Software Developer

As the software industry is evolving rapidly so as the environment, technologies, and expectations from a new age software developer. Particularly in a current situation like COVID, companies retain top valued software developers. Even if you have great coding skills, your company might not consider you valuable. Nowadays companies are looking for new-age smart developers – Being Aware, Being Social & Being Smart is the new demand of the hour. A new age software developer focuses on these novel factors to remain competitive, happy, aware and tech-savvy:

Figure Developer Productivity (Slide Format Courtesy: https://slidesgo.com/)

#1 – Client-focused – focus on the outcome

  • Keep your inquisitiveness quotient high and focus on solving the business problem.
  • Focus on the outcome not just on putting in long hours. If you can’t deliver the entire JIRA story, set expectations to deliver incrementally and break them into tasks.
    • Click here to read this post on how to focus on outcome, not output.
  • Keep your objectives measurable – Like your code performance SLA, keep your job objectives SLA based. Measure it every fortnightly/monthly/quarterly with your manager.
  • Focus on long-term impact when solving business problems.

“You don’t get results by focusing on results. You get results by focusing on the actions that produce results.” – Mike Hawkins

#2 – Communicator – Learn to sell your idea

  • Learn to sell your ideas to your project manager – often software developers struggle to communicate bright ideas to their supervisor.
  • Prepare your discussion (either by writing on paper or word or even PowerPoint) to present your idea.
  • Learn techniques to tell your story. For example, Storytelling is a well-known technique to convey your thoughts in a way anybody can understand.
  • Listen to a sales pitch or a startup idea – observe how startups selling their ideas to their investors.
  • Listen to TedTalks on Technology.

“If you are trying to sell someone your idea and you can’t even define it to yourself, then it is a problem.” – Garance Doré

#3 – Learner – Keep up your learning quotient

“I never lose, I either WIN or LEARN” – Nelson Mandela

#4 – Productive – Keep it in check

  • Be aware of the activities you find mundane and think about automating the same or find new ways to do the same. For example – use JMeter to run a unit performance test for your APIs or think proactively about using chaos engineering techniques to build resilient applications.
  • Be aware of any smart or new-age software developer in your team. Collaborating with people having a similar mindset creates new ideas and increases your productivity.

“First, Solve the problem.
Then, Write the Code.” – John Johnson

#5 – Healthy – Keep up with healthy mind, body and soul

  • The most important one as it keeps up the spirit and make sure we have a fresh & healthy mind to counter any challenge and come up with innovative ways to do things.
  • Build relationships & collaborate within and outside your team.
  • Don’t limit your positivity within the team or even company – spread your positivity as you progress.

“Happy Programmers write Happy Code.”

That’s it – thanks for reading this post. Share your ideas, practices, and success formula as comments!

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