Thanks for sharing your 5 tips. For me, one of the things that helped me progress the most was becoming self-aware of how good I really am. Talking to co-workers and leaders outside the team will give you some sort of assumption but being able to accurately estimate whether you are good enough for that desired promotion is very important. The reason is that you are dependent on other people's decisions to progress in your career. It's a thin line between quitting too early and staying too long. If you are doing your best and do not get that promotion, it might not be you but the company. I once stayed too long at a company until I almost lost interest in software development.
From my experience, the one thing that successful developers do is work on open-source or side projects. I've worked with developers who did their 9-5 jobs and don't code beyond that. The common thread amongst successful developers is that they have side projects, numerous repositories on GitHub, a presence online, and possibly blog or do RUclips videos. I don't think having excitement for the job is a requirement. I love coding, but somedays you're just worn down and you have no excitement. It's human nature, we have ups and downs.
Telling people they need passion and excitement about their work is setting them up for failure. When they don't feel those things they suspect there's something wrong with them, undermining whatever confidence they might have. You do not need to be excited about your job. What you need is the resolve to master the craft, to look for ways to build a better product. I've been programming for years amd never felt anything at all about it. But I come back to it every day because I want to do it better than yesterday. That's more than enough.
Really interesting here. We may be getting down to semantics, but you're desire to master your craft, I would consider to be passionate. The fact that you want to get better at the thing you're doing goes a long way. Most people in life don't get that feeling. They go to their job and can't wait to be done and go home. I love that you want to continue to develop. I would consider that passion and excitement.
I hear you James! Some great adivice right there. Specially the point about maintaining your work life balance as you navigate your career and staying passionate about what you want to do. Staying passionate being a goal to strive for, and extra hours is only a vehicle to achieve that(Noting it doesn't have to be) There's always another way. Another key takeaway I got was understanding not everyone is the same and understanding the people you work with have their own asperations. I think the mindset I'm under now is I'm doing a lot of support work that's not enjoyable, but people do keep coming to me. I've found sticking to my own principles for software quality and sharing the knowledge or experience with them has helped. Not all the time there's an element on their side which ideally could be openminded discussions about the trade offs a decision. Thanks for sharing this!
Very interesting video I’m not at this point of my career but agree to find things that we enjoy to do and to keep learning ( watching videos, reading articles, documentations…).
Hey James, I've been coding for 2 years and there were times I stopped so I wasn't able to code consistently due to my PC being really old so it keeps getting broken, I'm currently learning advanced stuffs, so I figured why not just avoid memorizing codes but instead just focus on how to read API references efficiently, but what's the most frustrating is actually navigating through documentations, I don't know why but I think what instructors should be teaching is navigating through documentations and API references since there are many out there that's way too complex, e.g. Redis, MongoDB driver API, etc. unlike Express that's really well documented and can easily be navigated . Is there any advice you can give to learn how to do these things efficiently? If you can make a video about this, I would truly appreciate it.
Great question. The simple answer is to pick one topic, course, tutorial, etc. at a time and stick with it. Don't try to learn too much at one time. Great idea for a video in the future!
Having excitement isn't always possible, but showing up, being present, taking initiative, etc will have the same effect. I may not love every project that I do but I take pride in not just being like "meh" every day when I show up to work.
I agree with all of this pretty much. I think that honesty is a huge part too. If you're like me and struggle with imposter syndrome from time to time because there are just things that you forget, or are weak on, or still need to learn, BE HONEST ABOUT IT. If you're honest with anybody you communicate with in terms of coding, people will 1. appreciate your honesty, 2. respect you more, 3. know where your skills lie so you can move forward and foster that relationship appropriately. I think also being excited is important and a driver when it comes to motivation, but after time work just becomes second nature, and the feeling deescalates so you need to pick up side projects or research some new things to mix it up and keep things fun. Anyway, great video man, keep it up and it's wonderful to have you making videos about the coding industry. I would love to see more JavaScript and business development targeted topics.
Agreed, be honest about things you need time or help with share what you know well back to your team and peers. People have different areas within the industry that they have skills in. Some people are skilled in unit testing, some people are skilled in SPA's, some are a11y experts. Not everyone can do everything to the same level, and that's perfectly normal.
Love your videos James! I am more of a selt taught developer for the last 5 years. I mostly work with javascript and consider myself a pretty good developer. However, being self taught i may know how to work on difficult or advanced projects but may not be able to explain how it works and why it works to someone else say on my team. What would you recommend I do to be a better communicator on how my solutions are working from a technical stand point.
Great question. This may seem obvious, but if you want to get better at communicating, put yourself in positions where you have to do so more often. You can have mock interview/conversations with friends and co-workers. You could also just talk to yourself in front of a mirror (awkward I know lol). I think creating content is a great way to practice that as well. You could start small with tweets, then explore doing smaller blog posts and go from there.
