How to move up from apprentice to star developer

So, you’re a fresh graduate straight out of campus and you just joined your dream company. You see all the folks around you with high energy: talkative and opinionated, talking about evolutionary design, refactoring code smells, and TDD-ing away at the speed of light. And you wonder when you will ever be like them.

Here’s a secret: Every single one of them was just like you when they joined the company. Nope, they didn’t know keyboard shortcuts, nor did they TDD like there was no tomorrow.

And neither did I.

Here are some key takeaways from my own experience that might be of help to every aspiring developer.

Believe in yourself

First and foremost, you need to believe in yourself for others to believe in you.

I see some fresh graduates lose confidence when they join a company. They doubt themselves a lot. It’s understandable when confronted with a dynamic and totally different environment from college.

But think about this: if you’re not good enough, you wouldn’t make it into the organization in the first place. So, stop doubting yourself. If you believe in yourself, sooner or later, others will start gaining confidence and trust in you.

A great way to gain and inspire confidence is to start off with small tasks and do them exceedingly well. Aim for small wins, as many such wins add up.

In my case, I remember not knowing anything about TDD or design patterns, but one of the first tasks assigned to me was to figure out why a certain package installer was not working as expected.

The cause of the problem was opaque to everyone else. I loved solving problems and took it as a challenge. So I went ahead and figured out how to enable verbose logging, went through the logs, and worked on the issue on my own. And that really impressed folks.

The other big moment was when I presented alternative design solutions to a more experienced and very opinionated colleague. I presented them as suggestions, not having enough confidence in my own ideas. But my colleague liked and accepted the presentation. It wasn’t that I had good debating skills; it was just because the idea was good.

These small incidents gave me confidence and helped me earn the respect of my colleagues, even when they knew my knowledge was way more limited than theirs.

Study, study, study

Knowledge is everything. Absorb as much as you can. Listen, engage, ask, and then listen more.

Are you a book person or a blog person? Would you rather watch a video or read a long article? Would you rather attend a session or have a one-on-one meeting with a colleague? Does a group debate excite you?

Find out what works best for you in terms of learning. For me, it’s books, because I love how books start off gently with fundamentals and gradually introduce advanced concepts.

Learn to write clean code

Be really good at one thing

Make the uncool cool

Engage in pairing

Ask for feedback

Take one step at a time