The market is tough and harsh, it doesn't give a damn about anyone's over-bloated self-ego and wishful thinking which I believe we all suffer from.
I haven't gotten anywhere but here are the things, I am working on to become better in the field.

Staying in African as a dev should be an extra motivation to double the hustle but no human nature would always kick in and you will get hit series of syndrome that will want to slow things down before you know you are lagging behind.

Here are the things you need to know as an aspiring Software Engr.

1. You will never be good enough (Imposter Syndrome):
I guess you already know what that means, start doing whatever your goals are for learning to code immediately.

2. Never code without Mock-up:
You can say but I am not a UI/UX designer, it doesn't matter, knowing exactly what you want to make will save you a lot of UI debugging time, companies that spend money on product designers are not dumb and besides it doesn't take that much time to grab the basics, though becoming an expert can take a lifetime, but hey the basics to is okay for you as a FE developer.

3. Know exactly what you want before you write your first print function:
I know this seems easy but I can bet it's not cos it's a trap I have fallen into myself, From backend engineering with node.js to js 2D canvas games to FE with react.js, next.js to AWS to chrome extensions development and UI testing. It seems I have fallen into endless learning which in the end there is almost nothing to show for it. Assuming I had stuck to the react.js community and just did the needful, I might have landed a remote job by now after spending 3 years in the space.

4. Network like mad:
Again, I failed here, I can't stress enough how your network is your net worth. A lot of ideas comes when you don't even think about it when your brain wave frequency is very low, You can know what problem people have that you can solve if you don't get out there and network, Linkedin is your best friend in the regard, reduce FB and bird app to the minimum if you don't want to trade networking for productivity which at the end will feel meaningless. If you have ideas, the MVP is ready, if you have quality the network the sky is the limit.

5. Get exposed:
I am taking a lot of petty skills seriously these days, I have widened my horizon, I don't code for as long as possible again, I try to take inspiration from many spaces through I get to know about many problems, e.g I have YouTube channel on Bet bots, Do I play bets? No. But there is a community of people who do who will be super happy to handle over their cash to me if I can solve their gamble problems, which is basically reducing loss.

6. Find mentors:
It really difficult to find people who wanna mentor people with course to sell or hidden agendas that's why I commend people like tenzagetsu (bro where u find u moniker self ) for his persistent talk on coding miseducation, Listen to what the said works and it's your job to cut the bullshit out by wiving the ultimate Google.

There are a lot of things to discuss and say, In fact, I never start, but I believe am still learning, and learning never ends but never allow learn Bleep with your productivity.


Modified:
I thought I was in the programming section, oops