This is a guest post from Morgan Whaley, lightly edited. Enjoy. Dear new developer, Honestly my #1 piece of career or technical advice to new developers is: Be adaptable and authentic. I don’t think there is any one magic bullet to helping someone “break into” a job, or business, or new city. Humans are all … Continue reading Be Adaptable and Authentic
Dear new developer, I was at a lunch a few weeks ago and asked some senior engineers and managers what advice they'd give to a new developer. One said: "never stop learning". I thought this was a perceptive answer and wanted to expand on it. I learn something new every day. I'm going to talk … Continue reading Never stop learning
Dear new developer, When I was newer to development, I thought that conference speakers were experts in their area, harbored no doubts, and that they knew exactly what they were doing. Speaking about technology seemed scary (until it wasn't). I enjoyed this post, "Confessions of a Conference Speaker", pulling back the veil on the experience … Continue reading Confessions of a conference speaker
Dear new developer, A few years ago I was job hunting (during a hot job market and with almost two decades of experience) and had a lot of people turn me down or say I wasn't a good fit. Sometimes it was for coding ability, sometimes it was for familiarity with various systems, sometimes it … Continue reading You have to fit the job
Dear new developer, I thought this article nicely laid out three principles to guide a developer's career. They were: follow your taste find community take risks Each of these really resonated for me. The first because the wide world of software can lead to analysis paralysis, so you should really have some way of deciding … Continue reading Three principles for guiding your development career
Dear new developer, I recently learned a new skill. And I wasn't good at it. (The skill, if you must know, was writing with a certain tone for a corporate blog. But the lessons below apply for any skill.) I don't like being "not good", aka bad, at something. Especially since it was adjacent to … Continue reading The despair of not being good
This is a guest post from Jenna Quindica. Enjoy. Dear New Developer, I didn't learn how to program until I was 18; in fact, I didn't know about computer science the concept until I was 18. It is never too late to start learning how to code. In the beginning I struggled the most with … Continue reading It is never too late to start learning how to code
Dear new developer, I wrote about debugging a few weeks back. I wanted to get more concrete. One time a friend called in about his client. The client was getting doubled orders on their ecommerce site. That is, someone would order five widgets on their site. The system would have some kind of hiccup and … Continue reading On debugging, v2
Dear new developer, I really liked this post on mid-career challenges. I know you're new, but you'll be mid-career before you know it! I’m in a position right now where I have to figure out what comes next for me and how to navigate the challenges of getting there. I made it to senior engineer, … Continue reading On mid-career challenges
Dear new developer, You have to manage your career. If you don't, no one else will. This means three things. Know what you want. Communicate that. Make moves toward it. Let's talk about each of these in turn. "Know what you want" is the hardest part. Because we are lucky to live in a world … Continue reading Manage your career
Letters To A New Developer 