so important to your learning and questions can stem conversations that you would have never thought you’d have. It can lead to more questions, maybe even an aha moment.

SIDE TIP: TODAY I LEARNED/ACCOMPLISHED

Create a doc or keep a notebook to document something you’ve learned that day or something you’ve accomplished. It doesn’t have to be a great discovery or accomplishment like finding the cure for world hunger, but it can be as small as learning how to open a folder on your computer. You'll be amazed by the small details and how much you learn each day.

Comment below if any of these tips resonated with you or what else you learned during your first moments at a new company!

- Sanaa