Professional Development — A How-To Guide For Rising Talents — Part I

This post is meant for developers with less than 1-year of experience. For those having 1–3 years experience, stay tuned for my next post.

Most developers, when they start out, have difficulty with three major fears. These fears are real, but with a bit of work, you can learn to eliminate them.

Fear 1:

“There’s so much to learn. What do I learn first?”

Solution: It’s important to keep up with the times. Ideally, you want to be working on topics or fields that are growing in demand.

• Machine Learning
• Data Science
• Blockchain
• Cryptocurrency

Learn by DOING. Grok the main concepts behind the tech. Work through the beginner tutorials. Then, deep dive into one particular aspect until you master it. (Also read “How to Get Paid While Learning” — coming soon).

Fear 2:

“If I make a mistake, people must think I’m inexperienced or stupid. And then, no one will hire me.”

Solution: This is actually quite the opposite. Don’t let it haunt you. Mistakes are common and actually is what “experience” is made of. I always have a saying, “It’s OK to make mistakes. Just fix it twice as fast to make up for the lost time. Then take the lesson to heart, prepare better, so there won’t be a second time.”

Fear 3:

“Help! My GitHub profile is so empty. What do I do?”

Solution: work on your GitHub profile. Starting with easy tasks by “going beyond the tutorial”.

Go Beyond The Tutorial

Lots of developers starting out complete the tutorial by copy and pasting code. You don’t want to be “one of the newbies”.

It’s OK to fork other GitHub repositories to fill up your GitHub. Just do a bit more to stand out.

Consider:

• Abstracting part of your code into new components or modules
• Integrating with third-party API to provide additional functionality
• Write and update test cases for your repositories

Parting advice

1. Get a Professional Critique for your profile, and see a real difference in how you look to prospective employers.
2. Look for Remote Gigs. Nothing speaks louder than legitimate experience. Especially ones that help companies in a similar stage as your prospective employer.
3. Contribute to open-source projects on GitHub. Fix a small issue. Add test coverage. Improve documentation. All this adds credibility to your profile.

If this was helpful to you, can I get 3 (or 30) claps?

Until next time!