So I spend quite a bit of time reading and replying to comments on youtube videos and one thing I’ve gotta say is that it’s pretty obvious some of you are struggling with some self-confidence problems.
And I get it, getting involved in the tech industry can be pretty overwhelming. It seems like there’s a mountain of things to learn and there’s no way you could possibly get through it all and call yourself an expert.
So I’ll just come out and say it… The idea of a 10X developer is a myth and a totally unrealistic expectation to apply to yourself (if you are a developer) or to your hiring practices (if you are a hiring manager).
The idea of the 10X developer (or 10X engineer if you prefer the fancier title) comes from the idea that there are devs out there that outperform their counterparts at an extreme rate.
Learning to code is an exercise in persistence. Based on my real-world experience, it’s easy to see that most people who want to learn to code will simply give up after trying a single language. For most, at the beginning of their journey, the idea of learning multiple languages seems nearly impossible. The syntax looks like a jumble of letters and characters and even just the setup required to get a basic “hello world” running makes the entire process extremely frustrating.
Submitting code for review can be a nerve-wracking experience, especially if you are early in your coding career or new to a larger company requiring a code review process.
Having a development career and working on side projects are two completely different things. If you are working on your own project it’s easy enough to have an idea, slap some code together, and push it up. Nobody else cares and life is simple.
There are over 128000000 open source projects on GitHub and every single one of them has the potential to change your life forever. Whether you are building your GitHub street cred, fixing a bug, adding a feature to a project you personally use, or just fixing typos, every pull request you submit moves you one step further in your development career.
GitHub is the new resume and every contribution you make builds your collaboration skills and associates your name with the massive community of driven individuals out there making software for fun and profit.
In software development, doing a code review is often seen as a chore or a rubber stamp requirement for quality control. Because of this, it’s easy to rush through and look like a total jerkface while doing it.
But it doesn’t have to be that way! If you come into a code review with an open mind and a willingness to help, you can turn it into a learning opportunity for everyone involved.
OK, so stop me if you’ve heard this one before… A developer walks into a room full of stakeholders in a project kickoff meeting. The developer listens to two minutes of the “problem” statement and immediately starts spitting out a bunch of technical mumbo jumbo, assuming they know EXACTLY how to solve this issue.
Have you seen this? Have you DONE this?? I sure have.
In today’s working environment, virtually everyone is asked to do multiple things at once. Stop for a minute and think about it. How many tasks do you have on your plate right now? Two? Five? Twenty? I bet your answer isn’t “One”.
The problem is true multitasking is impossible! Have you ever tried to attend two conference calls at the same time? (Come on, admit it, everyone has tried to pull this off at least once!
