Professional Growth

Sharing knowledge with others forces you to ask questions like 'why does this work?' 'is this the best way?' and 'can this be improved?' This deepens your understanding and makes you and those you teach more effective software engineers.

You can have terrific conversations with coworkers and friends about things you're learning and doing in this industry. Professional conversations can have a much bigger impact depending on their packaging and distribution. Look for ways to increase the reach and impact of the knowledge sharing that naturally occurs when having professional conversations.

The very best programmers and teams will fail without effective communication. Opportunities for collaboration are missed and gratitude and kudos are withheld. This has career-wide implications. Your marketing value and communication with the business (also a form of marketing) will focus on the value that's been created for users rather than technical accomplishments. You'll also always give credit where it is due.

There are tons of little ways to make little bits of money. You don't get sucked into this. Introducing money impacts the relationship and people start to feel entitled to more of you and your time. You determine what it is you make your money doing and you make money doing that, and then the rest of your activities you do for free or do not do at all.

It's easy to get distracted by all of the things you could pack into your product offering or tech stack. So you regularly ask yourself whether the problems you're solving are your unique value proposition or if you should outsource this time and energy. The more time you spend on things outside of your differentiators, the less time you spend on solving the problem for which you're building.

You will never know everything. There will be gaps in your knowledge and understanding. It can be easy to immediately reject things which are new and unfamiliar, but do not fall into this trap. The world continues to evolve and while you don't want to be swept away by every fad that comes and goes, you should approach the new with an open and curious mind. This will not only expand your own knowledge and exposure, but also help you make and keep friends by not getting defensive whenever something new challenges your current understanding. As your understanding crystalizes and experience increases with time and exposure, you can update your solutions and even your principles to better reflect your updated context. You avoid stagnation by re-evaluating your principles and practices. Maintain a growth mindset and don't settle with your current level of ability. Always strive to improve.