You know how artists and bands are influenced by other great people? I believe the same applies to our careers.
I'm sure that I wouldn't be nowhere near where I am in my career if it wasn't for the influence of excellent professionals, near or far. And I'm not talking code exclusively, there is BIG value in looking up to professionals that are kind, committed, and have great work ethic.
But enough with lengthy intros, here's a list of people whose work might positively influence your career.
Oh, and this is a randomized list so no such thing as ranking here.
Please share yours in the comments!
Ashley Willis (McNamara)
Ashley is a Software Engineer at Microsoft and you may know her from the Go community.
J.H. Gold
Jon Gold rocks the Cosmic Computation Laboratory, a technology research studio exploring alternate futures for mind, body, spirit & planet.
Sarah Drasner
Sarah is currently a VP of Developer Experience at Netlify, member of VueJS core team and has an amazing CodePen.
Wes Bos
Wes Bos is web developer, teacher, speaker, and podcaster. You most certainly know him from one of his many web dev courses.
Addy Osmani
Addy is an Engineering Manager at Google. He works on Chrome and is a reference on making stuff on the internet go fast!.
Eric Elliott
Twitter | GitHub | Website | Medium
Eric Elliott is the author of "Composing Software" and "Programming JavaScript Applications", and teacher. He has excellent articles on his Medium.
Ives van Hoorne
Ives is the creator and full-time maintainer of the excellent CodeSandbox.
David DeSandro
Twitter | GitHub | Website | Dribbble
DeSandro is a great reference for adepts of the designer/developer combo. There is absolutely no chance that you've never seen a website run one of his libs.
Francesc Campoy Flores
Twitter | GitHub | LinkedIn | Website | YouTube
Francesc is an Engineering Manager at Apple and runs justforfunc, a YouTube Channel filled with recordings and screencasts mainly about Go and the Google Cloud Platform.
Chris Coyier
Twitter | GitHub | LinkedIn | Website
Chris is the head behind CSS-Tricks, easily one of the biggest contributions of CSS content ever. He also co-founded CodePen and co-hosts ShopTalk, a podcast on web design and development.
Sebastian McKenzie
Sebastian literally created Babel, which is kind of a big deal in the JS community. Currently a Senior Software Engineer at Discord.
Mina Markham
Twitter | GitHub | LinkedIn | Website
Mina Markham is currently a Staff Software Engineer at Slack, worked on Hillary Clinton's UI pattern library, teaches at Black Girls Code, and more.
Dan Abramov
Dan Abramov didn't make React.
Rich Harris
Rich Harris is the man behind Rollup and Svelte, which you might have heard a lot about this year. He works for the New York times and has an Emmy, which I believe is fairly rare among developers.
Emma Bostian
Twitter | GitHub | LinkedIn | Website
Emma is a Software Engineer at Spotify and one of the people behind Ladybug Podcast, an all lady-hosted tech podcast about code & career.
Kent C. Dodds
Twitter | GitHub | LinkedIn | Website | YouTube
Kent is a full-time educator and maintainer of excellent JS libraries like Downshift and React Testing Library. You definitely should check out his testing JS course.
Eric Meyer
Twitter | GitHub | LinkedIn | Website
Eric Meyer is an engineer, author of multiple web development books and articles, and a saying that he is a huge reference in anything CSS is still an understatement.
Cassidy Williams
Twitter | GitHub | LinkedIn | Website
Cassidy Williams is a Principal Developer Experience Engineer at Netlify. You most certainly know her already from her funny videos on Twitter!
Joel Califa
Twitter | GitHub | Dev | LinkedIn
Joel Califa designs products and codes things. He is a Staff Product Designer at GitHub and formerly Head of Product Design at Digital Ocean.
Jen Simmons
Jen is a designer, developer, public speaker, a Web Technologies Evangelist at Apple, and a W3C CSS Working Group member, phew! Among other things, you can thank her for the Firefox Grid Inspector!
Matt DesLauriers
Matt is a creative coder, artist and author of canvas-sketch, a collection of tools for creating generative art in JavaScript. Check out his Instagram!
Sara Soueidan
Sara is an award winning UI/design engineer, author of the Codrops CSS Reference and has an impressive track record of independent work.
Tim Holman
Tim is a Lead Frontend Engineer at Bustle Digital Group and the curiously creative mind behind stuff like https://theuselessweb.com/, https://github.com/tholman/elevator.js, and more!
Brandon Dail
Brandon is a React core contributor and an Engineer on Accessibility at Discord. He's got some real cool OSS contributions and, other than JS, is also working with Rust
Ryan Florence
Twitter | GitHub| LinkedIn | Website
Ryan is one the creators of React Router, teaches at React Training and it is working on a very interesting React framework called Remix.
Mattias Petter Johansson
Twitter | GitHub | LinkedIn | YouTube | Twitch
MPJ is a content creator who streams on Twitch and updates his YouTube channel regularly with fantastic programming related videos.
Meng To
Meng To is the founder of designcode.io, where he bridges the gap of design and code through a variety of courses.
That's it!
I hope that this list serves you well. Personally speaking, my professional development is heavily influenced by MPJ, Wes Bos, DeSandro and Kent C. Dodds.
Big thanks to my friends Christian and Edgard who not only helped me get this list together but also make me a better professional. Also thanks to Bailey Zindel on Unsplash for the beautiful cover photo.
So, what about you? Do you have a professional that you admire or helped you on your career path in any way?
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