Communicate value

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.

Examples

  • You finished a performance optimization that decreased load times by 50%. Instead of highlighting only the technical changes, you explain to stakeholders how the optimization will improve the user experience and reduce bounce rates (which you have been tracking), directly connecting it to business goals.
  • Your team implemented a new testing framework. When sharing the update with management, you communicate that the improved tests will catch more bugs early, reduce QA workload, and help deliver reliable features faster, tying the technical choice back to business value.