The author reflects on their six-month experience at I-Tel, where they worked as a Senior Software Engineer. They encountered problems with the Angular project and worked on a React Native app. They also mentored a direct mentee. The author shares the mistakes they made while evaluating the opportunity and the lessons they learned. They hope to use this experience to help them find a better company in the future.

As you may remember from my most recent company, I left after six months due to various reasons.

During my search for a new company, I came across I-Tel.

🤌🏽 Why I-Tel?

I chose I-Tel because I was searching for a new position as a Senior and Lead Engineer to enhance my skills.

I had two different offers on the table: one from I-Tel and another from a consultancy company.

But why did I choose I-Tel?

Well, their offer provided better compensation, and at the same time, I discovered I had a friend working there, so I reached out for more information.

Lastly, the company was family-owned, and most of the management positions were held by their children.

💁🏽‍♂️ My friend

Upon discovering I had a friend at I-Tel, I reached out immediately.

This was an old friend from school, whom we had known each other through mutual friends.

I asked him about the company, its structure, and gathered as much information as I could before making a decision.

We had a brief conversation, and after receiving some information, I decided to accept the offer from I-Tel.

👨🏽‍💻 My role

I was hired as a Senior Software Engineer, specializing in front-end development.

The company had primarily developed new applications using Angular, and they were seeking someone experienced with the framework to enhance the architecture of their apps and optimize the performance of existing ones.

After being onboarded, I began examining their apps...

That's when the problems started.

🖥️ Angular

As my first duty, I had to examine one of their new projects, which was supposed to be released in six months (it still hasn't been deployed yet), and honestly, I was hoping it was a joke.

They were unfamiliar with the framework, and even worse, with RxJS.

When I started delving into the code, I discovered numerous promises, conversions of Observables to Promises, imperative programming, and so on.

It was quite unfortunate.

😅 How it went

Well, after several discussions about the architecture and the code they were writing, we agreed on a massive refactor, even though the leadership rejected our estimates and proposal.

I repeatedly suggested performing the refactor at that stage since the app was still in its initial phase. However, they persisted with their approach, and now they still haven't released it.

🥲 React Native

You just read about the Angular project we were working on...

Well, there was also a mobile app to develop.

Enter React Native.

I had previously worked with React, and they were aware of this, so I ultimately took on the responsibility of working on this app.

😅 How it went

Although I didn't want to focus on this app, I had to.

React Native is still a framework I don't particularly like, so imagine working with it on an app you didn't want to build, as you wanted to focus on the web app.

When I was introduced to the code, I was even more worried than with the Angular one for the web app.

I discovered the skeleton and architecture of the app were built by some university students as a collaborative project.

To clarify, this isn't a problem; however, if you're developing an app that is vital for your business, I would expect more experienced individuals to be working on it.

I also found out that React Native was chosen over other technologies due to the discoveries made by these university students.

After several months and multiple refactors, my mentee and I managed to develop a solid framework and a well-functioning app. However, there were still various features that needed improvement.

👨‍👦 Mentorship

I finally had the opportunity to work with a direct mentee.

I must say it out loud:

It's one of the best experiences you will have during your career.

Why so?

Being a mentor is challenging, yet it plays an extremely important role. You're sharing your knowledge, and you're going to change your mentee's life.

You have to inspire, teach, provide feedback, understand their feelings, comprehend their needs, and so on.

I would say that it went well, even though we had various discussions on different topics. Now, he is working for another company with better compensation and a more challenging role, involving interesting projects to work on.

🚪The end of my adventure

Based on my previous experience, I left after six months.

The reasons were somewhat similar, as I made the same mistakes while evaluating the opportunity. However, I might have been influenced by my friend who was working for the company at the time (he left two months before me).

I must also admit that, without this experience, I probably would have never applied to my current company, and I might not be as happy as I am now.

✅ Lessons learned

I'll reiterate, the mistakes may be similar to those from my previous company, but this time, I was influenced by my friend, which could have biased my judgment.

Certainly, the projects and values we discussed during the interview process were never fulfilled.

