Seek feedback loops

Dear new developer,

Feedback loops are so important. (If you’re not sure what that is, I’d recommend “Thinking in Systems”.)

These loops help systems improve. If you don’t have feedback, you’ll improve more slowly, in my experience. Why? Because you won’t know what you are doing that is good and what is garbage. It’s really hard to evaluate that kind of stuff yourself. You can do it, it just takes time and perspective.

And of course, you want to do more of what is good. Here are some kinds of feedback loops which have helped me.

• tests
• one to ones
• public writing
• being a contractor

Automated tests are a really tight feedback loop. You can make changes to code and know if you’ve blown things up. (Type systems are another tight feedback loop preferred by some.) This is helpful in many situations, including when you are debugging a problem.

One to ones are a great way to gather feedback from your manager on problems, challenges and situations that you have faced. By doing it in a one to one (rather than a one off meeting), you’ll build context and history around these. After all, the tenth time you bring up the fact you find front-end development challenging indicates that this is a pattern, and you should evolve yourself or the position to help with the challenge. When you have your meeting, make sure you ask for feedback explicitly. When you get it, avoid being defensive. If you make it hard to get feedback, you’ll get less.

Public writing, especially a blog, is a great way to get feedback. You’ll be able to put your thoughts out in public. This can be scary and frustrating; some communities are more gentle about feedback than others. But the act of writing forces you to make the implicit explicit. And sharing that knowledge is a great way to get feedback. (Even a lack of response is feedback; what you were writing didn’t resonated with the audience you shared it with.)

I think everyone should try being a contractor. First it makes you appreciative of everyone else in a business, because when you are contracting, you often have to take on roles outside of development (sales, accounting, marketing). But for the purposes of this post, contracting is a great way to get feedback from the market. You’ll learn about which skills are in demand and what organizations will pay for those skills. Of course, you can find this out as an employee, but if you are a contractor, especially a short term one, you’ll be interacting with possible hiring managers much more often than as an employee. And the feedback loop is brutal and blunt: do they hire you or not.

Feedback loops are a key way to find out whether what you are doing is working or not. Seek them out.

Sincerely,

Dan