As the software industry is evolving rapidly so as the environment, technologies, and expectations from a new age software developer. Particularly in a current situation like COVID, companies retain top valued software developers. Even if you have great coding skills, your company might not consider you valuable. Nowadays companies are looking for new-age smart developers – Being Aware, Being Social & Being Smart is the new demand of the hour. A new age software developer focuses on these novel factors to remain competitive, happy, aware and tech-savvy:
#1 – Client-focused – focus on the outcome
- Keep your inquisitiveness quotient high and focus on solving the business problem.
- Focus on the outcome not just on putting in long hours. If you can’t deliver the entire JIRA story, set expectations to deliver incrementally and break them into tasks.
- Click here to read this post on how to focus on outcome, not output.
- Keep your objectives measurable – Like your code performance SLA, keep your job objectives SLA based. Measure it every fortnightly/monthly/quarterly with your manager.
- Click here to watch on how to have performance & feedback conversation by Harvard.
- Focus on long-term impact when solving business problems.
“You don’t get results by focusing on results. You get results by focusing on the actions that produce results.” – Mike Hawkins
#2 – Communicator – Learn to sell your idea
- Learn to sell your ideas to your project manager – often software developers struggle to communicate bright ideas to their supervisor.
- Prepare your discussion (either by writing on paper or word or even PowerPoint) to present your idea.
- Learn techniques to tell your story. For example, Storytelling is a well-known technique to convey your thoughts in a way anybody can understand.
- Listen to a sales pitch or a startup idea – observe how startups selling their ideas to their investors.
- Listen to TedTalks on Technology.
“If you are trying to sell someone your idea and you can’t even define it to yourself, then it is a problem.” – Garance Doré
#3 – Learner – Keep up your learning quotient
- Keep your updated with technology trends, new design patterns, reference architectural patterns being used by tech-savvy companies such as:
- Subscribe or be aware of developer website of tech companies:
- Ask questions or answer questions on communities such as Quora, Stackoverflow, etc.
- Subscribe to key tech blogging sites such as:
- Improve your technology skills through MOOC sites particularly Coursera, Udemy, edX, etc.
“I never lose, I either WIN or LEARN” – Nelson Mandela
#4 – Productive – Keep it in check
- Be aware of the activities you find mundane and think about automating the same or find new ways to do the same. For example – use JMeter to run a unit performance test for your APIs or think proactively about using chaos engineering techniques to build resilient applications.
- Be aware of any smart or new-age software developer in your team. Collaborating with people having a similar mindset creates new ideas and increases your productivity.
“First, Solve the problem.
Then, Write the Code.” – John Johnson
#5 – Healthy – Keep up with healthy mind, body and soul
- The most important one as it keeps up the spirit and make sure we have a fresh & healthy mind to counter any challenge and come up with innovative ways to do things.
- Build relationships & collaborate within and outside your team.
- Don’t limit your positivity within the team or even company – spread your positivity as you progress.
“Happy Programmers write Happy Code.”
That’s it – thanks for reading this post. Share your ideas, practices, and success formula as comments!