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How to grow into your best developer self

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Re: How to grow into your best developer self

#61

Post by UK-AL »

JonLim wrote: post #31
atemerev wrote: post #25

"Optimize your career, not your salary" — and this is how gamedev is never lacking those new fresh naive developers. Poor souls.

I don't disagree on your sentiment on the gamedev industry and how it treats devs, but I agree with the author on the point of optimizing for a better career than just optimizing for salary bumps. Their checklist shares a lot with mine, and I can only assume money will come with having grown in supportive and great development environments.

Supportive and great developer environments probably correlates well with companies that pay well and respect(correlated with pay) their developers

Re: How to grow into your best developer self

#62

Post by beebs93 »

grigjd3 wrote: post #58

I don't think enough can be said about having good mentors and having good mentors that are good at things you aren't good at. My direct manager and I complement each other pretty well and in addition to it being good for our department, I get to learn a lot.

When approached to work for my current company I met with my future manager and asked:

Will I be able to have a more senior developer act as a mentor?

Will I have direct access to more experienced devs on my team?

What opportunites will there be to try something new and get it reviewed?

Are there any tech stack absolutes I will never be able to stray from?

The answers I received were great and ended up being accurate.

It was the first time I had ever decided to choose a company based primarily on the potential for growth and not money/perks/etc.

Smartest decision ever.

Re: How to grow into your best developer self

#63

Post by pmiller2 »

noxToken wrote: post #34
atemerev wrote: post #25

"Optimize your career, not your salary" — and this is how gamedev is never lacking those new fresh naive developers. Poor souls.

Optimize doesn't mean that you should completely ignore salary, work/life balance or any other benefit. I read it as, "Don't immediately jump ship just because someone offers you a 3% increase." > and this is how gamedev is never lacking those new fresh naive developers I think I know what you mean by this, but just in case, I really think it's the over-representation of SV and startup culture on the Internet. One of…

Do people really change jobs for a 3% increase? That doesn't even cover the risk of starting over at a new company for me, unless there's something seriously wrong with my current company or there's some other reason to move.

Re: How to grow into your best developer self

#64

Post by autotune »

UK-AL wrote: post #60

Honestly, I have found salary has correlated strongly with responsibilities you are given. Stronger than job title. Probably because higher salaries are given to people who they respect. If you optimize for salary, you will probably be given more responsibility.

The author is saying more that it's not just about how critical your responsibilities are to the company and how much you're given, it's about how much you enjoy said responsibilities as well. As an example, if you were to spend your days learning COBOL to chase the cash and work on legacy systems, you are probably having less fun than someone learning Python or Ruby or any number of more modern languages to work in a modern environment for what may be a lesser salary short term than that COBOL dev but can still give you a comfortable lifestyle in the long term as you become more senior.

Re: How to grow into your best developer self

#65

Post by weberc2 »

nizze wrote: post #56
weberc2 wrote: post #51

I hate to be the guy complaining about the site's UX, but that popover banner jumps over the text I'm trying to read whenever I scroll.

Let's see if we can do something about this. Thanks for the tip ;)

No problem. Here's a screen capture, wherein the highlighted text is what I'm trying to read: https://www.dropbox.com/s/zo9jmlxvs4mcqzc/banner_ux_bug.mov?...

I also sent an email with more details to your contact page before seeing your comment.

Re: How to grow into your best developer self

#66

Post by dpc_pw »

SolaceQuantum wrote: post #57

Query: As a new software developer, how does one find or develop mentor-mentee relationships? Unlike a technical book or code snippets, one cannot find this information through their own research. There are books on mentorship but they don't really apply specifically to technical fields and there may be nuances I am missing.

Mentors are hard to come by. I'd personally say that mentors don't have to be more senior or wiser or anything in particular. Just be a friendly, likeable person and listen to other people. Anyone cooworker that you respect can teach you something. And people do enjoy when someone is listening and appreciating they experience and skills.

Re: How to grow into your best developer self

#67

Post by dozzie »

snoman wrote: post #41
slmyers wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Call me a pessimist but I doubt the vast majority of people will ever find true mentorship. Would it be nice to have a more experienced and talented developer take a personal interest in your career and technical development? yes, of course it would, but it's unlikely at best. I'm sure self study, discipline and "grit" matter far more.

And they never will with that kind of attitude. Personally, I was fortunate enough to have a mentor when I was starting out and it rocketed me to a strong position in my career and I couldn't be more grateful. I try to actively mentor 1 or 2 people a year as a result. It's been mostly very successful so far.

What does it actually mean "to have a mentor" or "to mentor somebody"? What kind of activity is this? Because I constantly see people talking about it, but I've never seen a satisfactory explaination.

Re: How to grow into your best developer self

#68

Post by goldfire »

throwthisawayt wrote: post #48

I have a question for senior developers like the author. I've been a developer for 1.5 years and on this article's checklist for switching jobs I have everything except a mentor (that's probably more my fault). According to the this article I should not switch jobs. However I live in the Bay Area and there is a huge COL and also salary difference between top and "2nd tier" companies. Junior engineers at Google/FB/MSF…

The list in this article isn't exhaustive, it's just one set of suggestions. They are good and useful suggestions, but not the only possible criteria. You should make your own individual decisions based on the priorities and goals you have for your own life; nobody can tell you what is most important to you. What is it that you really want to accomplish? What are you willing to sacrifice to get there, and is that more or less than what you would actually have to sacrifice?

Keep an eye out for unintended consequences; keep digler999's reply in mind, for instance. But also don't overanalyze; whatever decision you make at this point probably won't be permanent.

Re: How to grow into your best developer self

#69

Post by achileas »

nizze wrote: post #9
xzion wrote: post #8

I just can't agree with the recommendation to read the comments before articles you find online. Critical thinking is such an important skill for everyone, not just engineers, and this habit all but eliminates it. You go into an article with a framed opinion of what it's trying to convey, and spend the time reading the article looking for confirmation of that opinion rather than thinking critically for yourself. This…

The comment section is pure gold for discovering contrasting opinions - which will feed critical thinking. Reading what ever article while remembering different opinions from comment section gives a really nice insight. Totally agree about the top comments. Not that valuable and some times even misleading/manipulated/bought/nasty.

The problem with that is often it gives equal credence to unequal opinions. And not everyone has the critical thinking skills and freedom from bias that they think they do. I'd argue that really nobody is able to fully remove from themselves any biases that may make them more likely to believe some comment over another.

Voting does nothing for this either, as people may upvote a popular lie or misconception, or downvote an uncomfortable truth - I used to see this happen often in the science-based subreddits when I bothered with them on reddit.

Re: How to grow into your best developer self

#70

Post by snoman »

dozzie wrote: post #67
snoman wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And they never will with that kind of attitude. Personally, I was fortunate enough to have a mentor when I was starting out and it rocketed me to a strong position in my career and I couldn't be more grateful. I try to actively mentor 1 or 2 people a year as a result. It's been mostly very successful so far.

What does it actually mean "to have a mentor" or "to mentor somebody"? What kind of activity is this? Because I constantly see people talking about it, but I've never seen a satisfactory explaination.

The dictionary does a pretty good job of defining it, though it omits something pretty important in practice. That is, to mentor is to advise or train someone.

The omission there is that there are, mostly, concrete goals that the mentee aims to achieve, and the mentor is personally invested in a successful outcome.

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