Full-stack Developer @ ICE | improving efficiency and productivity by automating business processes
I always encourage the aspiring developers I mentor to adopt a doer attitude. Being a doer makes it easier to adapt to different tech stacks. Instead of becoming a philosophical developer who only thinks about what they can or can't do, you'll be a real engineer who takes action. By doing the work, you'll clearly see what's doable and what's not, and you'll seek assistance to reach completion. Additionally, it's easier to give constructive feedback on a piece of code I can look at rather than on a theoretical assumption that remains untested.
Back at Meta, I worked with a 10x engineer who grew from senior to staff in just 1 year, 5x faster than average. Here was his secret for insane growth: Embrace looking like an idiot. This engineer joined my team, which entirely did Android. However, he came from an iOS background and had never written Android code before. Instead of spending months doing tutorials and reading docs, he just started hacking code together, putting out a PR within his 1st week. It was literally some of the worst Android code I had ever seen. So I left a lot of feedback. And several other engineers left a lot of feedback. His mountain of mistakes didn't phase him at all, quite the opposite. He happily took all the feedback and asked follow-up questions, eager for more. He repeated this process constantly, and after ~2 months, he was writing more code than 95% of the team, including me. You couldn't even tell that he was new to Android. If you want to grow fast, completely let go of your fear and ego. To learn the other tactics this engineer used to learn so quickly, check out my in-depth explainer here: https://lnkd.in/giW8N4FP #techcareergrowth #softwareengineering #staffengineer #growthtips #meta
