Should you keep your head down and do what youre told or should you aim only for ambitious projects?
Heres what Ive learned in my experience as a software developer.
Let me bat out a few suggestions based on my experience and observations.
This list is not all-inclusivebecause it cant be.
Your experience will be unique.
You rarely see anyonereadingone, especially not during core work hours.
Still, you have a computer and can read papers andmostbooks through an e-reader.
So get to it.
Youre not going to learn much if you just do what youre assigned and little more.
You also wont move forward if you ask for more work and get grunt work.
Be willing to slow down and do things right and read up on the fundamentals.
How do people develop an expertise in a coveted domain like machine learning?
One day at a time.
Manage your career aggressively.
So look out for yourself.
Dont ask for more work unless you trust that person to give youbetterwork than youd get otherwise.
Recognize under-performanceandover-performance and avoid them.There are a lot of low-effort players who stay employed for years.
This isnt a bad strategy if youre settled, but I wouldnt fall too low.
People who hide and do little tend not to make any enemies.
At the same time, be cautious of over-performance.
It can get you just as fired and it will happen a lot faster.
If you end up stuck between the two, ebb towards under-performance.
Dont ask for permission.
You wont get it.
So theres no upside in asking for that permission.
Just do it, and do it well.
It sets a precedent of you as a subordinate who needs more supervision.
Or no one else will.
If you learn CS666, you getsometime to breathe and forget about it and just do great work.
If you dont learn it, your career will be shaped by those who are better at it.
Otherwise, youd have the time and resources and no patience for quixotry in yourself or others.
Your intelligence doesnt automatically give you credibility.
WatchMad MenandThe WireandBreaking Badfor how people really are when there are any stakes.
Save all your energy for your own fights.
If you fight for other people, youre seen as an arrogant young fuck who didnt know the rules.
- take a stab at avoid thinking in terms of good versus bad.
Yeah, fuck that.
Every organization is a mix of good and bad.
Whatever the territory, use it to your advantage.
Boss yells a lot?
Assigned a boring project?
Its probably boring to your managers too, which means they wont look at you much.
This is a skill that seems to improve greatly with age.
Never step back on the salary scale except to be a founder.
Beyond that, the answer is no unless youre making a permanent move.
You better have a damn good reason if you step back, and it better be a high-status one.
then, congratulations, youre now a $90,000/year programmer.
Exercise.It affects your health, your self-confidence, your sex life, your poise and your career.
That hour of exercise pays itself off in increased productivity.
Long hours: sometimes okay, usually harmful.The difference between 12% growth and 6% growth is meaningful.
When your work is multiplicative in nature and your input/output relationship is truly exponential, work hard.
It may not feel like the case, but he needs you more than you need him.
will always suit you well.
Theres a lot of nonsense in data science but there is some meat to it.
Likewise, theres a lot of puffery and goofiness in NoSQL but non-relational databases do have their place.
functional programming) and which are just fads.
Finally, learn as much as you’re able to.
And, when youre out of school and probably not going back, its hard.
Even the really smart people find it hard to read the cutting-edge papers.
(In part, thats because many papers arent well-written, but thats another topic.)
No one is born with the ability to look at complex equations and just intuit what they mean.
What do software developers age 30 and over know now that they wish they had known in their 20s?
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This answer has been edited for grammar and clarity.
Image adapted fromFamily Businessandisak55(Shutterstock).
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