Professional Development in Tech: Steps for Creating a Productive Routine

May 14th 2021 new story

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This article refers to those specialists who have already found their niche in the Tech field and have been working here for several years. This article applies to those who came to Tech not from a specialized university. It is possible that you, like me, came to Tech after completing an economic direction at a university. This type of people has one big problem: in the head there is only the knowledge that came with solving practical problems at work. There is a lack of a systematic approach to education, which means that these specialists have a number of "white spots" in education.

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Example: ignorance of simple algorithms, basic data structures.

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The examples in this article are for programmers, but the meaning of the examples is also suitable for other areas of Tech.

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Why do you need to develop?

Rule 1 - Every six months we schedule interviews in order to find out what is our worth

Each person has their own bar for success. The person reaches it and stops. Someone just went into Tech and stopped at setting up users' computers, while someone wants his family not to need anything and raises this bar higher.

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In addition to material success, some people are looking for fame. You can write articles for magazines, be a blogger, speak at conferences, participate and win at hackathons. Development gives you the opportunity to get what you want from life (provided that you really want more).

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Some people, having read up to this point, will think: "I cannot find a better job than what I'm doing now." In a sense, this is true, since each person roughly feels at what level they are in the market. But many are mistaken at the same time, because they do not know what is their actual worth on the market. To find out, you need to go to interviews.

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How to find time for development?

Rule 2 - We free up time and consciousness for our development.

Let's solve the following problem. Given that your day consists of:

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• 8 hours at work
• 4 hours on the road with fees
• 8 hours for sleep
• 3 hours for your favorite game
• 1 hour for the family

These activities take 24 hours in total, and that is how many hours we have each day. The number of hours in a day is unchanged. Therefore, if we want to devote time to development, we need to change something in our daily activities. The options are as follows:

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1. 8 hours at work + 4 hours for packing and travel
   The best solution is to switch to remote work. Saving at least 4 hours on fees and travel. Plus you decide how much time you will spend working. Even if you go for 6-hour workdays, but postpone some of the work over the weekend, as a result, you will be saving at least 4 hours.
2. 8 hours for sleep
   It's better not to joke with sleep, sleep is healthy. And programmers love to sleep. We don't change anything here.
3. 3 hours for your favorite game
   I suggest revising the list of your games. If these are games from the MMORPG genre, then you should immediately completely abandon them, since these games, in addition to losing heaps of time, can also interfere with the ability to focus on work. During working hours it's easy to start thinking about how you can quickly sit down to play or what you need to do in the game today. It is impossible to develop in this mode. I cannot completely give up games, so instead of playing games on a PC, I chose one of the games on my phone and spend no more than 1 hour a day on it. This is enough for the body to receive the necessary daily share of emotions. Time saved hereis 2 hours a day.
4. 1 hour for the family
   Throw slippers, stones, but the fact is the fact - the figure is painfully pitiful. Of course, there is a difference between how much you dream of spending time with children and how much you actually devote. By switching to remote work, you will be able to devote more time to your family. And if you free yourself from computer games, then even more)

What do we get as a result? Moving to remote work is important as it gives you time to learn. Avoiding computer games saves not only time, but also keeps your brain less busy, providing more opportunities for learning.

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How to develop?

Rule 3 - We read the documentation for your programming language, for each framework used.

Many programmers work with the technologies they only have to apply at work and do not know that other technologies exist in their stack.

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Examples for the C# or Java programming language:

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Do you know about the existence of Nested classes? That you can create a nested class inside a class?

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public class Sales
{
    private class Order
    {
            
    }
}

Or how do you answer the question: is it possible to change a class variable with the readonly modifier?

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Answer options:

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1. it is impossible
2. possible, but only in the class constructor
3. you can do anything using reflections

To know the answers to these questions, you need to read thematic resources.

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So we have come to a new rule:

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Participation in hackathons, conferences, meetups

Rule 4 - We continuously work on expanding and maintaining our professional network.

I was surprised that many people even in Tech do not know what hackathons are. Hackathon is a Tech competition between teams, usually happening on Saturday-Sunday. A hackathon is an opportunity to learn something new in Tech, receive prizes for participation or victory, meet different people, and therefore expand your network of acquaintances.

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Why meet other people? There is a relationship between a person's success and the number of people in that person's network. The meaning of the relationship is as follows: if you have no connections, then it is almost impossible to become successful. If there are many connections, then many problems can be solved, which means you can achieve the necessary goals.

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How to find a job easier?

Rule 5 - Develop your LinkedIn account

A good way to make yourself known to the world is to create a LinkedIn account, grow your professional network and share your achievements there. As you upgrade your account, you will receive an increasing number of job offers.

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GitHub

Rule 6 - We save all the developments in GitHub.

It's hard to imagine life without Git. If you program and do not use Git, then you can easily lose your code or make, at best, rare backups of your data. In addition to saving your code, GitHub provides opportunities for teamwork, as well as showing the level of your code to anyone.

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