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Discussion on: Quickfire Discussion: I'm a Junior Developer, tell me your top 3 pieces of advice.

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miniharryc profile image
Harold Combs

Bravo, @Sumeet!

You are your Reputation. Act Accordingly.

Make yourself known in your organization for delivering quality stuff, on-time, that's easy to sustain in production. Be the kind of guy that when someone comes to a dev manager in a crisis and says, "Andrew's available...can he help you out?" They immediately think, "THANK GOD!"

By the same token, never sacrifice your reputation for a single "win". Your rep is not worth a single account, single production deploy, or single code commit. Don't climb over somebody else's back to win. Give credit to others. Cover for them. Be someone who earns their trust, genuinely.

It's not what you know. It's who knows what you know.

Follow-on to the above. Put yourself out there enough so that whoever "they" are, "they" have confidence in you. I once had a developer I was mentoring that I pushed forward for promotion, and my director said simply, "I don't know this person. That's a problem." For a technical person, that's irrational, but I've found it to be true.

Set firm boundaries for yourself

I'm a person who didn't have boundaries. I worked too much on things that eventually ended up in the bargain bin of Office Depot. For what? It's a miracle I still have a family.

Do better. Cultivate saying "No" and setting expectations in a way that's professional.

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moe64 profile image
Moe

Amen on it's not what you know but who you know!