How I became a Shopify Developer: Maria Reyes

Welcome Maria! Can we start with an intro from you? 

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Sure! I’m Maria, I live near Mexico City, and I've been a freelancer since I joined Storetasker 2 years ago. 

I ended up here at Storetasker when a friend during my coding bootcamp introduced me to the team. About a year ago, I paused my activity on the network to work full-time as a software engineer here in Mexico, but after recently becoming pregnant - I’ve gone back to the platform where I’m enjoying every bit of the freedom, flexibility and income that comes with freelancing. 

Ha! Welcome back then :) So before you did the bootcamp, what was your focus in your career? 

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Since I was a kid, I had always wanted to be an archeologist. So that’s what I studied, and ultimately what I ended up doing for 15 years. But as you know, life is very funny sometimes. Life presented signs to me that I might enjoy software development. So that’s what I did. I entered a year-long bootcamp called “Microverse” and took to programming quite quickly. 

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Would you recommend the bootcamp? 

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Yes - the course is actually free until you get a job and it’s mainly focused on international talent development, with students largely based in developing countries. So it was a great platform to position myself as an international developer. Everything was in English, and I learned a lot. 

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What’s been one of the most challenging parts of becoming a freelancer? 

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Working with the client. 

Ultimately being a great developer is half technical skills, and half communication skills. And because interactions with people can be very complicated, you need to develop strong skills to quickly understand how your client thinks; that’s the toughest bit. 

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What would be one piece of advice for young developers, looking to break into the world of Shopify development?

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Don’t give up. It's not gonna be easy in the beginning, but it gets easier over time. Though, I must admit that the learning never stops. The technologies are changing so rapidly that you have to keep digging to stay up to speed with the times. And also - find a community like Storetasker to join. You not only get great support from other devs on the network, but you also get access to an HQ team that has your support. That’s a huge deal when you’re starting out. 

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Thank you Maria!