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The most successful software engineers operate and learn faster than the average.
Welcome!
Hi this is John with this week’s Developing Skills - Skills for Developers looking to develop their careers. **
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Tip of The Week: Speed Up Your Learning To Succeed.
Throughout my career I’ve noticed that the most successful software engineers operate and learn faster than the average.
It’s usually not because they’re more intelligent, though some may be. It’s because of their approach and attitude. Which is great news, it means it’s something we can all do too.
Here’s how:
Don’t procrastinate. Focus on starting projects or tasks as soon as possible.
Validate what you are doing. Now you’ve started try and get rapid feedback on your work.
Course correct. Use the feedback to correct mistakes, learn and improve your rate of progress.
Here’s some classic examples of this in action:
When someone says “Let’s have a follow up conversation” - follow up within at most two hours.
When you take on some work, decide how you’ll validate the work is correct, before you start doing it.
When you take on some work, look for ways to shorten the feedback cycle. Perhaps by working directly with a user, or showing them a mockup and asking for feedback.
Check the feedback against the work regularly and adapt what you are doing based on the feedback.
It scales up to software engineering teams too, so if you’re leading a team focus your effort on reducing the feedback cycle and using it to accelerate learning. Hold a regular retrospective.
Two Ways I Can Help You Level Up As A Software Engineer:
I write another newsletter, Coding Challenges that helps you become a better software engineer through coding challenges that build real applications.
I have some courses available:
Become a Better Software Developer by Building Your Own Redis Server (Python Edition) which guides you through solving the Redis Coding Challenge in Python.
Build Your Own Shell (Go Edition) which guides you through solving the Shell Coding Challenge in Go.
Often we just need to check what our company is doing to manage projects and apply it to manage ourselves.
An experimentation / MVP mindset helps to detach ourselves from the results, fail fast, and pivot.
Good article, John!
I love your short and valuable posts! spot on as always. Course correcting using others feedback is crucial. It's important to listen to what others are trying to tell you.
The more you rethink your actions and methods, and work on improving them, the faster and more better engineer you become!