Identity and values

7 April 2023

Hi all! my name is Adam, and I live in Auckland. I value having a career that is meaningful and one that I can make progress in and having a skill that I can improve over time. And also I value having discipline, and to be able to persist through adversity. Although I've never been good at either of those things!

My previous full-time job was a digital designer at an ad agency, after leaving that job I decided to take some time out and do a bit of freelancing. I started looking for full-time front-end developer jobs and realized most jobs required a whole lot of skills that I don't have, so I looked into bootcamps to get up to date. Dev Academy stood out with all the great testimonials and reports from graduates. I'm looking forward to the challenge of learning a new way of thinking!

My strengths are that I'm logical, methodical and have good attention to detail. I think these are potentially good skills for problem solving and development. My limitations are that I can have poor discipline and be distracted, but if I maintain a consistant work schedule I can train myself to have good working habits. Also, I can lack self-confidence to do things I don't already know, which has held me back from making any progress in my career.

On a recent freelance project I quoted a client the number of hours to complete it. After I started working on the project the client added contextual details that they didn't brief initially. After completion, the client send a really aggressive angry message that the number of hours I tracked didn't match my estimate. I apologised and said I'd lower the invoice to match the estimate. In hindsight I should have made sure at the beginning of the project that the client clarified everything in the brief, and to make clear to them that if they added scope to the brief there would be additional cost added to the estimate.