r/cscareerquestions • u/pcodesdev • 1d ago
10+ Years Later: The Career Advice I Wish Someone Had Given Me as a Junior Developer
I see a lot of posts here from people struggling with imposter syndrome, trying to learn "everything," and burning themselves out. I want to share what I learned over 10+ years that could save you from making the same mistakes I did.
The Reality Check:
When I started, I thought being a good developer meant:
- Memorising every framework and language
- Writing perfect code from day one
- Working insane hours to "prove myself"
- Never admitting I didn't know something
All of this was wrong and held me back for years.
What Actually Matters:
For Job Applications:
You don't need to meet 100% of job requirements. I got interviews, meeting 60-70% of the requirements. Companies hire for potential and problem-solving ability, not just current skills.
For Learning:
Stop trying to learn everything. Focus on core concepts (data structures, algorithms, design patterns) and learn specific technologies as you need them. The best skill is learning how to learn quickly.
For Career Growth:
You'll never feel "ready" for the next level. I spent 2 years over-preparing for senior roles I was already qualified for. Apply anyway, volunteer for challenging projects anyway, give that tech talk anyway.
For Productivity:
Working 45 focused hours produces better results than 70 exhausted hours. Burnout isn't a badge of honour, it's a career killer. Take breaks, have hobbies, maintain relationships outside tech.
For Code Quality:
Nobody cares about your clever algorithms. They care about solutions that work and code that's maintainable. Write for the human who will read your code at 2 AM during an outage.
I've written a comprehensive blog post with detailed examples and actionable advice for each of these points: https://medium.com/@pcodesdev/10-years-of-programming-hard-earned-coding-lessons-to-save-you-a-decade-of-mistakes-d63fd848e62e?sk=5bad34c41e6426a28387e89f4e1f5412
Current developers: What do you wish you'd known earlier?
Job seekers: Which of these resonates most with your current struggles?
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u/Curious-Money2515 23h ago edited 20h ago
Corporate career success is: 1) Doing what's asked. 2) Being nice to people.
It's as simple as that.
Workers that make writing software their entire identity just make things miserable for everyone. Please just do your job and don't be a jerk. :-)
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u/Early-Surround7413 22h ago
This right here should come with every college diploma.
I think your #2 is really #1. I've always said I'll hire a 7/10 tech with a 10/10 personality vs the other way around.
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u/Curious-Money2515 18h ago
It really should. Instead we prep for coding challenges (which has little in common with the actual work) and behavioral interviews (which measures on how well one can lie).
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u/ExpWebDev 15h ago edited 15h ago
Caveat: Career advancement isn't the same in all companies. Scope sizes are different, skills required are different.
Sometimes, being nice to work will just make you a Mr. "Peter principle". Like a junior developer with 5 yoe going straight to a middle management role talking to offshore workers at very late hours.
If you decide to switch to a company that is more "tech first", this kind of experience may prove difficult to swing back into a technical career track.
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u/Curious-Money2515 1h ago
Being nice doesn't mean being a pushover. You don't have to be a jerk for career advancement or being a strong IC or manager. I've seen many sabotage their careers because they didn't want to use the soft skills they had.
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u/TheOldManInTheSea 10h ago
Oh man I wish that was true. Corporate politics play a huge role in career advancement.
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u/Bobby-McBobster Senior SDE @ Amazon 1d ago
You'll never feel "ready" for the next level. I spent 2 years over-preparing for senior roles I was already qualified for. Apply anyway, volunteer for challenging projects anyway, give that tech talk anyway.
I agree on everything else but on this I kind of had the reverse effect.
My promotion was delayed by a couple of years because I changed teams and it effectively reset my progress entirely.
I thought I was ready for promotion back then (and to be fair maybe I was, the previous team was a lot less demanding), but after getting promoted only 2 years later I realized that I wouldn't have been ready at all for the promotion if I had gotten it at the time.
Sometimes promotions are delayed for a good reason.
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u/Ok-Replacement9143 1d ago
It's not that you're wrong, but also, when you're in a challenging position you grow at an exponential rate. It might not be enough, but it's worth considering.
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u/deejeycris 21h ago
Can you elaborate, why weren't you ready? Wouldn't you have been able to get the hang of it if you were promoted immediately?
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u/Whitchorence 18h ago
I would suggest that a "senior" role in a big tech company is kind of a different deal than a "senior" role in a small- to mid-sized company, having several years of experience in both environments. Like honestly being at the seniormost level in a smaller company the scope was not that different from mid-level at a big tech shop
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u/Western_Objective209 23h ago
You don't need to meet 100% of job requirements. I got interviews, meeting 60-70% of the requirements. Companies hire for potential and problem-solving ability, not just current skills.
I literally don't even get interviews for jobs where I meet 100% of requirements and work in the same industry as a senior. In the current environment you actually do need to more or less be a perfect fit to get a job
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u/Nomorechildishshit 1d ago
You don't need to meet 100% of job requirements. I got interviews, meeting 60-70% of the requirements. Companies hire for potential and problem-solving ability, not just current skills.
Lol stop with this argument that was maybe true 5 years ago. Its impossible to estimate "potential and problem-solving ability" from a single interview. Companies were not hiring for specific tech stacks before because the demand outweighed the supply.
Hiring juniors is always a bet and now companies have the luxury of choosing among a vast pool of them. Of course they will rather choose the guy who aligns somewhat with their tech stack rather than the guy whose only coding experience is C++ console programs. Risk is still there but at least the first guy wont need 2-3 months to start being productive.
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u/Whitchorence 18h ago
Companies were not hiring for specific tech stacks before because the demand outweighed the supply.
