Developer Mentality and Soft Skills to Succeed

#beginners #career #productivity #performance

The developer mindset and soft skills have differences compared to people from different industries. For this reason, some people are better developers. In this article, I will explain the main differences and why they are essential to achieve goals in a developer career.

Importance of Soft Skills

Charisma and communication skill is valuable for many jobs. Some people had the worst technical skills but managed to get work with good charisma. Most people are communicative, never forget this fact. With charisma, it is easier to make a better first impression. Be honest, there are situations when the Project manager asks You about ETA - Estimated time of arrival. Not all tasks can be completed in time. Do not inform at the last moment. New programmers can be afraid of failure of incomplete tasks. In cases, if You see a task that cannot be completed in time. First of all, inform team-lead/other-programmer. It will show You as a responsible person in other's eyes. Most project managers can make situations even worst. Some of them can tell employers that You are slow, or incapable to solve tasks. If this happened I should recommend You look for a new job. If You are stuck do not be afraid to ask. Before asking use google, read the official documentation, StackOverflow. etc. If after an hour of research You are still stuck, ask for help. Describe the situation in detail in one message, no one loves spam. Find friends, not enemies. Being nice to others is important because people prefer to work more with kind people, than rude.

Time Management

Managing time to participate in meetings and complete tasks in time. Time management can prevent You from burnout. Developers are humans, they need to rest. Being exhausted at work leads to the worst productivity performance. Moreover, it affects Your health. For this reason, some employers do not allow workers to work more than 8 hours per day.

Continuous Learning

Professional and personal growth is important to compete with other candidates/developers. Personal growth means working on Your soft and technical skills about the importance of these skills I was writing in this article.

Importance of Technical Skills

For example, I will take a front-end developer position. Also, wrote in this article. If Your portfolio has about 10 projects, I would recommend improving everyday processes. Start from the browser, and VS code extensions, and find, what fits You. Browser extensions, what I use: color picker, Wappalyzer, Grammarly, React developer tools, and Open last tab. VS Code Extensions: Prettier, PHP extension pack, Live server, Auto Rename Tag, and ES7+ React/Redux/React-Native. In the future, I will make a list of extensions for a front-end developer. Write readable and maintainable code. After some time You or someone else will return to Your project to make changes or add new functionality. Readable code makes work easier and gives a better working experience. Read, understand and make changes to other personal projects. On the internet is easy to find a public repository. At work, You will be working with already existing projects. For this reason, it is important to understand other person codes. Best practices are easy to find and important to follow. Your code will look more professional. One real-world example of why this is important. Even if You completed the Interview task and everything is working according to the description. The senior developer will not accept You even for an internship. One possible problem is bad naming, it can be variables, files, functions, etc.