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Career Guidance

Sustainable Do not work more than 40 hours a week

Most people are terrible at giving interviews

  • John Carmack advocates learning tools
    • I get asked for career advice a lot, and while my "learn deeply" pitch may be good long term advice, it doesn't help breaking in -- being able to write your own tool chain with a hex editor is great and all, but it doesn't add value at most companies.
    • I suspect there is a useful path that I think of as the "tool master".
    • Modern art and programming tools are enormously complex systems, and the typical user only touches a tiny fraction of their features. Picking a path of study that revolves around deeply learning a tool rather than building works is potentially backwards, but if you learn why every feature exists, you actually learn a lot about the craft the tool is used for, and you are very likely to be able to add value to a team almost immediately by teaching tricks to the existing developers, or at least hit the ground running if you were selected for tool compatibility.
    • The "Unix guru" is a tool master, and so is the "language lawyer". Presumable Photoshop and Maya have similar roles. It would be critical for someone following this path to not become opinionated, because they don't have the broader experience to justify it, but as a store of knowledge and skills it seems a useful distinguishing mark at an entry level for those inclined that way.
    • This is a random thought at this point, does anyone involved in hiring want to comment?

Personal Projects

Build stuff! - Personal Project

  • Side projects are important in landing your early jobs

  • Recreational Coding And Preventing Burn-Out 1hour podcast

  • Advice to my young self: to succeed in your career, forget side projects and focus on your job

    • You spend 7 hours a work day using the tech - only a few hours on home tech
    • To many side projects are off-putting to employers

  • The dispassionate developer by Mark Seemann - Caring for your craft is fine, but should you work for free?

    • Companies wont train you, they expect you to work for free (on open source projects)
    • Passion can be manipulated and exploited

      • My point with this article isn't that there's anything wrong with being passionate about software development. The point is that you might want to regard it as a weakness rather than an asset. If you are passionate, beware that someone doesn't take advantage of you.

    • What happens if you don't keep up to date with new methodologies, new frameworks, new programming languages? Your skill set becomes obsolete. Not overnight, but over the years. Finding a new job becomes harder and harder.

      As your marketability atrophies, your employer can treat you worse and worse. After all, where are you going to go?

      As disappointing as it may be, keeping up to date with technology is your responsibility, and if you can't sneak in some time for self-improvement at work, you'll have to do it on your own time.

      This has little to do with passion, but much to do with self-preservation.

    • I do know an effective trick: get him or her to hire me (or another expensive consultant). Most people don't heed advice given for free, but if they pay dearly for it, they tend to pay attention.

  • relocate.me

  • The Biggest Hurdles Recent Graduates Face Entering the Workforce

    • Feedback

      • In college, feedback is clear and consistent. You have a syllabus, which details the requirements for the semester and the standards upon which you’ll be graded.

      • the feedback you receive at work is often less consistent and less easily decipherable than in college

    • Relationships
    • Accountability

  • How to Stand Out with your Job Applications a Junior Software Developer

    • You earn the right to continue asking questions by taking action on the last answer the person gives you.

    • coming with a list of problems before meeting can be quite helpful — ordered according to importance. Your mentor might not have much time with you

  • Micromanagement vs. micro-tasks: how to set junior employees up for success in remote #remote-working

    • Why junior employees are more likely to fail in remote

    • junior remote employees are doing almost 2x the upskilling they're doing in the office. It's not their fault they are struggling to get up to speed as quickly.

  • Letters To A New Developer: Understanding People Matters More Than Understanding Tech - What I wish I had known when starting my development career

  • How Senior Programmers ACTUALLY Write Code 13min

    • Your code is your personal brand
    • Format code in a uniform way across a project - coding standard
    • Document patterns - 1 markdown file (or wiki) as a list of patterns - why using pattern -
    • Demo the pattern and get buy-in from other devs
    • Don't create a refactoring ticket - it will be ignored - get team on board for incremental refactoring - Don't call it out as a separate item.
    • Add time to ticket to write documentation - If you keep going back with new user stories, you will be micro managed