Not really. The most selective jobs are often more tech-agnostic. There are two "tracks" that companies will align on and you can decide to orient your job search around. One is tech stack knowledge -- these interviews you'll be asked questions about how do abstract classes and interfaces differ in Java and that sort of thing. The other stack is whiteboard/Leetcode style interviews where they don't care about the language but they do care about you being sharp on algorithms and data structures and all that kind of stuff.
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u/dontmissth 1d ago
With the point about nobody cares about your clever algorithm but code that's understandable and maintainable.
Such a true statement working on multiple different teams over the years. I need to be able to look at something and understand the concept within minutes because I don't have time to do anything else.
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u/Unlucky_Topic7963 Director, SWE @ C1 1d ago
This is all absolutely true. I had a delayed start to my career because I joined the military and it took a little while to get my software engineering career going. I job hopped a bit for some experience and title opportunities, but I always tried to learn everything because I thought being a good dev was knowing all the answers. Finally I slowed it down, I did quality work within my area of expertise, I gave myself breathing room and enjoyed 35-45 hour weeks. Next thing I know, I was promoted to lead, then senior lead, then director.
I work at Capital One, so not the same prestige as many folks here, but the pay is really good and I can probably retire before 50 and all it took was me learning to slow down.
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u/ThomW 18h ago
I agree with
/You don't need to meet 100% of job requirements/
But too many companies put their applicants’ resumes through a meat grinder or non-developers who will automatically reject any resume that doesn’t meet 100% of the criteria. It absolutely sucks.
I’ll say this to folks who work in one of these environments — be aware of it and don’t list every technology under the sun as being required.
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u/Explodingcamel 16h ago
This post contains very little useful software engineering advice despite how long it is
“Learn fundamentals instead of memorizing all of C++, and don’t work 70 hour weeks” is something only a fool would ever disagree with
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u/Early-Surround7413 22h ago edited 21h ago
Agreed. I'd add one more thing to code quality: all that matters is ship-ability. Does the button do what it's supposed to do when you click it? Good enough. On to the next thing. Doesn't have to be the most elegant code, just needs to work.
Also in a large corporate environment (not big tech but a bank or fortune 100 company type setting) you can coast a long way just by showing up. As long as you don't piss anyone off, just do your work, clock in and out and you can have an easy work life making good money with not much effort.
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u/youwontfindmyname 20h ago
Makes me feel better about how explicit and kinda dumb my comments usually are. I literally try to make them as easy to follow as possible. Helps me out too when I go back to a project.
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u/BrokerBrody 20h ago
Memorising every framework and language
This is what I thought too before breaking into the industry.
The truth is that you need to know "tech stacks" very well and never an individual language or platform. Nor should you advertise to know more outside the tech stack unless explicitly requested in the job description.
The ideal candidate for hiring managers is familiar/expert-level at every single technology they are currently working with (the "tech stack") and absolutely nothing more.
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u/bisomaticc 17h ago
Bro you would be daydreaming in other countries if the same thing happened I saw hr rejecting people just cause they didn't had a skill that they were hiring for that too optional job market is shit right now
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u/fried_green_baloney Software Engineer 17h ago
You don't need to meet 100% of job requirements.
One time I saw a job description that seemed almost impossible for one person to match.
I mentioned it to the recruiter, and he told me it was really for two positions. OK, but you're going to scare off a good number of applicants compared to listing them separately.
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u/EmbarrassedSeason420 15h ago
Most of what you said can be greatly helped by AI.
AI helps if you have many years of experience to know good, bad and crap (code, design, etc).
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u/RelativeCloud8074 1h ago
Very good insight, my advice is never stop learning new skills even if your company doesn’t need them and pay well. This is usually the trap that most people get into.
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u/DeadlyPinkPanda 23h ago
For Job Applications:
You don't need to meet 100% of job requirements. I got interviews, meeting 60-70% of the requirements. Companies hire for potential and problem-solving ability, not just current skills.
For Career Growth:
You'll never feel "ready" for the next level. I spent 2 years over-preparing for senior roles I was already qualified for. Apply anyway, volunteer for challenging projects anyway, give that tech talk anyway.
I am currently at this stage... I am nearing 4 YOE, but I still feel very much insecure about my skills!
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u/Special_Rice9539 21h ago
I wish I had learned how to use my tools earlier, such as vim, tmux, wireshark, etc.
Learned how to make a good note-taking system so I can find information later easily
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u/Double_Dog208 18h ago
Have a plan to Git blame everyone you meet.
Challenging work, indoors, I guarantee you’ll go hungry - because at the end of the day? Some MBA wants his last programmer dead.
Gate-keep, gaslight, girl-boss.
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u/Mediocre-Ebb9862 15h ago
The best career advice for junior engineers I can give from my decades of experience is to strive hard to get to the "place to be" where you're close to the industry core and trends (Microsoft, Sun or Yahoo in the 90s, later Google, Meta, Amazon, OpenAI etc) even if it means relocating, living in a really expensive place with room-mates, competing hard, spending too much on rent and so on.
I've seen my share of smart guys who didn't realize anywhere close to their max potential because they were too comfortable where they were.. didn't want to leave Florida or San Antonio for Bay Area/Seattle and so on.
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u/ConflictPotential204 3h ago
smart guys who didn't realize anywhere close to their max potential because they were too comfortable where they were.. didn't want to leave Florida
Florida man here. You're right. We work smarter rather than harder down here. If you want to split overpriced rent with roommates just so you can work in FAANG, please do. I'll take financial independence and work/life balance over "maximizing my potential".
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u/LiveEntertainment567 23h ago
45 focused hours??? this guy focus!