money
Hello, hello, After a long break over Easter, I am back to writing you. I hope you took some time to rest because we have a full quarter ahead of us! Today I wanted to talk to you about something…
Dragos Nedelcu
Apr 13, 2023 · 3 MIN READ
- Develop a “Money Mindset” - I can give you all the tips in the world, unless you accept that you are worth it, that you can do more, be more, and of course earn more, all of this stuff is useless. Because you won’t even try it! You will tell a story to yourself about how those developers around you making it big have some special talent that you don’t, or got lucky and you didn’t and you won’t do anything to change your condition. The first step to self-improvement is responsibility. Get rid of those limiting beliefs now!
- Follow the cash - regardless of how skilled you are, a company cannot and will not pay you money they don’t have. To make the big bucks you have to work for the big dogs in town. Think of companies that have monopolies and companies that make money selling software where one developer can have a huge impact. Away remember, the money you make is always a subset of the value you add to the people around you.
- Make sacrifices - the job market is a market. Like any market, it is highly competitive. You are competing with hundreds if not thousands of other developers who also want a good salary. And just like any top athlete in any field, you will have to make sacrifices. If you want the kind of lifestyle and freedom a high salary can buy, you might as well have to ditch that Netflix account. You might have to put some extra hours into improving your skills and even invest in a mentorship program that teaches you step-by-step how to get there. Everything in life has a price. The only question is, are you willing to pay it?
- Work hard and work smart - a strong work ethic is a must if you want to make it in any field. But I bet you know a lot of hard-working people that never really made it. Smart developers work hard but they also look for things that have leverage. They work on things that make their company and team faster. Decreasing the build time of a service that 30 engineers use by 10 minutes saved the company 300 minutes. That’s high leverage. Writing documentation that 100 others developers will read? High leverage. Hard work gets you more work, smart work gets you promoted.
- Read, read, read - so much of what will make you a top software engineer is not about writing code. In the end, code is written to fulfill a business function. The more you understand how business works, the more you will be able to leverage those coding skills to create more value. A good business understanding will also help you stand out from your peers as most software engineers ignore this part (I don’t blame them, it seems boring compared to sorting data structures). The good news is that you don’t need an MBA for this, just a few business classics will do. Let me know if you want me to write more about this.
- Network like your life depends on it - the best-paying jobs are not on job boards. Why? Hate it or not, people like to hire people they trust, and they trust people they know. High-paying positions are usually high-trust positions. You have to grow your sphere of influence. You can do this even if you are an introvert. Simply make connecting with people a habit. Let’s say you had a technical interview with someone. Add them on LinkedIn, and follow them on GitHub and Twitter. These little actions will compound and you will become visible in no time.
- And lastly, get a mentor. Get more than one if you can. No matter how hard you work, you only live once. When you learn from other people’s mistakes, you don’t have to make them yourself. Ask every developer that made it to the top and they have one thing in common. They all had mentors. Humans learn the fastest from other humans. We are almost closing our doors for April, if you want us to help you, apply here now!
