The top career advice for future software engineers

Softwareengineers Quora-2129 By Quora2015-08-19 17:10:28 UTC This question originally appeared on Quora. What are the top 10 pieces of career advice for future software engineers? Answer below by author and Quora user Gayle Laakmann McDowell. First, let me explain what awesome careers look like. They don't look like nice linear graphs, where you're moving up a little bit each month. (Heck, even so-so careers don't look like that. You don't move up every month. You get a bit better at your career every month, but you move up in big steps.) Graph Great careers look more like this: They have some periods of slower growth and some "turning points," where your career shoots up. Graph2 The color changes? Those are career changes: software development to product management, sales to cofounder, etc. They also have some setbacks. Because you know what? Being great requires taking some risks. And taking enough risks means you'll fail a bit, too. So with that said... Coding Code. A lot. Schools are great at theory, but not so much at practical stuff. This is especially true at the top universities. Professors are academics and are often actually hostile to more "practical" forms of education. The best way to be a great coder is to just practice — a lot. It doesn't matter so much what you code (open source, iPhone apps, etc.) as long as you're coding and pushing yourself. Be language agnostic. Language is just a tool. It's valuable to know a language deeply, but it's also valuable to be learning new things. The best developers tend not to identify as a ____ developer. Career choices Prestige helps. Having a strong name on your resume helps open doors and show competence. If you can get a name like Google, Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft, Dropbox, etc., do it. (But don't stay long. See the next tip.) Leave the big companies quickly. If you want to build your career at a big company, then by all means, stay and build your career there. But if that's not what you want, leave quickly. One or two years post-college at a company like Google is great. 10 years? Not so much. You will continue to learn, but there are diminishing returns of sticking around. (Unless you want to be a big company person.) If you want an A+ career, come to San Francisco bay area. I love Seattle and began my career there, but I have to be honest: there are so many more opportunities in tech in the bay area. You will limit yourself as an engineer (or product manager/tech business role) if you live elsewhere. If you don't want an A+ career, don't come to the bay area. It is extremely expensive here. Seriously. That's worth it if you want a ton of career options. But if you just want a cushy career, there are more affordable cities with enough tech (like Seattle). A good software engineer can buy a nice house in Seattle. It's a stretch in the bay area. If you don't want to be a developer forever, then move on quickly. There is a lot of value in getting really deep technical expertise. But it doesn't matter that much whether you spent two years as a developer or seven years. Within a few years of college graduation, make a choice. Do you want to be an engineer for the next 10, 20, 30 years — or not? If you don't, start trying to move on now. More time as an engineer won't help you that much. Quit quickly. If I look at my friends who have switched jobs, almost all of them were thinking about quitting for the last six to 12 months. Some stayed for two or three years after they started saying that they wanted to quit. They've wasted so much time because of a resistance to change. If you're thinking about quitting, take action now. Start applying elsewhere — or possibly just quit outright. You probably won't be very successful if you're unhappy anyway, and there is a big opportunity cost in staying. Dealing with others Integrity matters. If you try to cheat and cut corners, it'll haunt you. Do the right thing in life. It's not only the good thing to do, but it's also the smart thing to do. People will trust and like you more. More doors will open — and those doors might just be the breakthrough moments in your career. Be helpful. When possible, help people who ask for help. The people who ask you for help right now will be much more likely to help you in the future. That "help" might be introducing you to their friends who can help you more directly. So even if you don't see how that person will be helpful, you don't know who their buddies are or will be. Make friends. You actually can't really be successful by yourself. If you're an entrepreneur, you need employees and business connections. If you're an employee, you need a job. Either way, it's friends who will be key to opening up these opportunities. It's friends, distant and close ones, who form the important part of your network, not that one person you met at a meetup and never talked to again. Being awesome Realize — no, internalize — that we've all got impostor syndrome. Even the most successful entrepreneurs and engineers (with very few exceptions) feel like they just "got lucky" and aren't nearly as good as people think, and that one day soon they're going to get "caught." Truly internalizing just how widespread impostor syndrome is can help you realize that feeling like you're a fraud doesn't mean that you are. Start stuff. Show initiative. Good things come to those who don't wait. Seek out new opportunities. Start stuff — a hackathon, a club, a project, a company, a new running group, whatever. You will learn so much from doing this and it will open doors. Take risks. Seize opportunities. When you notice that little flicker of opportunity, seize it. Run with it. See where it goes. Don't walk away just because you don't know exactly where it's going to go. Bias toward "yes." A great career hinges on the "breakthrough" moments. The problem is that you often can't identify those in advance. You don't know where that coffee meeting that you don't see the point of is going to lead. You won't know that, two months down the line, that person will end up introducing you to a guy who needs some advice and winds up as your business partner. Maintain a strong bias towards saying yes. This response has been abridged. View the full answer here. More Q&A on Quora: the best answer to any question. Ask a question, get a great answer. Learn from the experts and get insider knowledge. Mashable Job Board Listings The Mashable Job Board connects job seekers across the U.S. with unique career opportunities in the digital space. While we publish a wide range of job listings, we have selected a few job opportunities from the past several weeks to help get you started. Happy hunting! Topics: Business, career advice, Job Search Series, Jobs, mashable careers, quora, software engineers.