Recently, as a part of my career development, I enrolled on the course “Get to Senior” by @HexDevs. It is a fantastic resource in the #ruby community. It provides insight into the careers of some of our technology's most influential developers. Well done @HexDevs 👏
As I progress in the course, I’ll be sharing my thoughts and things I’ve learned.
We start with the one and only Aaron Patterson (@tenderlove)!
1️⃣ From his experience, his promotion was closely related to developing leadership skills, rather than technical skills. Thus, if you want to improve: take the lead, start giving advice.
“Re-balancing a tree wouldn’t get me promoted to the Senior.”
2️⃣Staying in one job gives you more opportunities to grow - and having a manager who provides valuable feedback is crucial.
Also, don’t forget to request that feedback! Ask questions like:
- How can I be more involved?
- How can I help?
- How can I improve?
At the same time, in the right job market, a change of jobs has the most potential to get a promotion.
3️⃣With your peers, ask for help all the time. If you see them doing something that you can’t understand why, ask:
“Please, explain to me why?”
That way you can internalize that knowledge and improve yourself.
4️⃣@tenderlove “I really try to be introspective about my skills and my limitations.”
Then, when you identify a gap, it’s all about practice, practice and practice.
5️⃣A huge part of leadership is great communication. Presentations help with that a lot.
“It’s not just about being able to do the thing, but also about being able to explain how to do the thing.” @tenderlove
⬆️ (Love that quote! 👏)
6️⃣Are you looking for motivation to start doing presentations at conferences? Apparently, wanting to expense the trip on your company works great😅
Conference presentations help other folks/companies to recognise you and make them aware of what you can bring to the table.
7️⃣When interviewing Seniors, things that he looks for are: communication skills; technical skills; whether they are easy to work with (because you’ll be exchanging feedback); and “logical thinking” (the ability to separate problems into smaller ones in order to solve them).
That's all for this one - more to come in the future! It was a great start to the course, I really enjoyed it!
Bonus point: @tenderlove first conference presentation was on 2008 Ruby Kaigi. Miraculously, the recording is still available - have a look!
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