Jumpstart Your Software Career: A Comprehensive Guide
Publisher: Amazon Kindle
Publication date: January 11, 2021
Table of contents
Preface
The ideas in this book are most effective for people currently in training to be a software engineer or people new to the software industry. A lot of the content was originally written for college students, but almost all of the information in the book can be applied by people in coding bootcamps or people searching for their first software job.
As an aspiring software engineer, you are very likely to achieve the career success you want if you learn outside of the classroom, get real-world software experience, practice your non-technical skills, and make yourself known to the world.
This is not a technical book. I will not discuss specific programming languages or computer science concepts here. There are millions of articles and other pieces of media that discuss those topics. This book discusses how to apply a few fundamental principles to your life that will empower you to build the career of your dreams.
Disclaimer
I want more than anything for you to succeed, and I hope that with the content of this book, you will be closer to taking more control of your career than you would have been otherwise.
Having said that, I cannot guarantee your success from following these principles and actions .
They may help you get closer to reaching your goals, but I cannot guarantee that all of your wildest dreams will come true just because you did everything in here as well as you could.
Chapter 0: DO NOT SKIP THIS
Do you really want to be a software engineer?
Before you just nod your head, whisper or think to yourself "yes I do", take offense to the questioning of your steadfast will to become a software engineer, or any combination of those actions, really think about it.
Do you really want to be a software engineer?
There are some truths of software engineering you have to understand and accept before you spend years of your life learning the craft, working on real-world software projects, going to networking events, and studying your ass off just to stay current.
Here are some reasons why it's difficult to be a software engineer.
You must always learn
In most careers, when a person is finishing their workday, the last thing that individual wants to think about is more stuff that relates to work. For example, mechanics spend all week working on other people's cars, so they themselves often drive cars that need minimal work.
Software engineering is one of few career fields in which a significant number of professionals enjoy spending their free time on their professional skills.
You may be lucky enough to have a job where the work itself is cutting-edge and simply by doing the tasks assigned to you, you continue to learn the newest software tools and trends.
However, since software is needed for all applications in all shapes and sizes in all facets of society, there are many, many jobs where you may end up learning skills that are only valuable to the company for which you're using them.
When you're in a job where your skills stagnate or otherwise do not reflect the market, it is your responsibility to make yourself robust to any workplace changes by learning the stuff that is valuable to the market on your own time.
Software is more than just code
Most schools don't do a very good job of teaching this idea, but there's a lot of work between writing code and making this code into a usable, efficient, scaleable, well-tested real-world software application .
Today's software engineer is responsible for more than just writing application code. Certainly it's very important to be good at writing code, but now a software engineer needs to understand the moving pieces around the production code as well, such as , and the hardware infrastructure/services that support your code.
You have to talk to people
If you took an interest in software engineering because you thought you could just sit at a computer and write code all day without talking to people, please do yourself a favor and get that idea out of your head right now. For you to write software that solves people's problems, you have to communicate with people .
Remember, software exists to serve human needs and wants.
In order for you to create valuable software (software actually used by humans), you must first know why it's valuable, who it affects, and what it's supposed to do. That involves communicating with people.
Software development is stressful
Despite what you may have heard about software development being relatively low-stress (I've sure heard that in the past before I graduated), often times that's just not true. Understand that many people in software are either naturally low-stress people or have learned not to stress out so much.
One of the most important non-technical skills you can have as a software engineer, perhaps right behind cooperation with others, is the ability to keep yourself calm in the face of pressure.
Deadlines, bosses, code releases, cost restrictions, auditing, and (especially production support) can add tons of stress to your life, especially if you're not generally well-equipped to deal with stress. And don't forget about the constant learning you have to do to stay current.
Speaking of production support, that leads into my next point.
You are responsible for your code and everything it touches
Remember when I mentioned production support?
Production support is when you have to restore proper functionality of your application in the event that something breaks in the live version of the app that the customers are using. In software, any moving piece of your application can break at any time (including in the middle of the night), and it is up to you to resolve the issue.
Some of you might retch at this idea of having to wake up in the middle of the night to fix broken software. I certainly did at first. But here's the thing. If you work on a software application, you are responsible for its maintenance.
Ultimatum 1
You don't have to be passionate about software and programming to succeed. But you definitely do have to like it, at least somewhat. And even then, things will go wrong, and they will go wrong often .
Software development is incredibly dull and frustrating if you don't like it, and even if you do like it, it can still be dull and frustrating pretty frequently.
I'll give you a full refund if you email me at with proof of purchase and a short description of your lack of interest in software. I don't want to spur you down a path to waste years of your life on something that doesn't interest you.
If you are only in software for the money, exit this book.
Ultimatum 2
Now, if you think of software as just what you do for work, and if you have no interest in pursuing it any more than absolutely necessary, that is perfectly okay.
There's way too much you'll want to do with your life outside of your job, and the desire to separate what you do to pay your bills and what you do with the rest of your time is normal. There's more to life than just looking at a screen.
Almost everyone has some idea of what they need to do to get employed, but this book focuses on going above and beyond and taking as much control as possible over your circumstances. If you only want to coast by, you're not going to want to bother with the principles in this book.
If you do not care to go above and beyond for the sake of your career, exit this book.
