When is a junior ready to work?

Hi there!
Today i finished a netflix clone, and i feel like the result shows the skills that i’ve learn, but I feel a bit confused about the future, and I thinkit would help me a lot to have the oportunity to get some feedback from an eperienced developer.
So, if you’ve seen my project, could you tell me what you think about it, what I can improve, and, do you think I’m ready to start applying for jobs?

This is my gitHub repo: GitHub - claragenovese/Netflix-Clone
and the link for the app: https://fir-netflix-970a4.web.app/

Sorry for get so long, and thank you so much for read me.
Have a nice week!

Hi @clariigenovese !

I haven’t been working as a developer super long but here are my thoughts.

I would personally stay away from clone type projects when it comes to showing them to potential employers.

The main reason why is because there are so many youtube and udemy courses that do these types of projects and the market is saturated with juniors showcasing them on their portfolio.

It makes it harder for you to stand out from an already competitive market.

My advice would be to take what you learned from this project and build something else with those same concepts.

Building unique projects will help you stand out from the crowd and probably give you an advantage during the hiring process.

Hope that helps!

3 Likes

The Netflix clone project looks pretty great, it also seems to correctly integrate with Firebase authentication.

It’s understandable the clone doesn’t actually stream video, but the few other features you could clone don’t seem to work correctly or as expected. For example I could add shows to my watch-list, but they disappear upon refresh. Optimally you should save these to one of firebase’s database api offerings (probably Firestore), or even local-storage. Since it’s one of the few features you can have in your clone that touches the entire stack, I’d consider it essentially to have.

I’d also try to “spice things up” by doing things to make your Netflix clone standout, as it’s a common clone project. Basic things like adding underlying features so they are supported, to having a non-firebase domain, to optimizing the page load so it loads as-fast as the real Netflix site are all things that could help distinguish your clone from other people doing the same thing.

The biggest question mark I see is there isn’t much else to see. Your github profile is somewhat sparse, and you have no portfolio project to help “show things off”. I assume you also have a resume, you could provide that for feedback if you wanted.

Otherwise it’s hard to get a full picture of what you’d be going in with when it comes to applying for jobs. One clone project wont make or break you by itself, unless its production quality, where you actually built a feature rich Netflix competitor rather than clone. So having a “fuller picture” is necessary to get at least a guess on if your “job ready” or not.

When is a junior ready to work?

So there is a slight misconception about “ready to work” and “ready to learn”. Many believe there is some bar where they learned enough to “work”, and thus seek out that bar so they can then apply and get jobs.

However, the reality of development is there is no bar, and you don’t get to stop learning. Simply put there’s too much to learn to assume you know enough. Even if you have 10 years of experience working, odds are you will still be learning new things.

So generally, you’re never fully ready, only less and less risky of a hire.

Because of this, you should start applying now, and get feedback from employers, along with getting insight into what the job market is looking for right now. From there you adapt to what you see.

Sure this probably means applying and getting rejected, but rejection is the norm in the job market. Just be sure to try to gain some feedback on your applications so you can learn from them.

Good luck, keep learning, keep growing :+1:

3 Likes

GR8 Advice, well said :clap: :+1: and :+1:

it’s a nice project, but your repo only shows about a month of commits?

What’s your background? Do you have a tonne of programming experience that isn’t reflected in this github account?

Is the project 100% your own? i.e. not based on a tutorial

If this is entirely you’re own project and you have a lot of experience that isn’t reflected in that github account, then yeah you’re potentially ready, but you need to communicate that you have more experience than that in your cv, because the github account makes you look very very new to programming,

If you started coding last month and this is a tutorial based project, then broadly I would say no with the caveat that it’s not impossible to get a job with that much experience, just unlikely.

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