❌ Errors I did

And here we are again; the major mistake occurred while evaluating this opportunity.

👀 Looking back

I would undergo the same experience again if it would lead me to a company like my current one, where I can truly see the difference in how people and teams can work, how the business is driven by the individuals who make it, and so on.

As a side note, most of the engineers I worked with during these six months have left the company.

I hope you enjoyed this article, the fifth of six (for now) about my career.

The last one would be the most intense one, as I have a ton of things to write on!

This series will be a prequel to others focusing on specific topics, so stay tuned and let me know in the comments if you want to discuss a specific section or topic.

🕺🏽 Your lovely neighborhood dancing engineer 🕺🏽

The author recounts their experience working at Innoteam, a consulting services company. They had the opportunity to work with React, Angular, and Vue, and explore GraphQL. Despite achieving various accomplishments, their requests for a raise were denied, leading them to eventually leave the company. Despite not agreeing with the CEO's vision, the author still recommends the company to junior people as a good place to start and explore various things.

As you may recall from my previous article in this series, I was searching for my next company after completing a fixed-term contract.

Enter Innoteam, which has since undergone a rebranding and is now known as Axelerant.

🤌🏽 Why innoteam?

After two stints at web agencies, I felt the need for something different to advance my career.

I chose Innoteam, a company offering consulting services.

In this role, I would serve as an expert, providing advice and assisting other companies in achieving their goals in software development.

The contract was intriguing, the opportunity was appealing, and I even had the chance to work remotely before the COVID-19 pandemic.

🏢 How it was structured

Before the rebranding, Innoteam offered a variety of services (which may have changed slightly since then).

The most sought-after services by customers included:

• Team Scaling

• Mentoring

🧑‍🤝‍🧑 Team scaling

This service was quite efficient and easy to use.

Essentially, a customer could request various experts to help them scale their teams internally using our expertise.

Each of the requested experts could be dispatched to different teams.

I had various experiences with these services, but I primarily worked for two of the largest customers Innoteam had.

🧠 Mentoring

As the name of the service suggests, it's easy to understand its purpose.

Essentially, customers would ask us for advice on improving processes, software, or other aspects within their companies.

For instance, one of the most sought-after mentoring topics involved transitioning from a waterfall environment to an agile one.

👨🏽‍💻 My role

I have primarily worked with React and Angular in my previous experience, so my focus was on these two technologies.

Additionally, I had the opportunity to work with Vue for the first time, a rapidly emerging library for front-end development.

It was the most thrilling experience I've had, thanks to the variety of clients I worked with.

💼 Customers

As I wrote a bit above, my focus was mostly on two of the biggest customers they had.

I'll not name them, but I'll just describe the experiences there.

1️⃣ Customer 1

I don't remember exactly how many months I worked for this customer, but it was the longest engagement.

I was part of the Scaling Team, and along with me, there were other colleagues from Innoteam. We were distributed into different teams based on our skills related to various technologies.

My role involved helping them transition some software they had from Django (the Python framework) to React, in order to separate the views from the APIs.

However, that wasn't my only responsibility.

I also had to lead the development of their new website, which played a significant role in their business strategy.

This website was one of the biggest challenges I had to face, both from a technological and personal standpoint.

Why was that?

Essentially, the customer chose to develop this website using the CMS provided by the SaaS they were utilizing for marketing purposes.

In my opinion, this was a poor decision, which is why I had to confront challenges on a personal level.

I ceased collaboration with this client due to differing perspectives on various matters, as well as personal-level conflicts.

I addressed this situation with my company, and we concurred on transferring me to another client.

2️⃣ Customer 2

After a brief period and some mentoring in between, I transitioned to this new client.

Working with them and their team was a pleasure, as the software they were developing was impressive and held a strong position in the business sector.

During this time, I worked with Vue.

The majority of their new software was written in Vue, with GraphQL on the back end.

This was quite enjoyable, as I had the opportunity to explore GraphQL and eventually fell in love with it.

🚪The end of my adventure

Why did I Leave Innoteam?