I have a question about #1 - how/where can I determine which tool/language/framework is the best for a given application or project. I know this is somewhat subjective but maybe a general guideline on what to use.
That varies greatly on the type of project, the experience of your team, etc. Let's say you're wanting to build a frontend app with JavaSCript as an example. Here are a couple of questions to consider. - do you need authentication and authenticated pages? - is it mostly static content - do you need API routes? - do you need to use private API keys? - what sort of performance requirements do you have? The answer to those questions could help determine what type of framework to use.
Hey man, been freelancing for like 1.5+ years now and now I'm the tech co-founder and sole developer at a brand new startup.. I've worked with different teams at my bootcamp before but do you think I've missed out on the real work team experience? Can I still gain that experience through maybe open source?
I recently told my CTO that I was interested in doing something more along the lines of a Front-end Architect. Its a small development team and we were recently acquired with a company that was a client and investor. They have their own developers and we operate our application suites . There has not been much opportunity for front end growth into larger roles because there are three teams with one front end for every 4-6 back end developers. I am hoping in a year there will be an opportunity for me to take on that binding front end role to keep everything inline. Especially since we are technically one company now. For me it is hard to find motivation to learn new stuff outside of work. Being the only front end developer who handles everything from mockups, implementation, documentation, and the "backend" of the front end logic. It gets rather taxing mentally. We have started SMART goals which gives me time during the work day to develop new skills. I have been pushing for UX Surveys and improving documentation. My next goal will be better coverage of unit testing. My experience with that has been limited. I am pretty happy we are doing SMART goals because it does give me dedicated time each sprint to learn and apply stuff we usually won't have time for.
Has James recovered from some kind of a disease? No disrespect but he has been looking really unhealthy since I started watching his videos back in 2020 until now. Now he looks much healthier
Thanks for sharing your 5 tips. For me, one of the things that helped me progress the most was becoming self-aware of how good I really am. Talking to co-workers and leaders outside the team will give you some sort of assumption but being able to accurately estimate whether you are good enough for that desired promotion is very important. The reason is that you are dependent on other people's decisions to progress in your career. It's a thin line between quitting too early and staying too long. If you are doing your best and do not get that promotion, it might not be you but the company. I once stayed too long at a company until I almost lost interest in software development.
From my experience, the one thing that successful developers do is work on open-source or side projects. I've worked with developers who did their 9-5 jobs and don't code beyond that. The common thread amongst successful developers is that they have side projects, numerous repositories on GitHub, a presence online, and possibly blog or do RUclips videos. I don't think having excitement for the job is a requirement. I love coding, but somedays you're just worn down and you have no excitement. It's human nature, we have ups and downs.
Telling people they need passion and excitement about their work is setting them up for failure. When they don't feel those things they suspect there's something wrong with them, undermining whatever confidence they might have.
You do not need to be excited about your job. What you need is the resolve to master the craft, to look for ways to build a better product. I've been programming for years amd never felt anything at all about it. But I come back to it every day because I want to do it better than yesterday.
That's more than enough.
Really interesting here. We may be getting down to semantics, but you're desire to master your craft, I would consider to be passionate. The fact that you want to get better at the thing you're doing goes a long way. Most people in life don't get that feeling. They go to their job and can't wait to be done and go home. I love that you want to continue to develop. I would consider that passion and excitement.
I hear you James! Some great adivice right there. Specially the point about maintaining your work life balance as you navigate your career and staying passionate about what you want to do. Staying passionate being a goal to strive for, and extra hours is only a vehicle to achieve that(Noting it doesn't have to be) There's always another way.
Another key takeaway I got was understanding not everyone is the same and understanding the people you work with have their own asperations. I think the mindset I'm under now is I'm doing a lot of support work that's not enjoyable, but people do keep coming to me. I've found sticking to my own principles for software quality and sharing the knowledge or experience with them has helped. Not all the time there's an element on their side which ideally could be openminded discussions about the trade offs a decision.
Thanks for sharing this!
So amazing you found this helpful. thanks a ton for watching and sharing!
Very interesting video I’m not at this point of my career but agree to find things that we enjoy to do and to keep learning ( watching videos, reading articles, documentations…).
Hey James, I've been coding for 2 years and there were times I stopped so I wasn't able to code consistently due to my PC being really old so it keeps getting broken, I'm currently learning advanced stuffs, so I figured why not just avoid memorizing codes but instead just focus on how to read API references efficiently, but what's the most frustrating is actually navigating through documentations, I don't know why but I think what instructors should be teaching is navigating through documentations and API references since there are many out there that's way too complex, e.g. Redis, MongoDB driver API, etc. unlike Express that's really well documented and can easily be navigated . Is there any advice you can give to learn how to do these things efficiently? If you can make a video about this, I would truly appreciate it.
