The Monday Byte

Welcome to the Monday Byte where I send you 5 things each week so you can improve your English and land a remote dev job.

📖 Word/Phrase - Frontend Ceiling

Do you follow swyx? If not, you should. I have learned more than I can remember from him in my career. Anyways, I saw this tweet and thought it’d be a great topic for this section.

First, I want you to know this is not a common expression. It’s more so an analogy. Let’s break it down. We have two words:

• Frontend - which you and I know

• Ceiling - the top part of the inside of a building

So what does he mean here? When you stick to frontend for your whole dev career, you limit your career. Why? There is only so high you can go up vs. backend devs.

Typically (not always), high-level roles like CTOs/VP of Eng. folks started out as backend devs. Don’t impose a ceiling on your career - expand your skillset!

💬 Pronunciation - Critique of Catalin from Romania

So friends have said they’ve loved these pronunciation critiques. I’ve decided to upgrade how I do these so you’ll notice that in this latest critique.

This one is 12mins long where I critique my friend @catalinmpit who is from Romania.

Big thanks to the Figma wizard @NexturHe4rt and @danielhe4rt for the design/scene help!

Want me to critique your English? Reply to this and let me know!

🗣️ Real World Conversation - POV: Native English Dev Shares His Screen

How comfortable would you feel if I told you to pair-program with your coworker (native English speaker) right now and you had to drive?

Look, I get it. It would be scary for me to do that in Spanish. How do you phrase things? What tense do you use? What vocabulary? It’s all tricky!

Don’t worry though. You can study this and get better. That’s why I made this video just for you. I share my screen and pretend I’m pairing with a coworker on a some code.

🔗 Content - Frontend at Scale

As you level-up in you career, you go deeper on specific topics. If you are frontend-focused, then this newsletter is for you.

It’s written by Maxi Ferreira, a Staff Software Engineer, who is like you — non-native English. I like it because t goes deep into technical discussions that no one else is talking about.

Read this first issue here.

💪🏼 Exercise - Belief before Reality

Over the past few months, an idea has being reappearing in my learnings as both an engineer and solopreneur - “belief often comes before reality.”

What does that mean? If you want something to happen, you first need to believe it. Only then can it manifest itself into something real.

Here’s what I want you to do:

1. Get a piece of paper

2. Write down what you want (i.e. “I want to work for an American company as a software engineer.”)

3. Now, cross it out and write it again in present tense (i.e. “I work for an American company as a software engineer.”)

Our brains don’t know the difference between present and future. The sooner you start seeing your goal as reality, the sooner it will become that.

Bonus: Email me a picture of your goal and I’ll give you 1 idea to help you get there faster.

Enjoy the week, we’ll talk again soon.

- Joe