Improving Your Communication Skills as a Developer

Communication with other people is an important part of a software developer’s career. As a software developer, you will often communicate with other developers on your team, non-technical people on your team, stakeholders, and users of your software.

Having good communication skills will help you work well with your team and others by communicating your messages effectively.

Podcasts for New Software Developers

If you want to be a good software developer you have to be constantly learning. One of the best ways to learn is through listening to good podcasts.

Here is a list of some of the best podcasts new software developers can learn from.

Writing Clean Code: Naming

When you start learning how to code your main focus is writing code that works correctly for the problem you are solving. Yes, code needs to work correctly and that is a good place to start learning. However, in a real work environment, you also want to ensure you write clean code.

Clean code is readable, extensible, changeable, and maintainable. These are all important qualities for a code to have.

Finding a Software Developer Mentor When You’re a Newbie

Your first job as a software developer can be very challenging. There is so much to learn about coding and building a career in the technology industry. Doing it by yourself can be overwhelming.

When I started my first job, one of the senior developers at the company I worked for, offered to help me learn and grow into a good software developer. He was a more experienced guide who had overcome the same problems I was facing and provided an inspiring example to follow.

Onboarding for Software Engineers

There has probably never been a better time to be a software engineer than right now. Most businesses and organizations across the world make use of technology for their day-to-day operations. For some of these companies, their whole product and business are engrained in their technology usage. Moreover, technology keeps advancing as new technologies and frameworks get released often. Businesses need to keep their technology up to date to remain relevant. Every person with internet access, which eventually will be the whole world, uses lots of apps and websites every day. All this has resulted in a massive demand for people with the skills to build software — the software engineers.

The supply and demand curve for software engineers is not balanced. As it stands, demand is much higher than supply as a truly valuable developer is one of the hardest things to find for companies. If you are involved in recruitment you’ll know what I am talking about: the competition is fierce and qualified candidates are baited from one company to another with promises of free gadgets, gym memberships, equity, remote contract work, loads of time off, and some of the best salaries in the world.

Making the Leap Into Tech Leadership

Jane works as a software engineer at ABC Software Company. She is the most skilled software engineer on her team. Jane is the person everyone else on the team goes to when they need help to solve complex problems and she always comes up with high quality solutions in a short space of time. 

Senior management at ABC Software Company recognizes Jane’s ability and they decide to appoint Jane as the manager of her team. They call her into a room on a Monday morning and tell her she is getting promoted. Jane is now the manager of the team and going forward everyone should listen to her.