Introduce yourself
My name is Gemma and I’m a career changer. I went off to the General Assembly and did their 3-month intensive boot camp back in 2015. Before that, I was in office administration and IT support. I love all things front-end and I gained my Professional Certificate in Web Accessibility through the University of SA, and I have also completed a Web Design course with The Graphic Design School. I’ve been working remotely since the middle of 2018 and I love it so much I decided to leave Sydney and move to Goulburn. I’m a member of the organising committee for SydCSS and I’m actively involved in the General Assembly community, helping to mentor current students.
What do you do for work?
I’m a Software Developer at Ray White.
Team update: Gemma is now a Senior Interface Engineer at Quantium.
What do you do outside work?
I like to spend my weekends taking photos, reading Sci-Fi books, practicing yoga and meditation, sorting through the large amount of brooches I own and tending to my ever-growing collection of house plants.
Toughest work moment?
Being made redundant due to COVID after being with a company for nearly six years and not being given the opportunity to say goodbye to the people I worked with.
Most rewarding work moment?
Watching newly onboarded junior developers skill up and increase their confidence levels, knowing that I have helped them and been a part of their journey.
Your one-sentence work-related advice
It took me a long time to realise this personally, but I think I would have to go with “You are not the code you write”.
Early on in my career, I used to feel a strong sense of attachment to my code, the time and effort that had gone into it, and maybe I felt that it was in some way a representation of me. I used to take any criticism of it personally and I honestly used to dread code reviews. I’ll admit that I’ve written bad code in the past, but I’ve realised that doesn’t mean I’m a bad developer. My value as a person is independent of the code I write. Things can always be improved, and we should always assume that everyone did the best they could at the time, given the circumstances. These days I love detailed code reviews and view every pull request as a learning opportunity.
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