Dear New Developer,
I know you worked hard to get where you are. You are self-taught, you earned a degree in computer science, or you graduated from a coding bootcamp, and your hard work helped you master the skills required to be a ‘junior’ developer.
Whether you are still searching for your first dev gig, or you’ve been at your first job for a while, you’re probably wondering what it will take for you to be a senior developer. There are lots of factors that contribute to being a ‘senior’, but the most important one is time.
It takes time to become a senior engineer because you are developing what behavioral economist Daniel Kahneman calls ‘Expert Intuition.’ Expert intuition is knowing how the story ends because you’ve read the book many times before. Expert intuition means that you can see a technical problem and you just know how it can be solved. Expert intuition is the difference between a junior and senior developer.
Kahneman says that the ingredients for this kind of expertise are
A Regular World + Many Opportunities to Learn + Frequent Feedback = Expert Intuition
Let’s take a look at what these things look like for a new developer.
A Regular World
A regular world is where there are a set of rules you can learn. For a new developer, that means a job where you can observe and begin to navigate your company’s culture. It also means having an opportunity to write code with a few programming languages, frameworks and approaches to deploying software. Even if your company’s culture isn’t great, or you’re not writing code in the language you prefer, your early experiences will help you figure out what you do and don’t like in a company, and if you’d like to specialize in a specific part of the software creation process, or remain a generalist.
If you’re still searching for a job, you can create a regular world by setting aside time each week to work through exercises on a learning path like Exercism, contributing pull requests to open source projects or civic hacking projects through Code for America and networking and applying for jobs.
Many Opportunities to Learn
For a new developer, your most obvious opportunity to learn is to write code and work on technical projects. Definitely do that, and know that another way to learn is to observe engineers that are more senior than you. Pick one colleague you admire, and notice how they learn new concepts or technologies, how they ask questions in meetings, and what they do on a project before they start writing code. Ask to pair with this person, take them out to coffee and ask them what technologies they’re curious about, and how they approach writing code. As soon as you identify some of their signature behaviors, start to emulate them. If you’re still looking for a job, find a streamer you like and copy their behaviors. I’m a fan of Coding Garden with CJ and Suz Hinton.
It’ll take time for you to make these behaviors your own, but being intentional with how your craft your developer habits and mindsets is a faster path to becoming a senior engineer than other, more conventional, learning opportunities.
Frequent Feedback
The final element that will help you develop your expert intuition is getting frequent feedback. You can get feedback from other developers through code reviews, you can get feedback on your technical and non-technical performance through regular 1:1s with your manager, and you can reflect and improve on your performance by keeping an end of the day journal where write down what you learned and how you felt during the day.
It Takes Time
In June of 2018, I took a job as an apprentice Site Reliability Engineer. Before that, I was a full-time educator, and part time JavaScript developer. I assumed it would take me a few months to figure out how my new company operated, and 6 or so months to get a grasp of cloud computing in AWS and Google Cloud Platform, Docker, Kubernetes, and the wide variety Continuous Integration/Continuous Deployment platforms.
I’m a year and a half into the job, and although I am more skilled than when I started, there is still so much for me to learn and do. Moving from web development to site reliability engineering is a big transition, and I had no idea how hard it would be. New developer, you’re starting a new career, and it takes years to grow into your professional self. It takes time, so be patient, and remember the ingredients for developing expert intuition.
Sincerely,
Kim
Kim Schlesinger is Site Reliability Engineer at Fairwinds Ops. Prior to Fairwinds, she co-founded diversity, and was an Instructor, Developer, and Curriculum Designer for the Web Development Program at Galvanize, a codeschool based in Denver, Colorado. In her spare time, Kim is a CrossFit athlete and the Head of Education and Content for Develop Denver, a 2-day conference for developers, designers, strategists and tech leaders.