The company was pleasant, my teammates were great, and the clients were nice, offering interesting projects to work on.

So, what was the problem?

The compensation.

Despite achieving various accomplishments, my requests for a raise were consistently denied.

I had grown significantly, both personally and technically, and I was producing results. Thus, I believed it was justified to ask for a raise.

Later on, most of the teammates I had in Innoteam left too for the same reason.

✅ Lessons learned

I learned a lot, that's a fact.

I grew technically in various fields as I worked with the leading front-end framework at the time.

I also collaborated with numerous marketing professionals who shared their knowledge, and now I know how to further optimize a web app.

On a personal level, I learned not to take many things personally, not to argue with customers who don't want to listen and other things like that; it was an incredible experience.

❌ Errors I did

I made some mistakes; it's true, I know that.

I still remember the biggest one.

I was working for Company 1, and we were in a meeting.

It was yet another meeting about how to improve old software made with legacy libraries.

My point was obvious: as an external consultant, I was suggesting rewriting the software using new libraries and frameworks.

Why so?

Well, most of these libraries were deprecated, and it was the right time to improve the architecture and the back end as well.

During this meeting, after a long discussion, they decided to proceed with the legacy libraries and refactor only some parts.

They asked me for advice on that decision, and I told them:

This is absurd, are you crazy?

Can you be so dumb?

Well, you can imagine how they reacted.

I have other stories to tell, but this is not the right time.

👀 Looking back

This was the best experience I had, I admit that.

I'm still recommending the company to junior people as I think it's a good place to start and explore various things; even though I don't agree with the CEO's vision and some of the decisions they made.

It was a great place to grow further, with nice teammates (we're still keeping in touch, and we're planning to meet later in the summer), and good flexibility.

I hope you enjoyed this article, the third of six (for now) about my career.

This series will be a prequel to others focusing on specific topics, so stay tuned and let me know in the comments if you want to discuss a specific section or topic.

🕺🏽 Your lovely neighborhood dancing engineer 🕺🏽

<born2code/> was the first Italian coding school that provided a three-month front-end development course, covering topics like UX/UI, CSS, JavaScript, Angular, and performance optimization. The experience helped boost the author's career by enhancing their skills and connecting them with like-minded individuals.

<born2code/> was the booster of my career, I'm sure.

Sorry guys, all links point out to Italian sites...

What is <born2code/>?

<born2code/> was likely the first Italian coding school.

The inaugural edition took place in 2017, and I was among the alumni in that class.

The class had limited enrollment, and the administration selected participants based on their CVs, similar to a real company.

We were a group of 21 individuals from various regions in Italy.

The class lasted for a duration of three months.

Several companies sponsored the project:

• Groupama Assicurazioni

• Codemotion

• Maxxi Museum

• Luiss Enlabs

• ... more

This project aimed to teach front-end development to diverse individuals with varying backgrounds, enabling them to embark on a new career in this field.

There were only two editions: 2017 and 2018.

In the first edition, they selected Angular as the framework to teach, while in the second edition, they opted for React.

We were based in the offices of the Luiss Enlabs in Rome, over the Termini station.

The curriculum

The curriculum for this initiative remained consistent across both editions; as previously mentioned, only the framework changed.

Yes, I know, React is not a framework, but it's easier to treat it as if it is.

There were 11 chapters.

The sections

1. Introduction

2. UX/UI

3. CSS and Responsive design

4. JavaScript

5. JS OOP and Design Patterns

6. AJAX

7. Publishing a web app

8. Intro to Angular

9. Using Angular

10. Client-server communication

11. Performance optimization

1) Introduction

The first chapter was quite easy, or at least, it was for me since I had 2 years of experience (as I joined this class after two years at Network Service).

The focus was on the role of a front-end developer, how to choose a technology to work with based on the project, the differences between front-end and back-end, and how they communicate, the HTTP protocol, HTML, and the semantics of a web page.

2) UX/UI

The second chapter focused on User Experience (UX) and User Interface (UI).

We learned the differences between the two, what they are, why they are important, and why we, as front-end developers, need to know about them.

