The Turing School strives to create an inclusive, helpful and creative community.
Being immersed in this has instilled in me an instinct to strive for not only person growth, but those around me. Throughout multiple team projects, I have been able to provide growth to the team through knowledge sharing, pair programming, patience and openness. I have seen the first-hand results of success through this approach and am excited to bring this mindset to a professional career.
Although, I recognize the importance of a team in solving problems, I have consistently demonstrated my ability to be self-driven and curious. This can be exemplified by my ability to learn quickly. Within a demanding curriculum, I was able to create projects using techniques/tools/stacks that were not covered. These include a Java desktop game and an Elm microservice. At every opportunity I’ve been driven to learn more, ideate and execute with zero bias.
While learning, I had never stopped sharing. For example, I had held a session on learning Elm, and organized a hackathon team surrounded by it. I haven’t let my knowledge just be my knowledge. I am constantly excited to share, receive feedback and iterate.
Outside of programming, I am consistently infatuated by design and the design process. Overall, my pursuit of self-iteration is inspired by it! I love exploring new concepts -- currently I am very into typography and its complexity.
Overall, I reach out to Etsy today, as I feel that you share a lot of these views. Etsy’s inherent creativeness and it ability to foster it as a business model is extremely impressive. A company that is focused on personal growth is one that I’d feel I belong at.
I think this is a good starting point, but it feels like raw material that needs to be refined. I usually structure my cover letters in the following way:
In general, a desire to learn is great and something everyone wants to hear but don't overemphasize it. Explain that learning is important but producing is equally as important. Make them understand that you don't see Etsy as graduate school, but as a place to produce and to apply the things you have learned, while also learning more along the way.
Some areas are also not clear. For example, "zero bias" isn't a reality and it also isn't necessarily a positive. We should have opinions on the tools we use and use those to inform what tools we use next and why/why not. This is a mark of a good developer, I would say. Also, curiosity and being self-driven are not exemplified by the ability to learn quickly. They're different traits entirely.
I think you do a great job of being confident, though. That's key. I also like that you included some interests outside of programming.
I would organize things a little bit and have some other students and maybe Meeka take a look at it and then send it back. Nice work so far, though! 👍