Book Image

Developer Career Masterplan

By : Heather VanCura, Bruno Souza
5 (1)
Book Image

Developer Career Masterplan

5 (1)
By: Heather VanCura, Bruno Souza

Overview of this book

Written by industry experts that have spent the last 20+ years helping developers grow their careers, this book offers invaluable insights and guidance tailored to the specific needs of technical professionals. By discovering the secret of continuous learning and adapting in the ever-evolving field of software development, you’ll explore various learning paths with formal and informal methods, as well as gain an understanding of the value of certifications to validate your skills. This book will teach you the significance of building a strong support network, holding crucial conversations, and taking ownership of your career growth. You'll delve into acquiring both soft and hard skills, becoming a well-rounded and sought-after developer. Packed with practical examples, stories of successful developers, and real-world applications, the chapters will equip you with actionable advice on how to push beyond your comfort zone and embracing communities to enhance your teamwork abilities. Additionally, you’ll uncover the benefits of joining open-source projects, speaking at conferences, and building a personal brand to amplify your visibility and reputation. By the end of this book, you'll have a well-laid-out long-term and short-term plan for your career progression, equipping you with advanced technical skills, strategic thinking, and the ability to effectively manage relationships within your organization.
Table of Contents (21 chapters)
1
Part 1 The Basics: Learn and Practice the Technical Skills
7
Part 2 Get Involved: Participate in the Community
13
Part 3 Create Impact: Share and Lead

Solving problems

This brings us to the next big skill, and probably the most important skill as a software developer: solving problems. No doubt that open source projects focus on solving problems, so being part of an open source project will help you improve that skill, but here are a few things you can do to make it even more effective.

Use the project in your current position

The first thing you can do is to use the open source project! Find ways you can use the project in your daily job. Use it as a way to solve problems in your company and your current projects. This is just the obvious. Of course, you can fix problems in the open source project itself. To be amazing at solving problems, you need to be an expert in identifying the correct problem and understanding what is going on. Every open source project has complaints from users where the details are unclear or the user was not able to articulate the issue. When it is not clear to anyone in the development team what...