We ultimately designed our projects using Figma.

3) CSS and Responsive Design

The third chapter introduced us to CSS.

We learned how to apply basic styles, understand the box model, use media queries, implement the mobile-first approach, and more.

This was particularly useful since Flexbox was gaining popularity (despite being introduced in 2009), and I hadn't used it until that point.

4) JavaScript

The fourth chapter was quite enjoyable.

It felt like a breath of fresh air for me, as we learned the basics, including variables, how to interact with the DOM, events, error handling, and much more.

However, most of the fun was in the subsequent chapter.

5) JS OOP and Design Patterns

The fifth chapter was intense.

We had to learn a lot of new concepts.

We delved into OOP (Object Oriented Programming), closures, scope, callbacks, prototypes, new ES6 methods, and much more.

We also received an introduction to the most commonly used design patterns in the JavaScript world:

• Module pattern

• Singleton pattern

• Observer pattern

• Prototype pattern

6) AJAX

In the sixth chapter, we focused on AJAX.

We learned how to make server calls from the client side, explored the XMLHttpRequest object, the new fetch method, and discovered how to handle XML and JSON responses.

7) Publishing a web app

The seventh chapter covered not only publishing an app but also delved into more topics.

We were introduced to Git, learning what it is, why we should use it, and how GitHub can assist us in publishing our applications.

Ultimately, we published our projects using GitHub Pages.

8) Intro to Angular

The eighth chapter was one of the most challenging ones.

We were introduced to a rising framework: Angular.

Angular was (and still is) a framework developed by Google.

Angular is an opinionated framework that provides all the necessary utilities to build a SPA (Single Page Application) without the need for other libraries.

We learned how it works, and covered the basics such as modules, components, services, directives, interceptors, and so on.

I must admit, I fell in love with it, and I still do, even though I'm using it less at the moment.

9) Using Angular

The ninth chapter was challenging.

We were constructing a SPA using Angular, adhering to the framework's best practices while learning it, and the library it relies on: RxJS.

RxJS is a library that offers reactivity.

It's not as simple as it seems, as you will need to completely shift your thinking and programming approach.

The imperative or declarative methods you typically employ are quite different.

10) Client-server communication

The tenth chapter focused on connecting our SPA with a server-side database.

We were introduced to Firebase, which we used as our database.

Communication was facilitated through the HTTP module provided by Angular.

We performed operations such as storing, reading, and updating data.

11) Performance optimization

The final chapter focused on performance.

We learned how to utilize the browser's DevTools to profile our application, interpret the HTTP calls we made, determine the number of times components were rendered, and more.

Additionally, we explored optimizing the source code, including both CSS and JS, as well as enhancing and converting images to more efficient file formats.

How was structured?

We were a group of 21 students.

The class composition was diverse, consisting of people like me who had a background in the industry, as well as those without any relevant experience since they were working in other fields.

For the majority of the chapters, we took individual exams and received individual results.

Only for the final exam, we were divided into different teams, and each team was tasked with developing a SPA.

Our project

To be honest, I don't remember many details about the project we completed.

However, it remains on GitHub, along with the projects from all the other teams.

Our project was called CoEvents, a platform for companies to organize internal events or collaborate with other companies.

We created a brief, drafted some templates for agile ceremonies (yes, we had an introduction to that too), then developed the wireframes, and so on.

You can access everything in GitHub.

I must admit that finding that repository and looking back at everything we did brought tears to my eyes, as a wave of emotions overwhelmed me.

The hackathon

We had the pleasure of participating in a hackathon hosted by the Maaxi Museum.

How it was structured

The hackathon was open to various groups, and its objective was to discover a project that could enhance the museum experience.

As a class, we joined different groups to assist them in developing the proof of concept for their projects.

I found myself involved in the Deed project: Get.

I had the pleasure of working on the prototype of the wristband.

The winner

Well, we won.

It was an incredible experience, as I had to develop an app using Ionic to establish and maintain communication with the wristband.

My takeaways

If you're sticking around, you might be curious about the insights I've gained from this adventure...

And let me tell you, there are plenty.

