How to fight against FOMO as a junior developer?

Becoming a developer is a path that requires a lot of consistency, mastery and ability to understand problems clearly, break them down, and propose solutions coherently.

As a junior developer, defining a goal of what you want to become (front-end, back-end or full-stack engineer) and setting a roadmap are two best remedies against FOMO.

Defining a goal crystallizes and anchors your desires that float in your mind and ensures that you spend your time and effort on what you love. Whilst setting a roadmap provides a plan or strategy, a map intended to achieve a particular goal.

Let’s back up a bit and talk about FOMO in this context. FOMO means fear of missing out. It refers to the fear of not knowing many languages or missing the developer’s networking tendencies. You will all notice that FOMO is common for junior developers. It is a big wall that will prevent you from reaching your goal. This FOMO comes when you learn many languages here and there only to learn nothing in the end. I followed the same path before; I didn’t learn from it.

I remember, a year ago when I decided to become a full-stack software developer. The ardent will of becoming a software developer helped me to persevere, concentrate and seek what are the means, the tools and the level of competence necessary to attain my goal. As an alternative, I have used Google, sought advice from experienced developers and also watched some videos on Youtube about the daily life of developers. That helped a lot in achieving the result I have today.

Establishing a roadmap was the crucial step to reaching my goal. I am still following it to this day. You may wonder how I came up with it. Well, it came from the same procedure taken to define my goal. As a roadmap needed more, I went through a well-structured training course worthy of an unequivocal reputation which today I can testify to the result as I am making progress, although I have not yet finished. You can join Microverse if you want to get a good one like me.

Don’t rush! Just understand that programming is a vast field of languages. You are not supposed to know everything. But consider the points listed below that can help you strengthen your fight against FOMO:

1. Learn how to learn fast.
2. Don’t compare yourself to others.
3. Be patient, you have time to learn other languages or frameworks
4. Today’s trends may not remain tomorrow.
5. Go step by step i.e start a new thing once you master the last one.
6. Measure your progress(practice by building projects).

I will tell my readers to consider that the key takeaways from this article are knowing what you want to become because this is your ultimate goal, in addition to setting a roadmap to follow that will get step-wise lessons for your type.

Thanks a lot for reading and if you found the content interesting, leave a clap to encourage me more 😊.

Happy coding.