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10 Months as a Software Engineer

Rasheed K Mozaffar on May 28, 2025

Howdy folks 👋🏻 10 months ago, I got my first real job at an American startup working remotely, and that was a significant transition in ...
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Hamza

Reading this brought back so many memories, man. I’ve seen you put in the work since day one learning, building, and pushing yourself constantly. Watching you grow into the developer you are now has been nothing short of inspiring. It’s been a privilege to witness the journey up close, and I’m excited to see how far you’ll go. Keep going strong bro! 🚀

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Rasheed K Mozaffar

Truly appreciate that man! It's been a long while now, we got to witness our journeys from start to now, incredible progress over the last couple of years, definitely a lot of work went into that and we're pushing for more!
Let's keep pushing 🔥

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Abrar ahmed

This was such an enjoyable read—thank you for sharing your journey! As a freelance full-stack developer, I completely understand those “I thought I knew it all” moments that come crashing down when faced with a challenging codebase. The blast radius tip and the idea that coding is about more than just writing code—absolutely true! I really value your insights!

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Rasheed K Mozaffar

Glad you liked it!

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Ali FELLAHI

Great journey @rasheedmozaffar
Aside of technical knowledge, how was your English language skills, what is your current level and how you developed it. Any advice for someone want to learn English for remote work?
Thanks

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Rasheed K Mozaffar

English in general at some point can be just as important as technical skills, cause that's the language of communication you will be using daily, being good at it is fine, but being really fluent will help you significantly, you'll be able to express yourself clearly, convey your ideas and better contribute in discussions.
For me I did take some English courses in my early high school years, and I kept learning by myself for 3 years then took an IELTS test, in which I scored 8, but that was 2 years ago.
As for my advice, what worked best for me in summary would be these practices

  • Surround yourself with English
  • Chat and speak in English with friends, be it online and more preferably in real life
  • Read more and explore new words to expand your vocab
  • This one is a bit hard but it's the best tip I've collected through 4 years of learning English, that is, think in English, your inner voice, force yourself to do that in English instead of your native language

Good luck!

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Mohammed Husain

Great Insights. Thank you.

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Precious Kelvin Nwaogu

Same here Bro!!

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Sai Shravan Vadla

Hi @rasheedmozaffar, this was a great article. Just like you ten months ago, I'm looking for a junior web development job. Can you please explain the process of how you achieved the job, that too for an American company? Thanks in advance.

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Nathan Tarbert

insane how much growth you packed into 10 months, makes me wonder, you think the real trick is being willing to admit you don’t know stuff or just going deep even when you feel kinda lost?

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Rasheed K Mozaffar

It's a combination of both things, it's fine to not know things, and that's the absolute normal, you won't be able to pack every pattern, every library, every language and tool into your brain, but what's important is that if you do not know something, is that you can at least gain sufficient knowledge about it to deliver, and that's mostly the core I wouldn't say trick but rather skill, that will get you up to speed. And yes I say skill because this is something you can develop over time and even get better at, taking deep dives into things you're not familiar with, training in your free time, learning new concepts and sharing them, and getting involved in things that are outside your boundaries will allow you to grow quickly, also your ability to use existing tools like AI tools to make you more productive, not by copy/pasting code but rather by making use of it to understand concepts you're not aware of and to speed up your learning processes.

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Simone Brandt

great work