Considering this course took place in Rome, I had to uproot myself and reside there for a solid four months.

It was an entirely novel encounter, in an unfamiliar city, devoid of companionship and immersed in a lifestyle drastically distinct from my usual surroundings.

Reflecting on everything I gained at the tech level, it truly was the catalyst for my career, as I mentioned at the beginning of this article.

I not only enhanced my fundamental understanding and existing concepts, but also acquired new knowledge, and met wonderful people with whom I could share the experience.

I would recommend an experience like this to anyone looking to start in our industry. However, I must acknowledge that current coding schools may not be able to offer something similar due to various reasons, such as relocations, participant numbers, and so on.

I also have to admit that the current programs are not always as useful as they could be, and, most of the time, the marketing of these schools does not help those who want to start in this field, as it can be misleading in various aspects...

But we'll discuss this in another article, so stay tuned!

If you enjoyed this article, please like and share it. Let others know how these experiences are beneficial to all of us.

Perhaps, some companies will be inspired to propose similar initiatives in the future.

🕺🏽 Your lovely neighborhood dancing engineer 🕺🏽

A high school student began their IT career by working as an intern at a small web agency called Network Service. After two years and six months, they left due to the legacy tech stack and delivery time issues. This article is the first of six in a series about the author's career, focusing on the importance of perspectives and how the author should not have challenged them.

It was June 2015, to be precise, and my final exam to graduate from high school was just one month away.

Because of various reasons, I had to begin working instead of solely attending university.

Thus, I started searching for local companies to see if I could find any opportunities that would help me kick-start my career in the IT industry, as that was my desired path. The world I discovered was truly astonishing.

After two weeks of searching, I came across a small web agency called Network Service and realized that I shared mutual friends with one of the partners.

📜 CV and interview

After two weeks of searching for a role in the industry, I discovered a company where I had some mutual friends.

I can still recall saying:

"Let's try this. I'm scared because this will be my first job in the industry, but I have to take my shot."

and then my friend told me:

"Send me your CV so I can share it with them, but send it to them too"

PANIC.

I had never written a CV for this industry, and all my experience was unrelated to it. So, what should I include in the CV?

Ultimately, I decided to write about my education, my reasons for wanting the job, and a project I had completed with a classmate for our final exam.

🕵🏽 The interview

Another week went by, and I received a call from them; they wanted to conduct an interview.

I remember feeling both elated and nervous simultaneously.

We agreed on a date, and suddenly, it became real: "I HAVE AN INTERVIEW!"

I had to call my friend and express my gratitude for the opportunity they provided by referring me.

📅 The DAY.

It's happening; it is the day of the interview.

I drove to the office, rang the bell, and entered.

Upon arrival, I was welcomed by one of the company partners.

We engaged in some small talk before the interview commenced.

It proceeded smoothly, and we discussed why I wanted this position as my first job, my knowledge, and so on.

For the behavioral portion of the interview, I spoke with the partners and the head of the engineering team.

The company was quite small, consisting of only 8 engineers, 6 marketers, the partners, and the front office staff.

Two days later, I received a call from them, expressing their desire to hire me.

It was incredibly exciting, as they were willing to take a chance on me despite my lack of experience.

👨🏽‍💻My role

I was hired as an intern, as it was my first job.

My primary duties involved coding websites for hotels and restaurants.

Within a few weeks, the head of engineering, who also served as the head of design, onboarded me.

He showed me how they built websites, the technologies they used, and so on.

🖥️ Tech stack

As I was focused mostly on the front-end side, I worked primarily on website development.

The company had a custom CMS written in PHP to manage the content of the websites and provide customers with the ability to add, edit, or remove sections and other elements from their websites.

The websites were built from scratch (each time starting from a "template") using only HTML, CSS, and JavaScript (actually, we were using jQuery; back in the days when ES6 was emerging and jQuery was a lifesaver, the world has changed a lot since those days).

After a few months, I became so proficient that I was given more responsibilities, such as implementing Google Tag Manager to handle Google Analytics, Facebook Pixel, and other marketing tasks.