Great question. The simple answer is to pick one topic, course, tutorial, etc. at a time and stick with it. Don't try to learn too much at one time. Great idea for a video in the future!
Having excitement isn't always possible, but showing up, being present, taking initiative, etc will have the same effect. I may not love every project that I do but I take pride in not just being like "meh" every day when I show up to work.
Pride goes a long way!
I agree with all of this pretty much. I think that honesty is a huge part too. If you're like me and struggle with imposter syndrome from time to time because there are just things that you forget, or are weak on, or still need to learn, BE HONEST ABOUT IT. If you're honest with anybody you communicate with in terms of coding, people will 1. appreciate your honesty, 2. respect you more, 3. know where your skills lie so you can move forward and foster that relationship appropriately. I think also being excited is important and a driver when it comes to motivation, but after time work just becomes second nature, and the feeling deescalates so you need to pick up side projects or research some new things to mix it up and keep things fun. Anyway, great video man, keep it up and it's wonderful to have you making videos about the coding industry. I would love to see more JavaScript and business development targeted topics.
This is amazing. Thanks for taking the time to watch and share. HONESTY IS HUGE!!
Agreed, be honest about things you need time or help with share what you know well back to your team and peers. People have different areas within the industry that they have skills in. Some people are skilled in unit testing, some people are skilled in SPA's, some are a11y experts. Not everyone can do everything to the same level, and that's perfectly normal.
started this as a hobby considering doing a career choice, needless to say i enjoy it its fun
Definitely I am following everything you are saying, and excited as always 🥰🥰 thanks for the motivation bro
Very good advice indeed! I am trying to improve myself and you guide me see the gap that i missing.
Love your videos James! I am more of a selt taught developer for the last 5 years. I mostly work with javascript and consider myself a pretty good developer. However, being self taught i may know how to work on difficult or advanced projects but may not be able to explain how it works and why it works to someone else say on my team. What would you recommend I do to be a better communicator on how my solutions are working from a technical stand point.
Great question. This may seem obvious, but if you want to get better at communicating, put yourself in positions where you have to do so more often. You can have mock interview/conversations with friends and co-workers. You could also just talk to yourself in front of a mirror (awkward I know lol). I think creating content is a great way to practice that as well. You could start small with tweets, then explore doing smaller blog posts and go from there.
I have a question about #1 - how/where can I determine which tool/language/framework is the best for a given application or project. I know this is somewhat subjective but maybe a general guideline on what to use.
That varies greatly on the type of project, the experience of your team, etc. Let's say you're wanting to build a frontend app with JavaSCript as an example. Here are a couple of questions to consider.
- do you need authentication and authenticated pages?
- is it mostly static content
- do you need API routes?
- do you need to use private API keys?
- what sort of performance requirements do you have?
The answer to those questions could help determine what type of framework to use.
Hi James. I am trying to reach to your courses using the link you have provided in your about section here on RUclips. The link doesn’t seem to work ?
Step 1: add middle initial to name.
lol forgot that one
Hey man, been freelancing for like 1.5+ years now and now I'm the tech co-founder and sole developer at a brand new startup.. I've worked with different teams at my bootcamp before but do you think I've missed out on the real work team experience? Can I still gain that experience through maybe open source?
What domain u r working can u elaborate, Because in the upcoming year i will be starting freelancing with my friends
Sure I think you can definitely get that type of experience through open source!
The first and second timestamp are mixed
I recently told my CTO that I was interested in doing something more along the lines of a Front-end Architect. Its a small development team and we were recently acquired with a company that was a client and investor. They have their own developers and we operate our application suites .
There has not been much opportunity for front end growth into larger roles because there are three teams with one front end for every 4-6 back end developers.
I am hoping in a year there will be an opportunity for me to take on that binding front end role to keep everything inline. Especially since we are technically one company now.
For me it is hard to find motivation to learn new stuff outside of work. Being the only front end developer who handles everything from mockups, implementation, documentation, and the "backend" of the front end logic. It gets rather taxing mentally.
We have started SMART goals which gives me time during the work day to develop new skills. I have been pushing for UX Surveys and improving documentation. My next goal will be better coverage of unit testing. My experience with that has been limited.
I am pretty happy we are doing SMART goals because it does give me dedicated time each sprint to learn and apply stuff we usually won't have time for.
Just apply on the fly . Theres no other solution . the errors that appear on the screen are actually the key to the next level. am still a noob though
Has James recovered from some kind of a disease? No disrespect but he has been looking really unhealthy since I started watching his videos back in 2020 until now. Now he looks much healthier