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The Best Way to Advance Your Career

Jaime González García on February 25, 2019

One of my readers asked me this question recently: What are the best ways to advance my career? And I thought to myself... hmm... good question......
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Edwin Klesman

Love it. I live by this, too. I call it "providing value". By providing value to others you'll be sure to open doors and creating opportunities in the long haul.

It's what I preach at Shipharder.com and in articles here at Dev.To.

People that are trying this out with a focus on short term gains, put this off as BS. It's because it isn't a quick life hack that will help you benefit. It is a lifestyle, or mindset if you will, that needs consistency and requires you to put in the effort - providing value - in the long term.

It doesn't matter if you're providing value by sharing knowledge, by actively helping or by building products that provide value. As long as your intention is to help others.

✌🏻take care and keep providing value like you did in this article 👌🏻

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Jaime González García

Thank you Edwin! What a great comment! Providing value is a great principle to live by.

People that are trying this out with a focus on short term gains, put this off as BS. It's because it isn't a quick life hack that will help you benefit. It is a lifestyle, or mindset if you will, that needs consistency and requires you to put in the effort - providing value - in the long term.

You nailed it in the head.

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Marek Zaluski

Caring about your work is a big element of whether you find your work meaningful or not.

I like to think of this as related to Cal Newport's idea that being good at what you do is more important than having passion for it.

It's also a common cause for career frustration: when you want to do great work, but your work environment doesn't allow it or doesn't prioritize it. When pressures and deadlines mean that you have to produce work that isn't the best, but it has to be shipped.

One of the challenges of being a developer is learning how to deal with these kinds of tradeoffs and sacrifices: how to find the middle ground when you're limited by factors outside of your control

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Jakob Attkinson

Interesting read. What I would add to the subject is a paragraph about stagnation, about how advancing your career could break that vicous circle where you feel you are not making any progress or that your work doesn't matter.
Advancing a career might not necessary mean something better, but something different that allows you to further develop as a human and as a professional

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Andrew Harpin

Find what you love and live for it.

Whether you achieve what capitalism describes as successful or not is irrelevant.

The biggest success is that you are passionate about what you do with your life.

I respect that not everyone has this choice, but imho it is a goal worth chasing.

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Oles Maiboroda

Be A Leader
Make everyone else around you awesome.

One of the best definitions of leadership I've heard 😀

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Jaime González García

Thank you! :D Glad that you liked it :)

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Tony Tin Nguyen

Thank you for your great post.

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Jaime González García

Thank you! :D

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Eric Pham

Great post and thanks for sharing Jaime! I've always been thinking about what's next for my career, and this does really helps me to sit down and start thinking about these questions.

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Jaime González García

Thank you Eric!! :D Glad that you found it helpful!

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Shubham Bagrecha

I'm lucky to read this great post just before my first job. I'll keep the things you suggested in mind.

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Jaime González García

Awesome! Good luck! :)

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Enes Genç

Thank you for your great post.. You opened our horizon..

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Jaime González García

Thank you for leaving a comment! I'm glad to hear that! :D

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Max Ong Zong Bao

It's really a awesome post :) especially the part in defining your success especially it might differ from person to person.

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Jaime González García

Thank you!! :)

My wife said the same thing when she read your comment. And then she said that I should add more meat to the second part with more specific advice and personal stories :D

Might need to do a follow up :)

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David J Eddy

Any excellent article Jaime; all very excellent points. Your engineering mindset is showing. :)

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Jaime González García

Thank you!! :D

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Chris Noring

as always it's a pleasure to read what you write :)

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Jaime González García

Thank you Chris! 😊