Since joining the team as a junior developer back in September 2024, I have been exposed to a lot of great learning experiences. It’s been quite a blur, which is why I wanted to take the time to pause and reflect on my first six(ish) months as junior developer at Gibe.
The experiences that have stood out to me generally fall into two categories: mentorship/learning experiences, and involvement in the Umbraco community. Let’s start with the former.
Mentorship
It would feel amiss to not make this the first point. Even in this short amount of time, I have benefited immensely from the help and guidance of the team; whose sheer depth of technical knowledge I still find honestly astounding. This mentorship has come –primarily – in two forms:
Pair Programming
Coming into a new environment, with unfamiliar codebases and processes, having the ability to spend some one-on-one time with members of the team has been invaluable, as it has allowed me to ask (probably close to a million) questions and get real-time feedback. Also, in an era of remote work, this time has provided a great opportunity to get to know everyone!
Pull Requests
Saying that PR reviews provide a good opportunity for learning might sound a little obvious, but the PR process in Gibe is nothing short of fantastic. The feedback is consistently thorough, and extremely helpful. Since day one, I have been encouraged to use pull requests as a place to ask questions – whether that be about my own, or others’, code.
The Umbraco Community
It was the community that initially lured me into the world of Umbraco. After my first interactions with people in the community, I was immediately invested. Gibe are heavily involved in the Umbraco community, so it has been the perfect place to be to further my own involvement in the community. So far, my highlights have been:
The Umbraco Discord
The Umbraco Discord was my entry point into the wider Umbraco community. In just a short space of time, I had received a very warm welcome – and more than my fair share of assistance in debugging – from the community server. If there is one tip I would give to anyone looking to get more involved in the Umbraco community, it is to join the Discord server!
The New Gibe Office Opening
The opening of the new (and very swanky, might I add) office was the perfect opportunity to meet not only the Gibe team, but members of the wider Umbraco community, face to face. It was quite surreal to meet some of the creators of packages I use on a daily basis, and to pick their brains. I can only hope I managed to hide how starstruck I was. It was no surprise at all that every single person I met was incredibly down-to-earth and welcoming.
Pre-Spark Package Jam
It didn’t take long, after my initial interest in Umbraco began, for package ideas to start floating around. Still being quite new to the CMS, and the package creation process, I didn’t know how best to get started.
Enter the Umbraco Spark Package Jam, a full day dedicated to building Umbraco packages. Having access to some package veterans was invaluable, as was my introduction to Lotte Pitcher’s “Opinionated Package Starter”. Thanks to all this community support, I made more headway with my Umbraco package in one day than I had in the weeks leading up to the package jam.
It's days like these that fuel my love for the Umbraco community. The enthusiasm for Umbraco, and all the great package ideas floating around, was inspiring.
Umbraco Spark
The following day, I returned to Bristol for the (biased opinion time) number one Umbraco conference, Umbraco Spark. Having attended last year, I was excited ahead of the talks, and prepared to meet as many Umbracians as possible.
The talks were superb, covering a wide variety of interesting and practical topics. My personal highlights from the talks were: Gotta Cache ‘em All, a talk about the new .NET 9 hybrid cache – delivered by our own Luke Hook; Process Mapping as Code with Mermaid by Richard Jackson – because any talk that includes a Little Mermaid musical ukulele number is a winner in my books; and The Road to Umbraco 15 by Markus Johansson – being a relative newcomer to Umbraco, it was great to take a fly-by tour of Umbraco’s history, before seeing its exciting future.
In between the talks, there was ample opportunity to chat with members of the community – all of whom were, in true Umbraco fashion, very welcoming, extremely knowledgeable, and friendly. It is no surprise that Umbraco is often referred to as the friendly CMS!
In Review
Over the past six(ish) months, I feel like I’ve got to experience the wonderful Umbraco community from the best seat in the house. I’m going forward enthused to attend more events, work on more packages, and to learn as much about the rich world of Umbraco as possible!
If you spot me in the Discord, at an event, or event out in the wild – please come and say hello!
