You have to evolve. Stagnation breeds boredom. Matt Bellamy

Developers' careers can stagnate when they get stuck in a role where they learn no new skills. Whilst developers skills fail to evolve, the technological environment moves on.

Developers sticking to what they know and staying in their comfort zone will lead to developer fatigue and boredom.

Developers cannot expect business or projects to develop their skills and knowledge. Developers must take the responsibility for learning and avoiding stagnation because its for the benefit of their career. Learning new skills and progressing their career is often not in the interest in the companies they work for because it involves a period where they are not good at their job (whilst they learn).

Career progression is risky for companies because the developer might suffer from the Peter Principle and reach the level of their incompetence.

Evolving

Many articles are written on IT evolving, and developers need to adapt.

What does this really mean, what actions should developer or development teams take to cope?

To evolve as a developer, you need to combine different approaches, technologies, best practices and create something new.

Animals evolve by two animals, getting it on and mixing their genes together. Sometimes the genes mutate and create a different feature.

We don’t know what will be better, so after creation, it’s trial and error. Evolution decides if the change makes the animal more effective, it will thrive and the change will spread. Changes that are less effective will die out.

As developers, we evolve our skills by trying new things, learning new skills and seeing what works. This will lead to some best practices that don’t work but

Environments

The other element to consider is the environment changing. Technology evolves and it requires developers to evolve their skills to adapt to the technology changes.

There are many changes in languages, frameworks, services, tools, best practices and devops. Changes happen all the time and developers need to keep up and get experience with them.

In services functionality gets deprecated, technology versions progress and developers need to keep up or risk the software becoming unsupported.

No developer can resist change and they need to focus on keeping their skills up to date.

Stagnate

Invert evolution and you get stagnation. Stagnation is where there is no changes or improvements.

Developers' careers stagnate when their skills, knowledge and experience stagnate. When developers stop being curious and stop learning they stagnate.

You can still be busy, stressed and overworked but be stagnating.

If your skills, experience and knowledge are not progressing then you are stagnating.

If the technology environment is evolving and your skills, knowledge and experience are not, then you are stagnating.

Stagnation is an obvious danger for developers because it can happen easily by having a role on a project that needs lots of time and energy. Projects often demand full commitment which leaves little time for learning for new skills.

The extra effort you give to the project will benefit the project but won’t benefit your career. Often getting more experience of skills you already have won’t help you get promoted.

Conclusion

For a long career as developer you need to be curious, keep learning and take responsibility to progress your career. Technology changes and it’s important to update your skills to adapt to the technology changes.

Software projects often use skills, knowledge and experience you already have. Your career needs more than writing great code — How Software Development Really Works — You Need More Than Great Code To Be A Successful Developer

The emphasis on avoiding stagnation is on the developer, they need to create habits and processes to make sure they keep up with technology. It’s not the easy path but it is the path for a long successful career.

Learning keeps development exciting.