Read the documentation. Aggressively pursue opportunities to learn new skills.
I feel like your advice is not emphasized enough in tech circles. Our field is constantly changing and evolving so success is often predicated on willingness and eagerness to learn.
That said, also recognize that not every new skill or tool is necessarily appropriate for a particular task. You should still learn them, though, otherwise when they are appropriate, you may not even recognize it.
Get a better paying job once you’ve got some experience. Raises won’t keep up with your value.
Don’t work yourself to the bone. There really are plenty of jobs that only require 40hrs/wk and pay the same or better.
Work somewhere with a good culture.
3 and leave is the general rule of thumb till you’re at the most senior levels. Never move laterally if it can be avoided, know what the resume and experience looks like for the next level and always be working towards that.
This is extremely important. Your best raises and title changes will come from changing companies, not internally.
After a number of years with my first company (a household name), I quit and got an 80% raise. Based on how quickly my new company accepted my salary request, I’m pretty sure I could have asked for more.
Don’t burn out! Ask for help and guidance when needed, and take care of your mental and physical health (get a hobby, go out with friends, go to the gym, etc.)
I’ve seen brilliant people burn out and end up leaving/missing out growth opportunities because of it. Now that I manage people, it is my biggest area of focus because many times the best employees are the most at risk. They keep getting praise and asked to be involved in more and more and it becomes hard to say ‘no’ to new projects, responsibilities, etc… Until it is to much.
When it happens everyone looses, your boss, your team, the company, and especially you.
a million times this, so many young people overwork themselves and burn out quickly
I cringe whenever a see someone has checked in code at 1am on a weekend, and these people are also working normal business hours so it’s not like they are only working at night
sadly it’s usually the same people who never take PTO either
What if my whole problem is I don’t know what I need or what kind of help I could use?
Whenever I work a job that’s too complex for me, part of the problem is I can’t clearly define what the heck is going on to even know what kind of thing would help.
It’s like my brain just start blanking out.
There is no one perfect solution unfortunately.
Meeting a therapist will definitely help to identify the root cause, and eventually will help.
Also, see my post YSK: Understanding the work burnout experience, treatment and preventions
I think the root cause is the complexity. I do a lot better in jobs where the situations might change but the rules don’t. In programming, everything is changing all the time and I can’t keep up. There’s no repetition and if you are repeating yourself you’re doing it wrong.
I need parts of the day when I’m not being creative within a formally strict environment. It takes too much processing power for my brain to do that, and it overworks me.
I know the root cause and the problem is solved because I’m working jobs that have complexity within the range I can handle.
I think the root cause is the complexity.
Split the problem into manageable chunks, then attack the chunks. Apply recursion as needed.
This is part of a more senior skillset, as some times a senior will be breaking up the problem and assigning the smaller pieces to other devs.
You’re not responsible for the bad decisions made by the people who have positional authority over you. Do your best. Warn them about the risks. Let yourself feel disappointed by their decisions, but don’t ever accept responsibility for them. If you did your best to warn them, then you took your responsibility seriously. That’s enough.
CYA in a nutshell
UPDATE: I added some clarifying points in light of getting some of this wrong. I believe the underlying point still stands.
No. I believe I understand why you think so, but just no.
At best, covering your ass means gathering evidence about how much you tried to warn the people making decisions, in order to avoid or deflect blame when things go wrong and someone starts wandering the countryside looking for people to blame. I’m not suggesting that. I’m not even suggesting saying “I told you so.” when things go wrong.
Quite often, at least how I’ve seen it, covering your ass involves not even trying to do the right thing or, perhaps, pretending in public to do the right thing in order to have a plausible excuse when things go wrong. That’s also not what I’m advising.
I’m advising not to accept responsibility for other people’s bad decisions. If you genuinely did your best to influence their decision and they chose poorly anyway, don’t take responsibility for that choice. The responsibly remains with the person who had the authority to decide.
For example, if the OP decides to listen to you instead of to me, that’s not my responsibility. I’ve tried to explain my position, but the responsibility for choosing what to believe belongs with them. I’m most definitely not covering my ass; I’m recognizing that I’m not responsible for replacing OP’s judgment with mine. If they ask me for more information, I have the responsibility to provide it. If they ask me to clarify my position, I have the responsibility to do that. But I am not responsible for convincing them nor for their final decision.
