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How To Become a 10x Dev: An Essential Guide

In a Nutshell

  • Software development is a team sport. Your individual performance doesn't matter as much as the performance of your whole team and company.
  • By improving how you work, you only ADD to your team's performance. By improving how everyone works, you MULTIPLY your team's performance.
  • Multiplying the whole team's performance will put you on a much faster lane for being noticed and promoted than being a crazy efficient individual contributor.
  • Boosting other people's performance requires a different mindset and approach than boosting your individual performance. In this article, I'll show you 16 proven ways to multiply your team's performance (or even the whole company).

The Common Misconception of 10x Dev

If you google the term "10x developer", you'll get many results related to individual performance.

Check out the quotes from a few of the top results that I've got:

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10 Traits That Separate the Best Devs From the Crowd

In a Nutshell

  • We work hard to improve our tech and soft skills. But our character traits, our mindset - we take it for granted. An innate, fixed part of who we are. And thus, we let it run on autopilot.
  • This way of thinking is harmful. Not only is your mindset critical for a successful software development career (maybe even more than your skills), but it's also under your control.
  • True senior devs acknowledge that character traits are malleable, are self-aware of their mindset, and deliberately work on it. This is the superpower that makes them stand out from the crowd and accelerates their career.
  • In this post, I'll discuss the 10 most critical traits of a successful developer, why they are important, and share a few tips on how you can shape them.

Three Things You Need To Succeed as a Software Developer

Professional software development is a complex discipline that requires a diverse set of abilities to succeed. We can group them into three main categories:

Technical Skills

This is the most obvious group. To be a successful developer, you need to be good at your trade: programming languages and frameworks, clean code principles, architecture, testing, debugging, and so on. You also need to be skillful with your tools: version control, command line, and IDE.

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Beyond Coding: The 5 Must-Have Skills to Have If You Want to Become a Senior Programmer

In a Nutshell

  • We instinctively equate programming with writing code. Because of it, we focus primarily on code design and creation skills: mastering languages and frameworks, clean code, design patterns, TDD, and architecture.
  • But creating new code is only a fraction of what we do every day. For example, we spend much more time navigating, searching, analyzing, reviewing, and debugging code than writing.
  • Though these activities seem straightforward, they require as specialized skills and experience as coding. Mastering them is what separates true senior programmers from the crowd. And what makes you stand out and get noticed at a new job.
  • In this post, I'll look at the key traits of professional software development, how they impact what you do every day, and explore what skills you need to become a complete programmer.

The Common Misconception About Programming

People instinctively equate programming with writing code. And it doesn't apply only to lay people. But, unfortunately, many experienced programmers also do have this bias. Not in a naive way, of course. We know that coding isn't just typing and that having crazy keyboard skills doesn't make you a great programmer. But even then, we focus mainly on code creation skills.

Think for a moment about what most books, blog posts, and talks are about. What sparks the most heated discussions in your team? What are the most common coding interview questions?