I also had to study Apache and Nginx to manage redirects and other server-related tasks to improve the website's SEO.

🚪The end of my adventure

I left Network Service after two years and six months.

But, which were the reasons for this?

Let's find out together!

💻 Legacy tech stack

The biggest reason for leaving was the tech stack.

I have to thank a lot Network Service and all my teammates for the opportunity, but after two years I noticed I was not growing anymore my tech skills as the stack was stuck.

Why the stack was stuck?

Well, there were multiple reasons:

• Delivery time

• Different visions

🚚 Delivery time

Like most of the small companies we have here in Italy, the delivery time of websites or any other type of project is often discussed.

Most companies still don't understand the importance of mediating the delivery time between the client and the engineering team.

This was the biggest issue from my point of view.

I had different discussions with the partners of the company about improving this area through mediation between them and the client.

They never accepted.

Probably, it was also my fault!

As it was my first experience, I didn't have the soft skills I have now. I argued with them at different times, although we know it's not good behavior during a negotiation.

At different times, most of the team members were under pressure due to the strict deadlines and the quantity of the workload we had.

💻 Different visions

It's 2017, Webpack and other bundlers were rising, yet we were still serving un-minified and un-uglified CSS and JS.

As a result, any person with minimal experience in web development could easily steal our code just by opening the DevTools.

After introducing Gulp for running tasks to minify, uglify, and other perks of our code, I wanted to take our DX to another level.

I wanted to introduce a templating system like Handlebars and bundle our code via Webpack to benefit from smaller chunks and all the things we never bothered with at the time, as they were the "basics."

The head of the engineering team saw this as something complicated that would never give us any benefit due to the size of the engineering team and all the tasks we had to complete.

It was at that point that I understood I had to change something to be able to improve my skills even further.

That's pretty much the story.

For different, and obvious, reasons, I skipped some parts of my journey in the company.

✅ Lessons learned

I have to acknowledge that without Network Service, I probably would not be where I am right now, both professionally and personally.

I really understood how the web works in a more detailed way, how to create a website from scratch, and a bunch of other marketing things that are always useful.

❌ Errors I did

I made a lot of errors, and I don't want to use it as an excuse, but it was my first experience.

I definitely had too many discussions with both the head of engineering and the partners, often for trivial reasons.

Today, I would probably approach these discussions in a completely different way and tone.

👀 Looking back

Now, after eight years of experience in the industry and working with various companies, I can offer a wealth of advice to my younger self on how to approach situations from different perspectives and with alternative strategies.

For instance, I now understand the challenges of managing a customer, both from technical and financial standpoints.

Delivering results is always difficult for both sales and engineering teams, but we, as engineers, should not solely focus on doing things the "right" way.

There are challenges, contracts, and a multitude of other factors that can impact a project, and we cannot always work in the ideal manner we desire.

I now clearly recognize the importance of their perspectives and how I should not have challenged them.

I hope you enjoyed this article, the first of six (for now) about my career.

This series will be a prequel to others focusing on specific topics, so stay tuned and let me know in the comments if you want to discuss a specific section or topic.

🕺🏽 Your lovely neighborhood dancing engineer 🕺🏽

🕺🏽 Who is elgorditosalsero?

Allow me to introduce myself.

My name is Guido Porcaro, and I am a Front End engineer currently based in Italy.

I am 27 years old and began my journey into the IT world at the age of 14.

Over the years, I have experimented with various technologies, stacks, and more, but ultimately, I chose to focus primarily on the Front End realm.

Why, you may ask?

Well, I have always been fascinated by the world of design, colors, and shapes. However, I am not particularly skilled at drawing. As soon as I discovered that I could create shapes and colors using code, I was instantly smitten.

🕺🏽 Wait... a dancer?

Allow me to write two sentences about this before delving into the main focus of this blog.

The title of this section precisely reflects the question every new teammate asks me while getting to know each other.

There's a stereotype that most engineers (particularly those who aren't in perfect physical shape) are introverted and generally prefer being in the dark with their computers rather than socializing.

