5 mistakes stopping you from becoming a senior software developer

you've been a software developer for quite a few years you worked on a number of projects but for some reason you can't get promoted to senior developer here are five mistakes you might be making preventing you from becoming a senior developer coming up hi I'm Rafael and this is coder cave mistake number one is thinking that seniority will get you the senior role guys it doesn't work like that you can spend five years on the same job this is not going to get you promoted to senior developer look there is a natural time-based progression between an intern Avella per all the way to upper media developer purely time-based but when you need or when you want to become a senior developer you need to show some initiative spending time at your desk or even worse at the office cafeteria is not going to get you promoted the second mistake is never working on a pet project a pet project can help you on at least three fronts first overcoming greenfield jitters the second is making plans and the third one is making decisions for a greenfield jitters I mean you know when you have a clean slate you want to start something and you have very little idea where to start well with a pet project the stakes are low so you can easily start your own thing make a few mistakes and come back to that later and I kid you not I work with dotnet engineers with ten years of experience who had no idea how to start a proper visual studio solution so don't be that guy start your pet project as for the planning yes it's your project you have everything in your head but you will forget your great ideas so you better use some form of tracking and come up with a system to consistently develop your pet project when it comes to decisions you will have to most probably decide which tech stack to use do you want to use Python c-sharp Java it's up to you do you want to use a MongoDB do you want to use dynamodb we want to use sequel server those are all decisions that he will have to make now you don't have to defend them but those are still things you need to go through a pet project is also a formidable tool you can use during a job interview usually someone is going to ask you show me some code you are really proud of and there you go with your pet project that you started on your own you had to plan and make decisions showing that you truly have initiative and commitment this is also giving you the opportunity to drive most of the interview on ground you are very well prepared on mistake number three is falling for the 8020 rule you know 80% of the result comes from 20% of the effort and as developers we have so many tools that give us 80% of the result by just running one command line but then we don't understand what's underneath that yeah we run Sam in it and we end up with a fully functional AWS lambda or dotnet new and there we go a great well done project ready for Visual Studio now that's not where our promotion happens we need to use the 80/20 rule relatively so that we start closing that 20% gap that gets us to excellence let's say you're a dotnet developer and you don't understand what a generational garbage collector is or what's the common language runtime is or you've never seen intermediate language or you don't know how a class is initialized well guess what you are not going to get promoted a senior developer is well versed in the details of the technology they are using mistake number four having no idea about software architecture look you don't need to shoot for the chief architect role but at least understand the difference between a monolith and a big ball of mud or what saw was and micro services are what serverless mean you know those are very important things because as a senior engineer or a senior developer you will be making decisions and if you don't understand if your decision is aligned with the overall architecture you will make huge mistakes that will cost a lot of pain to your team and you yourself personally here is a dishonorable mention for you focusing on the pay raise look if you want to become a senior developer just because it's a better paid job you're focusing on the wrong thing you need to focus on what you can learn and the value you can provide to your team not on the paycheck and mistake 5 is inability to communicate as a senior engineer you will be the one bringing options to the table you will verbalize trade-offs and you will make recommendations if you cannot communicate clearly you will hurt your team's chances of success also as a senior engineer you will be the one mentoring new team members so make sure you use a positive uplifting communication style have you ever had a mentor who was abrasive or a primadonna how did it make you feel I can bet that you did not become effective as a result of that so make sure you learn how to positively communicate with inexperienced team members this will help your team immensely and this was my list of five mistakes that may stop you from becoming a senior developer now this is not a complete list so let me know in the comments down below what other mistakes do you think are fatal if you want to become a senior engineer and definitely subscribe to this channel because there will be more videos about software architecture or coding coming your way [Music] you

Channel: Coder Cave

Views: 1,134

Rating: 4.818182 out of 5

Keywords: software development, codercave, career

Id: LjrLBkxHUFg

Length: 6min 0sec (360 seconds)

Published: Mon May 11 2020