I'm honing in on my coding abilities and interpersonal skills at work. Besides good coding and good teamwork, how do I "level up" as a developer? Senior devs, what helped you the most?
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Here's some advice from my experience and from what I learned from other developers.
Master the basics.
If you spend most of your development time using a framework (like React, Angular, Vue, etc.), make some time to polish up your knowledge in the basic technologies: HTML/CSS/vanilla JS. It will help you understand better how and why things happen and it will make things easier if you have to pivot your career down the road. You will be able to adapt to a new framework a lot easier if you have a solid grasp of the fundamentals.
Teach other people
One of the best ways to master a skill is to teach it to someone else. It will make you better at summarizing things, at presenting them in a way the other person will understand it. And it can highlight holes in your own knowledge you didn't know you had in the first place.
One of my previous clients had "coding dojos" every Friday where one of the developers would present a new thing they were excited about and the rest of us would get to practice it together.
The easiest way to teach other people is to write articles. I hope you already have a blog :) Document your progress as you are learning new things and you would be amazed at how many people might appreciate the fact you shared that experience.
The third option would be to make presentations for local meetups. Use Meetup.com to find something in your area. If there is none that catches your interest, you might as well start one.
Be prepared for a career change
Job security is not guaranteed anymore nowadays. A lot of things can happen anytime that can send you back on the job market. Build and maintain a body of work you can use as proof of your skills and experience. Articles, blogs, podcasts, presentations, being involved in meetups, personal projects, open source contributions, etc. - all these can serve that purpose.
And the most important thing - never stop learning.
I've found that the best ways to level up have nothing to do with coding and more to do with people, how you treat your team and being able to estimate how long things will take.
I wrote a blog post earlier in the year that expands on my thoughts:
6 Ways to Level Up Your Career
Helen Anderson ・ Jan 14 ・ 4 min read