Covering your ass typically involves not trying to do the right thing or, perhaps, pretending to do the right thing in public in order to have a plausible excuse when things go wrong
You have a very different idea of CYA than I (or the other poster). To me, CYA means ensuing you have evidence that tried to do the right thing and were overruled, so that you will can (justifiably) avoid repercussions when the failures you warned about come to pass.
I’m with you. Two things.
One, I assumed that the commenter was referring to the cynical kind of CYA, which I was certainly not advocating. I might well have got that wrong; only the commenter knows what was in their heart. Oops.
Two, I said nothing about gathering evidence to be able to produce when needed. I merely said that if you tried your best, then you did enough and not to feel responsible for their decisions.
In both cases, I did not suggest covering any ass.
Thank you for clarifying and not letting me off the hook.
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Exercise regularly. Maintain good posture. Stretch. It kills your body, working at a computer all day.
Above all else here, this.
:wq
Years of imprisonment avoided
I wonder how many files I’ve accidentally left that in while I wasn’t in vi.
For me, probably a lot.
:q!
:x
I don’t like that as much because it’s not as clear what it does. I remember “:wq” as “write quit”.
Understand that technology cannot fix people problems. Always remember that. If you’re asked to solve a people problem and you don’t understand it, you will suffer. Only management can fix people problems.
Also, it may not seem like it, but software is almost entirely about people. Everything comes down to the users. You need people to use your software. You need people to want to use your software. Even if your users are other engineers, you still need users. You could build the best piece of software ever made, but it’s nothing without usage.
Things like marketing, product, and design are usually equal parts of building software.
This is something that took me a long time to come to terms with.
Yup. It’s definitely always about people. The people using it.
I’ve worked in software support, QA, and technical writing.
A LOT of developers who come in as devs from the very start of their careers know very little about how the average person might interact with the software they are creating. And what they know of, they can (sometimes) be so sneering and dismissive of that it actually impacts their design decisions. Like, “I don’t care, the user is stupid, I’m doing it the RIGHT way.” Even when the “stupid user” is like 90% of the population that’ll use your widget.
A new (and old) dev should read past customer tickets and talk to your customer support people, as they’ll have the actual real-world experience and examples with non-technical users that can give you insight into how to better create the thing that you are creating.
To make a comparison…say you were a furniture designer making chairs, and you’re 6’3". Sitting in the chair yourself and proclaiming it’s fine isn’t enough if your users are children, women, guys shorter than you, people lighter than you, people heavier than you, and the disabled. You need to actually understand how people who navigate the world in a different way than you do interact with the thing you’re making. A chair that works fine for someone who is 6’3" with two working legs might be unusable for a 11 year old who broke their foot, or a 4’11" grandmother who can no longer move heavy things around (say if the chair is solid and heavy and something a 6’3" dude could easily move).
With technology, it means average non-tech users will flow through menus differently than you, might have vision or hearing problems that you don’t have that make signals from the widget difficult to decipher, and people in general who are non-techie can also be more risk-adverse when it comes to things like clicking strange buttons. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
Interesting, mind giving an example?
Trying to use technology to control people clocking in on time or making the IT department the company computer police
Oh I see! that is a great example, thanks.
Everyone else here who said, “Keep learning” is right on, but don’t forget to work on your soft people skills along with your tech skills. Whether your long term goal is to stay in development or some other aspect of the industry, you should be comfortable talking to all sorts of people (management, sales, customers, etc…), making presentations, being social at conferences and so on. We (techies like me) tend to forget this, but it’s really important.
Imagine yourself starting your own company in five years or being the senior manager of a large group. How are you going to like meeting new people every day, selling or at least explaining your product or service to them? If the answer is “not very”, then start working on that now.
If you’re a developer, read the source code. People will tell you how they remember things working, or how they think they should work. The code is what it is.