Well, I do enjoy being in the dark, but while dancing.

I began dancing Salsa in 2015 and instantly fell in love with it.

When I'm not at the keyboard, you'll likely find me on a dance floor.

📝 Why this blog?

You may be asking yourself why I started this blog.

Well, it's a good question...

Jokes aside, I started this blog as different folks around different social networks are asking me the same questions multiple times, so I felt I had to start writing to share my knowledge, my pov, and some advice based on my experience in this frenetic world of IT.

🔍 What you will find here

I'll discuss various topics in this blog, including:

• Career

  • Mentoring

  • Coaching

  • Reviews

  • ... more

• Technology

  • JS/TS

  • React

  • Angular

  • Testing

  • ... more

📈 Career

As I write this article and begin this blog, I feel that I should focus more on discussing careers.

Why is that?

Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, our industry has experienced a boom, and many engineers have started questioning themselves, wondering how they can improve and achieve their goals and desired results.

I am part of various communities and even moderate some, and the most frequently discussed topics revolve around careers rather than specific technologies.

At the time of writing, I am employed by a large SaaS company where I have grown significantly and taken on various opportunities and responsibilities.

Some of these responsibilities include being a Buddy and serving as an interviewer.

👯 What is a Buddy?

A Buddy, in this context, refers to a supportive colleague who is always available to help others.

Essentially, I am like a best friend to my coworkers, and they can reach out to me anytime for any reason.

This role involves providing both technical and personal mentorship.

👨🏽‍💻 Interviewer

The best part about being an interviewer is that you get to meet many people, learn from them, and offer guidance or advice.

It's both exciting and intimidating at the same time.

Conducting an interview isn't always easy, as you have to manage the interviewee's emotions as well as your own.

Perhaps I'll start a series about interviews later on... (let me know what you think!)

🖥️ Front End techs

In my current role, I primarily concentrate on the front-end realm, discussing the technologies I frequently use, including libraries, frameworks, patterns, and more.

I won't devote much attention to this section, as I plan to write less about this area, likely only when I discover something valuable and interesting to share.

🫡 To sum up

Before concluding this introductory article for my new blog, I would like to thank you for taking the time to read it.

I understand that beginning to read an entirely new blog can be challenging if I'm unable to capture your attention, but I hope I have accomplished that goal.

I hope you find my content engaging, and please remember to subscribe if you'd like to stay current with my posts.

That's all folks,

🕺🏽 Your lovely neighborhood dancing engineer 🕺🏽

The GTM is an awesome tool for marketers and developers for adding external libs, handling events and analytics tags without affecting the codebase, and, above all, give to the marketing team some working autonomy without deploying a new version of the app/website.

Why?

Why I wrote this Hook?

Basically, because we are in the Hook era and, at the moment of writing, there was not any hook to handle it.

Overview

The Hook will inject the GTM scripts into the document and you don't have to edit your index.html anymore.

You can also pass as parameters a custom dataLayer name (it will replace the default dataLayer) and custom values/variables to it.

There is also a method to send custom data/events to the GTM (is a wrapper for the dataLayer.push())

Example Snippets

Basic/Default usage

import { useEffect } from 'react'
import useGTM from '@elgorditosalsero/react-gtm-hook'

const App = () => {
  const { init } = useGTM()

  useEffect(() => init({ id: 'GTM-ID' }), [])

  return <p>My awesome app</p>
}

Send event (after initialization)

const MyAwesomeComp = () => {
  const { sendDataToGTM } = useGTM()

  const handleClick = () => sendDataToGTM({ 
    event: 'awesomeButtonClicked', 
    value: 'imAwesome' 
  })

  return (
    <div>
      <p>My Awesome Comp</p>
      <button onClick={handleClick}>My Awesome Button</button>
    </div>
  )
}

So, what do you think? Will you try it?

If you think would be useful an article with more examples and/or screenshots also from the Tag Manager, let me know in the discussion section

Pull Request, contributions and issue are welcome!

If this Hook was useful to you and you like it, please add a reaction and/or leave a comment and star on GitHub!

Repo

GitHub