It’s Official: I’m Self-Employed
Since August 2015 I’ve had the privilege of working at one of the best tech companies in the world, Auth0. Now this week marks the start of a brand new chapter: I’ve wrapped up my work at Auth0 and I’m officially self-employed!
An Unlikely Candidate
When I got my job offer at Auth0 over two years ago I was absolutely thrilled. Not only would I have the chance to experience what things were like at a quickly growing startup, but I had also never worked in tech before. Actually, I was kind of dumbfounded that I even got the job. I had no formal coding education and, in lieu of a degree, all I had were a bunch of evening and weekend hours logged teaching myself how to build apps, as well as a handful of tutorials I had written which aimed to teach others what I was learning at the time.
For the job I was going for though, it turned out this was enough. I joined the marketing team as a Technical Writer and over the next year I researched and wrote on tons of different technologies.
This role was actually perfect for me at the time because it was a great way to continue learning but at a much more accelerated pace. I’m almost certain that the knowledge I gained about the web, JavaScript, and programming in general in my first year at Auth0 eclipses anything I would have gotten out of any bootcamp or other coding school.
On to the Hard Stuff
In my second year at Auth0 I got to take care of a large portion of the docs content, namely the integration guides. If you’ve read one of Auth0’s quickstart guides in the last year, there’s a decent chance that I (or someone on my team) wrote it.
Learning on the job was essential in this role as well. Not only did I need to become familiar with a wide range of technologies that I hadn’t touched before, but I also needed to be more disciplined about the content I was writing. When it comes to writing blogposts, leaving out certain details is par for the course (you can’t cover absolutely everything), but when writing docs it’s a different story. A docs reader expects questions to be answered as they’re reading. The biggest challenge with this is to write a compelling narrative while supplying just the right amount of information so as to not inundate the reader in detail along the way. As anyone who has written any serious documentation before can attest to, this is much easier said than done!
The Next Chapter
Even before I worked at Auth0, I had a small roster of clients that I did web dev work for through my own company, Elevate Digital. Interestingly, this list only continued to grow after I joined Auth0 and hasn’t slowed down since. The types of websites and apps I’ve developed for my clients have varied, but these days it’s mostly single page apps and REST APIs.
In addition to my client work, I’ve also been publishing programming courses in a number of different spots like Udemy and my own site dedicated to Angular training, Angularcasts.io.
In the last month or so, I realized that I was reaching a tipping point with my businesses. I looked at the numbers and discovered that with what I was bringing in from my clients and Angularcasts, I could already focus on my own work full time. Doing so without also working a full time day job would also allow me to grow them even more.
Adding One More: GraphQL Workshops
Lately I’ve really been getting into GraphQL. It’s such a nice alternative to REST and I’ve been using it in all my recent client work. My pal Lukas Ruebbelke and I gave a GraphQL workshop at Frontend Masters in October and immediately afterwards we decided we wanted to offer a dedicated workshop for it. Thus, we’ll soon be launching GraphQL Workshops! (Stay tuned for more on that).
Looking Ahead
Working at Auth0 was amazing and taking the job was the best decision I’ve ever made. I’d highly recommend that anyone who is in the market for a job at a company with awesome culture and fun, challenging work, checks them out. I want to give a huge shout out to my former boss, Gonto, who was kind enough to bring me on board back in 2015.
I’m super excited that I now have the chance to fulfill one of my career goals: being my own boss. At the same time, it is a bit nerve wracking as well. Gone will be the sense of stability that comes from having a full-time job and much more will I now need to worry about making sure the pipeline stays full in the future. I’m fine with that though — I love a good challenge.
Drop Me a Line
I’ll be writing about my experience as a self-employed developer and will be releasing a lot of content on JavaScript, Angular, GraphQL and more. Say hi to me on Twitter if you’d like to hear more!
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