I don’t know if that’s obvious for people entering this profession but mind that you don’t read code like a book. Check how the functions you use are implemented. What’s being called from where (call stack helps in the debugger). How are experience programmers managing their code etc. It’s a good skill to learn how to navigate other people code and quickly find the parts that matter
Exactly! Always push for code pointers for everything people tell you about the codebase. Even if the code has a bug and isn’t working as intended, it’s so important to know the actual truth if what’s happening.
Ask questions, don’t assume. Keep notes of meetings, and notes of your work, little bits. Always have a good rollback plan.
Remember tech-companies exist to make money, not to “do good.” Whatever problem they are supposedly working on, they are only doing it because someone thinks they can eventually turn it into a revenue stream. Don’t drink the kool-aid, be a mercenary and get as much out of it that you can until you can leave for good. Dont’ be the like the smuck’s that are still working at twitter.
Yup, and this applies to any company. If you don’t own the business, you are a line item, not “family”. Always be ready to jump ship for a better opportunity, because they will do the same.
Ask the experts from help, and learn from them. Don’t ask things you can legitimately learn really easily on your own by just doing a quick read of the code, but the bar for questions to not be stupid is pretty low. In most projects with any complexity, it’s probably overall saving the company money if you ask someone who knows and can save you time, instead of wasting a ton of your time reaching the same conclusion. But next time that problem comes up, you should know how to solve it, so it saves everyone time.
I can think of three big pieces of advice:
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Are you sure? I think the golden age of the magic tech jobs is nearing its end. If you want to join the tech industry because it’s an easy ticket for a successful life then you might wanna rethink that. If you want to join the tech industry because engineering is pure magic and you want to be a part of that, then by all means, you do you. Just be ready for it to be a bumpy road if you aren’t able to adapt to whatever AI does to the industry over the lifetime of your career.
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Find companies who will treat you right, and where people are real and do real shit. When I was first starting out, a project I was working on was behind. I stayed over the weekend, even though people told me not to. I finished, I was proud of myself. Then I came in on Monday and everyone else’s stuff was behind anyway, so we missed our deadline regardless, and in the end it didn’t matter. Right around that time was when I decided, more or less, to hell with this. At the company I eventually jumped ship to, my boss would regularly push back on clients who wanted us to work weekends, come by and encourage people to live a normal life instead of just a working-to-death life. Basically, he looked out for people. So I stayed there for quite a while. Basically, after that experience, if the boss wasn’t looking out for me or the tech was shoddy, I bailed instantly. You gotta have a good human life and take pride in what you do.
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Own up to your fuck-ups. You’ll make some. I’ve destroyed important hardware, made massive architecture mistakes on client work which the clients then identified and talked to us about, deleted the partition table on an important public-facing server, you name it. When I did something like this, I would be 100% upfront about what happened. In good working environments, people would recognize and give respect for that, because nobody’s perfect. In bad working environments, being upfront about mistakes would somehow be a bad thing (see point #2). The answer is not to become sneaky. The answer is to leave and go somewhere where people respect honesty. Those places do exist.
That third one can be tough, but I think it’s super important, and, not just in tech.
An easy way to confirm your first point: would you still want to do it if you were paid significantly less? If so, then yeah, you’re in the right place.
Point 1 is pure speculation. You could say the same about any profession. Absolutely not something woth considering when looking for career opportunities. You can always pivot with your career and knowing how to code is a plus because that makes you understand tech better
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If you have an opportunity to learn a new platform or technology, take it. Every environment has a different way of organizing, implementing, troubleshooting, etc. Each one you learn gives you a new way to look at a project, and teaches you something about how other people may think about projects, problems, and solutions.
People who stick with the same tech for decades are also stuck with the same approach to new projects. When the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail, and all that. Get more tools in your tool belt.
Depending on your specific field tough.
In front-end there are so many opinions it becomes a lot of noise so you kinda have to narrow your focus.
If you’re offered a job with more money/benefits or whatever, take it. Don’t give your employer the option to counter. And if you ever do let them counter out of curiosity, don’t take it… Leave.
There’s too many horror stories of people basically staying on after a counter-offer, only to train their replacement and end up tossed out anyways.
Loyalty doesn’t mean shit in tech; any promotion you get internally at a job will be pennies compared to what you’re able to get by shopping around; so do yourself a favor and run whenever the opportunity arises.
