At Uber, my colleague, Dan Heller is a developer who moved to being an engineering manager, then back to his roots as a developer. He wrote up advice that he would have given himself when he started his career as a software engineer. He shared this as advice for people on his team. It went viral within the company and after many requests to do so, he also shared it online.
His advice is something I still frequently refer to for new starts on my team, as well as when people ask me for tips on how to grow to be a great engineer. This advice is evergreen for anyone starting work at a tech company, a startup or working as part of a team, within a larger organization. I also could not agree more with the advice on writing: writing well is one of the very much undervalued skills for developers.
Read his ten principles for growth as a software engineer here and you can follow Dan Heller on Medium.
About me: I'm an engineer turned engineering manager, working at the intersection of Silicon Valley & European startups and tech companies. Follow me here and on Twitter. I write longer essays on software engineering on my blog, The Pragmatic Engineer. I also send a monthly newsletter with extended notes on software engineering and tech leadership topics.
Latest comments (5)
Nice Article
Awesome, I wish I could read this article when I just started my career as an engineer. I started to realise the statement below after I became a senior.
Fantastic. Love this statement:
Great tips, thanks for share.
Great list - I agree that writing well is probably the number one under-appreciated trait that you can work on.
I also like how 9 out of 10 things on this list have nothing to do with the technology itself! But rather, it's all about how you think about yourself as part of the business, and how you work well with other people.