On April 23, 2024, we visited Vasyl Stefanyk Precarpathian National University. The educational institution is one of the top ten universities in Ukraine and is our reliable partner in training software engineering specialists and developing the IT community in Ivano-Frankivsk.
The purpose of our visit to the Department of Computer Engineering and Electronics of the Faculty of Physics and Technology was a lecture for students of 1-4 years of study, delivered by Yaroslav Ersteniuk, STO of NetLS Software Development. Having started his life in the company as a Middle Developer, he climbed up the career ladder to such positions as CTO and System Architect. He was involved in more than ten projects for our clients and is a specialist in such programming languages as C#, C++, SQL, JavaScript, TypeScript, CSS, and HTML.
The title of the lecture was “The Junior Trap: How Not to Stumble on the Way to Senior. Tips from the NetLS service station”. Yaroslav talked about the importance of constant training, attending various tournaments and competitions, meeting deadlines, and the client's budget to develop your skills from Junior developer to Senior developer. He asked questions to the audience, prepared future engineers for the main questions of the technical part of the interview, and explained why logic, hard work, and consistency are so important for programmers. Therefore, Yaroslav allowed students to solve their logic problems. The experienced specialist also gave students advice on how to develop their profession and gave examples from his own experience and that of his colleagues. The main warnings were:
- Before you ask for help, try to figure it out on your own, but if you still don't understand something, clarify and ask questions;
- Do not avoid reviewing the code;
- Consider the importance of patterns and use them appropriately;
- Respect the work of the Project Manager and give realistic workloads;
- Do not hide your shortcomings;
- Take on a new task after decomposition;
- Do not neglect the version control system;
- Constantly analyze your mistakes to prevent them from happening again;
- Consider gadgets with small display sizes;
- Regularly check access to resources;
- Do not expect integrations to work exactly as you need them to;
- Learn English, it's a must;
- Don't neglect multithreading for static objects;
- Analyze the type of service life cycle;
- Solve problems with existing solutions rather than inventing your way;
After the lecture, students had time to get answers to their questions. They were interested in what position to choose, and what level of English is sufficient to start working, and some of them have already shared their achievements. The students were interested in the discussion because they picked a topic of the lecture, which was relevant to them.
The NetLS team regularly meets with students from three universities in Ivano-Frankivsk, as we want to help young professionals succeed and prepare them for the challenges ahead. Also, the best students have the opportunity to undergo a three-month internship in our company, which is held every year, and get to know their profession better.